Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: It seems to me unfair at the political parties, who
Speaker 4: you would think should be the most important voice in
Speaker 4: campaigns are the ones that face most onerous rules and
Speaker 4: regulations on their campaign donation, and the billionaires have no regulations.
Speaker 3: Let's just have a fair fight. It's the First Amendment.
Speaker 5: And I'm proud to represent my clients and tell staff
Speaker 5: or the members themselves why we think they got it wrong.
Speaker 3: All right, welcome to Counterpoints Today.
Speaker 6: We're going to be talking about the corporate takeover of Washington.
Speaker 6: We've got an author over here, Brodie Mullins, who wrote
Speaker 6: with Luke Mullens the new book which is destroyed. That's right,
Speaker 6: put his put the actual copy up on the screen here,
Speaker 6: called The Wolves of k Street. The Secret History of
Speaker 6: How Big Money took Over Big Government were also joined
Speaker 6: by Sam Godaldig, who represents that big money taking over
Speaker 6: big government. Sam is a lobbyist here in Washington. Do
Speaker 6: you go by super lobbyists or you just go by lobbybbyist?
Speaker 3: Just we'll go by Wolf. Now, Yes, he's a He
Speaker 3: is a Wolf of K Street.
Speaker 6: And so we hope that people at the end of
Speaker 6: this program will have a full and rich understanding of
Speaker 6: how lobbying works and how legislating works in Washington based
Speaker 6: on this kind of investigation into the into the history
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 3: Sam quickly start with you.
Speaker 6: You actually read the book, which is unusual for you.
Speaker 3: Tell us what you thought of it. I loved it.
Speaker 3: Brody did an incredible job.
Speaker 5: He outlined the careers of three, you know, mega lobbyist
Speaker 5: people that change the field. I was a staffer on
Speaker 5: Capitol Hill when most of these lobbyists were kind of
Speaker 5: in their prime, so I didn't know them very well personally,
Speaker 5: but I definitely knew of them. They all had enormous
Speaker 5: shops and big influence, and they were cutting edge. And
Speaker 5: Brody writes about that and kind of writes about how
Speaker 5: things got off the rails for him too, So I
Speaker 5: found it really interesting.
Speaker 6: It is interesting how terribly things actually turned out in
Speaker 6: the end for almost all of the characters in this book,
Speaker 6: and also terribly for us as a country. Like nobody
Speaker 6: won here, even the winners lost. But Brody want to
Speaker 6: start with you and ask you. Let's say you've got
Speaker 6: Ukrainian oligarch or an Israeli oligarch or Russian oligarch.
Speaker 3: Although sanctions come into well.
Speaker 6: Let's go with the second. Sanctions are a problem too,
Speaker 6: that's a political problem. An oligarch is decides that he
Speaker 6: has a problem in Washington. It's always a heat and
Speaker 6: he needs this problem solved. So, knowing everything that you've
Speaker 6: learned in your couple of decades of covering Washington, influence
Speaker 6: if what would the influence pedlars in Washington tell an
Speaker 6: oligarch For an oligarch who's coming into town, here are
Speaker 6: the steps that you need to take if you want
Speaker 6: to move your position from where it is now to
Speaker 6: something more sympathetic. You get your yacht out of hawk
Speaker 6: or whatever it is that they feel like they need.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll give you two different answers.
Speaker 4: In a normal world, the oligarch would hire lobbyists Republicans
Speaker 4: and Democrats, and lobbies are really translators. I mean oligarchs
Speaker 4: or US corporation executives are running their businesses, or running
Speaker 4: their countries or running you know, how are they they
Speaker 4: make their money. They're not folcus on Washington. Policy and
Speaker 4: the policy making process here is incredibly confusing and complex.
Speaker 4: So lobbies in general are translaers. They tell people, here
Speaker 4: are the people you need to talk to, here's the
Speaker 4: story you need to tell. Here's how a bill becomes
Speaker 4: a law, or how a resolution will get passed. And
Speaker 4: it's really about educating as many of the correct people
Speaker 4: as possible to get your message out on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: The second answer, though, is if Donald Trump wins, the
Speaker 4: answer is that you hire Paul Manaford. Paul Mannifort would
Speaker 4: probably be the most powerful unelected person in Washington. If
Speaker 4: Donald Trump wins, major character in your book, major character
Speaker 4: in our book, and the way he's survived through so
Speaker 4: many years is making contacts with the most important people
Speaker 4: in Washington, working for President Reagan, working for President Bush.
Speaker 4: After that, and if Trump is elected, there's one person
Speaker 4: in the world on the planet who is gone to
Speaker 4: jail for Donald Trump and proven his loyalty, and that
Speaker 4: is Paul Manaford. And if Trump wins, Manaford is going
Speaker 4: to be the guy to call well Manaphord.
Speaker 7: It's a good place actually to start going back in time. Sam,
Speaker 7: I'm really curious to ask you this question, given what
Speaker 7: you just said about watching people when you were younger
Speaker 7: and you were a staffer from that generation. But I'll
Speaker 7: start here because you document in the book the fascinating
Speaker 7: story of how Manifort, Black and Stone, names that are
Speaker 7: familiar to a lot of people. Roger Stone, of course
Speaker 7: alluding to changed the game, and lobbying itself has phases,
Speaker 7: has had sort of phases throughout the last fifty years
Speaker 7: plus of American history. What changed fundamentally about lobbying, as
Speaker 7: he documented in The Wolves of Case Street.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's one fundamental change in the last fifty years,
Speaker 4: and that is that most people think of lobbying today
Speaker 4: as based on cozy relationships between lobbyists and lawmakers and
Speaker 4: campaign donations and state dinners and golf outings. And that's
Speaker 4: just not how lobbying works these days. Lobby is much
Speaker 4: more about mobilizing constituents, getting business groups, getting like minded
Speaker 4: allies out in the States to pressure members of Congress
Speaker 4: to vote one way or another. Paul Manniford and Roger
Speaker 4: Stones started to change things that way. They were campaign
Speaker 4: guys in the late nineteen seventies. They were working for
Speaker 4: Ronald Reagan. Interesting story and Ronald Reagan back then it
Speaker 4: was almost was very similar to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: He's an outsider.
Speaker 4: Yes, people think of him as the established of Republican,
Speaker 4: which he is now, but back then he was unning
Speaker 4: against George Bush.
Speaker 3: George Bush was the Eastern Conservative.
Speaker 4: Establishment back when there were Eastern Conservatives around. He went
Speaker 4: to Yale, he had the right pedigree. He worked at
Speaker 4: the RNC, and he was supposed to win the nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty election, or at least be the Republican nominee. Reagan
Speaker 4: beat him. Then Reagan beats Carter. Reagan comes to office
Speaker 4: and there's no Republicans in town. There were no Republican
Speaker 4: lobbyists because one Democrats to control Congress for fifty years
Speaker 4: two the last set of Republican establishing figures were with
Speaker 4: the Knicks the administration, so they were out with Watergate.
Speaker 4: Paul Maniford and Roger Stone had worked for the Reagan
Speaker 4: campaign companies started saying, Hey, who can we hire the
Speaker 4: lobbyist who has access, who knows Reagan and Stone and
Speaker 4: Maniford are literally thirty and thirty one years old, basically
Speaker 4: said like, we can do this. So they started getting
Speaker 4: tons of corporate clients. And what they realized was that
Speaker 4: running a lobbying campaign is very similar running a political campaign.
Speaker 4: You're just trying to get fifty one percent of your
Speaker 4: constituents in this case Congress, to vote for what you want.
Speaker 4: And so they started running basically political campaign for big corporations.
Speaker 6: And so you also write about the Wolves of k
Speaker 6: Street element of it, like it feels like something out
Speaker 6: of a movie in the eighties, like just absolute debauchery.
Speaker 6: You go through a bunch of lawsuits that women, particularly
Speaker 6: in the office, filed against these different partners. Sounded it
Speaker 6: sounded crazy like and some of these guys just sounded
Speaker 6: like a complete cliche.
Speaker 3: I think it was was it Boggs.
Speaker 6: Who would ride in his in his top down Lamborghini
Speaker 6: or Porsche on his like you know, like rick phone,
Speaker 6: car phone.
Speaker 3: Smoking five cigars a day?
Speaker 6: Hell yeah, how did how has that changed or has
Speaker 6: it not changed? I mean, obviously it's not exactly the same,
Speaker 6: but the culture still feels.
Speaker 3: I feel like the culture has changed in Washington.
Speaker 4: That was very you know, mad men nineteen fifties mentality
Speaker 4: that we had in Washington through the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: I think there's that a lot of that has cleaned up.
Speaker 3: But you know, is that right when did you see?
Speaker 3: Did you see it clean up? In your arc?
Speaker 5: It had been cleaned up by the time I was
Speaker 5: on Capitol Hill as a staffer. I think, you know,
Speaker 5: the campaign finance law and the lobbying reforms after the
Speaker 5: abram Off scandal really tightened things up.
Speaker 8: It's like twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds right. Brody Brody broke that story too.
Speaker 4: Two thousand and seven was he logo, which is the
Speaker 4: Honest Leadership and Government Reform Act or something like that,
Speaker 4: And basically what it said was lobbyists like Sam cannot
Speaker 4: buy anything of value for a staff or a member
Speaker 4: of Congress. And the idea was, let's separate the ties
Speaker 4: the coat, Let's bring these cozy relations between lawmakers and
Speaker 4: staffers right, so that lobbyists can't registered lobbyists can't bring
Speaker 4: a staffer to play golf, or can't buy dinner or
Speaker 4: go to Nationals game to sort of separate those ties.
Speaker 4: One of the results of that, unfortunately the unintended consequence
Speaker 4: with a lot of lobbyist said, well, I'm just not
Speaker 4: going to register. The rule applied to registered lobbyists. Registered
Speaker 4: lobbyist for people who spend twenty percent or more of
Speaker 4: their time actively talking to members of Congress or policymakers
Speaker 4: about legislation. And I imagine you don't spend twenty percent
Speaker 4: of your time.
Speaker 3: I don't write.
Speaker 4: So it's very easy to get around that rule by
Speaker 4: saying I don't spend twenty twenty percent of my time
Speaker 4: doing that. So lots of lobbyists just deregistered and therefore
Speaker 4: the rules potentially didn't apply to them.
Speaker 7: So Sam, then tell us what the life you know,
Speaker 7: people at home, Ryan and I've both been in Washington
Speaker 7: and around this, but for people at home, tell us
Speaker 7: what the daily life. In the daily routine in the
Speaker 7: life of a lobbyist looks like.
Speaker 5: It's not super sexy. You know, it's meeting with a
Speaker 5: lot of young staff. You know, I'm fifty one now,
Speaker 5: but you know, it's meeting with the staff to members
Speaker 5: of Congress and senators, talking to a lot of journalists,
Speaker 5: sitting in meetings with clients, their PR firms, their lawyers.
Speaker 5: You know, we've talked about like the political and industrial complex.
Speaker 3: I consider all four of us solidly in it.
Speaker 5: In a source to you guys, in a source to Brody,
Speaker 5: trying to you know, shift the debate in positive ways
Speaker 5: for clients and trying to kill things on Capitol Hill
Speaker 5: that our clients don't like the book, I agree with Brody.
Speaker 5: It does feel like an era that's long gone. The
Speaker 5: book makes it sound like it was all mad men,
Speaker 5: and you know, these these happy hours that were insane,
Speaker 5: and the misogyny, and it's I haven't seen any of that.
Speaker 3: I think it's an interesting way to make a living.
Speaker 5: You know, we get to talk to a lot of people,
Speaker 5: come up with strategies to make you know, certain policies
Speaker 5: palatable or not palatable for the members that are going to.
Speaker 3: Vote on those policies.
Speaker 5: We focus on a lot of Fortune five hundred work
Speaker 5: at my firm. We don't do FARA work, so that
Speaker 5: kind of eliminates the Ukrainian you know, oligarchs.
Speaker 8: How do you design who to represent them.
Speaker 5: I'm at an all republic firms, so for us, it's
Speaker 5: very simple. We try to take clients that we think
Speaker 5: Republicans will be aligned to want to help.
Speaker 3: What about you worse issues me personally?
Speaker 7: Like you know, when you're thinking of I'm sure you've
Speaker 7: had less than savory characters approach you in the past.
Speaker 8: I'm sure you've turned people away. What's that like for you?
Speaker 3: Less than savory characters.
Speaker 5: You kind of get a vibe pretty quick if they're trying,
Speaker 5: you know, throwing around more money than maybe you know
Speaker 5: you would normally charge. You know, sets off like a
Speaker 5: little internal red flag. People assuming that you can do
Speaker 5: things that you can't. You know, like one conversation is
Speaker 5: going to change everything. So you know, I try to
Speaker 5: stay away from that personally. You know, it's a big industry.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of obvious in town, and there's even
Speaker 5: more lawyers and more PR firms. So you know, Brody
Speaker 5: wrote about three kind of really interesting slash ethically maybe
Speaker 5: challenged you know, human beings.
Speaker 3: I don't see that every day.
Speaker 5: You know, there's been people that have been wildly successful,
Speaker 5: and you know, every election turns turns kind of the
Speaker 5: tide on which firms may or may not get hired
Speaker 5: by certain clients.
Speaker 3: But it's it's a lot of blocking and tackling.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of meetings, it's a lot of trying
Speaker 5: to figure out messages that will move you know, electorates
Speaker 5: in certain congressional districts or states to a place where
Speaker 5: the Senator, the member feels comfortable voting yes or no.
Speaker 4: One thing to add I think, you know, like I
Speaker 4: said before, a lot of people think that lobbying is
Speaker 4: not what.
Speaker 3: It is the way it exists today.
Speaker 4: You know, back in the day when you work for
Speaker 4: John Byner, I think people think that you could go
Speaker 4: into John Baynor and give a campaign checking He's going to,
Speaker 4: you know, put some provision into the law for you.
Speaker 3: And that just doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker 4: And it did happen, It absolutely did twenty thirty forty
Speaker 4: years ago, especially when we had earmarks. But it doesn't
Speaker 4: happen now. And part of it is because it's scrutiny
Speaker 4: of the media and the member of Congress exists. I mean,
Speaker 4: in my entire time of being a reporter, Like the
Speaker 4: one thing you know for sure is a member of
Speaker 4: Congress will do anything it takes to get reelected. And
Speaker 4: if they're gonna do some sweetheart deal for a lobbyist
Speaker 4: buddy and get caught.
Speaker 3: You know, they could lose their seats, so they're not
Speaker 3: going to do that. I would add the media landscape.
Speaker 5: You know, back when Bogs and Podesta and Matt of
Speaker 5: Fort were doing, what they were doing was so tight.
Speaker 5: You know, you had three major newspapers, maybe four, couple
Speaker 5: of network news shows that only ran a half hour
Speaker 5: every night. You know, now with cell phones and the
Speaker 5: Internet and all the media kind of outlets that have
Speaker 5: popped up across across DC, it's really hard to have
Speaker 5: a quiet conversation in a smoke filled back room, Like
Speaker 5: there's no secrets anymore.
Speaker 8: Nobody even smokes.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 7: You I won't reveal what you put in, you know,
Speaker 7: to get your nicotine.
Speaker 8: Fixed before we started here.
Speaker 6: But it seems like it was in and it feels
Speaker 6: like I'm curious if Washington has sort of adapted to
Speaker 6: this by concentrating power in you know, the leadership positions,
Speaker 6: Like it's so like a parasite host relationship in the
Speaker 6: in the way that, like the Congress, the administrative apparatus
Speaker 6: kind of shapes itself sometimes to the right the lobbyists,
Speaker 6: like for instance, like Brody, You've covered this. The House
Speaker 6: Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, those would
Speaker 6: be the places that would regulate, you know, the people
Speaker 6: with lots of money. And so what ended up happening
Speaker 6: is that and this is a parasite host relationship. The
Speaker 6: members of Congress who wanted to raise money from Wall Street,
Speaker 6: you know, would go serve on these committees so that
Speaker 6: it would sort of then be subsumed into that. Like
Speaker 6: that's how the takeover ends up happening. But today, because
Speaker 6: there's so much there's so much anger at Wall Street,
Speaker 6: and there's also, like you said, there's more attention on
Speaker 6: everything right now, a lot of people are like, actually,
Speaker 6: I don't want to be on the House Financial Services
Speaker 6: Committee because it's just going to get me in trouble.
Speaker 6: It's gonna I'm going to take it's going to show
Speaker 6: that I took a million dollars from banks. Then it'll
Speaker 6: I'll take some vote, some bank will blow up, then
Speaker 6: I'm going to lose my seat. So how are people
Speaker 6: that's more on the Democratic side, it's harder, I think,
Speaker 6: to get called effort. What so what is the current
Speaker 6: state of like fear of getting called a tody to
Speaker 6: corporate America.
Speaker 5: There is an incredible amount of populism and parties right now,
Speaker 5: and there there is kind of a notion that you know,
Speaker 5: these these PAC checks that you know ran kind of
Speaker 5: politics in the nineties are a double edged sword. You know,
Speaker 5: you can get a five thousand dollars pack check and
Speaker 5: it can be turned around and used against you in
Speaker 5: a thirty second ad by your opponent or a primary opponent,
Speaker 5: you know, which you know, these are all things it
Speaker 5: didn't used to happen in the nineties. Primary opponents, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of you know, the negative ads have gotten more
Speaker 5: kind of intense.
Speaker 8: Parties had more control.
Speaker 3: Maybe, and outside groups do too.
Speaker 5: You know, you've got all these you know, these these
Speaker 5: I guess super packs that are funded by you know,
Speaker 5: maybe one or two donors that are willing to do
Speaker 5: things that maybe the party apparatus in the nineties would
Speaker 5: have never done, which is challenged a sitting member of Congress.
Speaker 5: So you know, you take a check, a PAC check,
Speaker 5: which sounds kind of benign. All it is is a
Speaker 5: corporations employees contributing to a fund to give to politicians
Speaker 5: that agree with positions the company agrees with or disagrees
Speaker 5: with and it turns that contribution into maybe a thirty
Speaker 5: second hit. So you know, you got five thousand dollars,
Speaker 5: but it did like a million dollars worth of damage
Speaker 5: to your you know, your your favorable ratings as a
Speaker 5: member of Congress.
Speaker 3: Hoping to get real around that now, or to try
Speaker 3: to duck that liability.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, hopefully, you know, your clients aren't
Speaker 5: that hot that you know that would cause a problem.
Speaker 5: And it's our job, is lobbyist, to make sure that
Speaker 5: the members that were trusting and they're trusting us to
Speaker 5: have serious conversations about how to move the ball forward
Speaker 5: in Washington on any issue, that we're not going to
Speaker 5: put them in hot water. So you know, if I'm
Speaker 5: going to sit there and talk to Congressman X and say,
Speaker 5: you know, here's a bunch of money, don't worry about it,
Speaker 5: It's all okay, and then he gets a negative ad
Speaker 5: run against him, you know that Congressman's probably never going
Speaker 5: to talk to me again.
Speaker 3: So you can't win too much. We can't do it
Speaker 3: the way those guys did it. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 4: You know I said before that a member of Congress
Speaker 4: will do whatever it takes to get reelected. Obviously, that
Speaker 4: means you need fifty one percent of your constituents of overview.
Speaker 3: But we also need money.
Speaker 4: After Watergate, Watergate, essentially the Federal Election Commission was created
Speaker 4: and legalized political actioning committees. Companies started giving tons of
Speaker 4: money to Republicans and the Democrats and create a sort
Speaker 4: of pro business center in the US where in Congress
Speaker 4: where both Republicans and Democrats listened to corporate America and
Speaker 4: listen to their lobbies and listen to corporations in Parkers
Speaker 4: are getting this money. We rose to a point where
Speaker 4: about half members of Congress get about half of their
Speaker 4: money from corporate packs. And that made members of Congress,
Speaker 4: Republicans and Democrats more dependent on money from corporate packs.
Speaker 4: And that meant that the corporations created that allowed corporations
Speaker 4: to create a pro business working center in this country.
Speaker 4: That's now fraying because both Democrats are not taking corporate
Speaker 4: pack money and some Republicans are not taking corporate back
Speaker 4: money because.
Speaker 3: Of the issues that Sam mentioned.
Speaker 4: So now what we have is members of Congress, Republicans
Speaker 4: and Democrats getting money from small donors. Small donors tend
Speaker 4: to be more ideological, less concerned about getting things done
Speaker 4: in Washington, oftentimes trying.
Speaker 3: To blow up things in Washington.
Speaker 4: And you have members of Congress on the right and
Speaker 4: the left who are now instead of appealing to the
Speaker 4: middle and coming to these companies to get their money
Speaker 4: and see what they want, or sort of moving to
Speaker 4: the extremes, which I think has made politics more extreme
Speaker 4: on both sides.
Speaker 3: And so the other thing about corporate pack.
Speaker 4: Dollars is that while there are problems with them, we
Speaker 4: know where they're coming from, we know how they're raised,
Speaker 4: they're regulated, they're disclosed, they're capped donations from billionaires and
Speaker 4: small donors.
Speaker 3: We don't know who these people are. We don't know
Speaker 3: what they want.
Speaker 4: There is very little disclosure, and that's a bigger problem
Speaker 4: that we have in politics. And the political parties are
Speaker 4: still capped. So the super packs and billionaires are doing
Speaker 4: whatever they want with no rules and no limitations, and
Speaker 4: the political parties, who I think we'd want to be
Speaker 4: the dominant force in politics are no longer dominant force
Speaker 4: in politics, and that's a problem.
Speaker 6: It's interesting that you say that I want to hear
Speaker 6: your guys take on this, because Yeah, I grew up
Speaker 6: worrying about corporate power like that in the nineties, like
Speaker 6: that was the that was the thing the left really
Speaker 6: cared about. Then the corporate we called it the corporate media.
Speaker 6: Now it's now it's become the mainstream media.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: And you would say, look, big oil is doing this,
Speaker 6: and it's and so on and so forth, and it
Speaker 6: corporate power replaced you know, labor power, environmentalists, women's groups,
Speaker 6: other coalitions that backed the Democrats in the seventies. And
Speaker 6: so that's why we understood it in that kind of dialectic.
Speaker 6: But your point is a really fascinating one because just
Speaker 6: last week and the week before, we were covering this
Speaker 6: race in Portland, Oregon. I don't know if you guys
Speaker 6: followed this at all at sam you wouldn't have because
Speaker 6: it's a Democratic primary.
Speaker 3: Who cares. I love democratic primaries.
Speaker 6: It was an organ Oregon's third district, Parmila Giapaul's sister
Speaker 6: was running and uh in an open, open race or
Speaker 6: a bluomen Hour retired and Apac decides that it's going
Speaker 6: to you know, weigh in against Giapaul's sister. But because
Speaker 6: a pack has a kind of toxic relationship with Portland,
Speaker 6: they're not going to come in and be like, we
Speaker 6: think that Israel's war is going great, and we support
Speaker 6: this liberal democrat, because then everybody would just say, well,
Speaker 6: we're voting for Giapaul. So they created basically fake super PACs,
Speaker 6: like they just propped up brand new superpacks and dropped
Speaker 6: millions of dollars into them at the very end so
Speaker 6: that they didn't have to disclose until, you know, after
Speaker 6: the after the election had already had.
Speaker 7: It's like a domestic version of the European Center for
Speaker 7: Modern Kah And it's just a shell group that Podesta
Speaker 7: and Manaport and.
Speaker 6: So boom, they pick a member of Congress just with this,
Speaker 6: with this maneuvering.
Speaker 3: What is that? What does that do to Washington?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 6: Or is it in some ways a sideshow that it
Speaker 6: that it affects American policy towards Israel, But otherwise everything
Speaker 6: else just kind of goes on as it was, and
Speaker 6: members just know like, Okay, if I step out a
Speaker 6: line on Israel, pile sign, I could have some completely
Speaker 6: random super pack at Nukemi.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the same thing happens with corporate America.
Speaker 4: I mean, I remember stories a decade ago when Harry
Speaker 4: Reid was running for reelection, and the pharmaceugal industry would
Speaker 4: come into the lastecond and support Harry Reid, and as
Speaker 4: a result, Harry Reid owed the pharmaceupal companies when he
Speaker 4: got back to Congress.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was Obamacare, right, cut a one hundred and fifty
Speaker 6: million dollars deal.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: More recently, I heard a great story that big tech companies,
Speaker 4: when these anti tech bills were moving through or there
Speaker 4: was a question of whether it be a Senate vote,
Speaker 4: big tech industry went out to a couple of key states,
Speaker 4: ran tons of ads and basically sent the message, we
Speaker 4: will destroy you if you vote for this bill. And
Speaker 4: there was no vote on that bill.
Speaker 6: The bitcoin folks did that in twenty twenty two. If
Speaker 6: you followed, they'd like jumped into a bunch of races.
Speaker 3: Sank free.
Speaker 4: Actually, yeah, right, you're sending a message that And I
Speaker 4: think the point here is that you know, the govern
Speaker 4: and the president and Congress are incredibly powerful, but not
Speaker 4: as powerful as big companies. At times, when big companies
Speaker 4: they come in and take people out. That means that
Speaker 4: these members of Congress, who again exist to get reelected,
Speaker 4: are going to be careful and not want to go
Speaker 4: against corporate America.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean that's incredibly interesting. One question for Sam
Speaker 7: just sort of about the vibes on Case Street right now,
Speaker 7: because I don't think mostly when you're talking to lobbyists,
Speaker 7: they're like sort of what people would imagine as the elite,
Speaker 7: coastal elite, sort of in their bubbles. You those, Sam,
Speaker 7: And last time we had you on the show, you
Speaker 7: did this fantastic report on what the differences between you know,
Speaker 7: the what is the Problem Solver's Caucus, right, the sort
Speaker 7: of elite coastal moderates and Justice Democrats and the Freedom
Speaker 7: Caucus who have more populous constituents and constituents and also
Speaker 7: actually lower secioeconomic constituents on average. I feel like you
Speaker 7: really understand populism in a way that the rest of
Speaker 7: the lobbying industry does not, even though it's in their
Speaker 7: interest to understand it.
Speaker 8: Right, So what's the vibe? Give us a vibe check? Like,
Speaker 8: what are other people missing? If anything?
Speaker 5: I think there's some that have their heads kind of
Speaker 5: stuck in the sand and think that things just can't
Speaker 5: and won't ever change. And the last time we were
Speaker 5: on we talked about, you know, the economic breakdown of
Speaker 5: some of the poorest congressional districts in the country, which
Speaker 5: surprises a lot of people. Republicans have a lot more
Speaker 5: the richest congressional districts in the country were held by Democrats.
Speaker 5: We myself and two business partners created the first minority
Speaker 5: owned bipartisan lobbying firm in the history of Washington, DC.
Speaker 5: A lot of people snickered, you know, it doesn't do
Speaker 5: fabulously well financially. I mean, the partnership's fun and we
Speaker 5: have a lot of fun working on the issues we
Speaker 5: work on, and we try to identify regressive issues, you know,
Speaker 5: whether it's you know, higher gas prices or tax on
Speaker 5: tobacco products that just are punitive to poor constituencies. And
Speaker 5: after COVID, you know, you can find a million stats
Speaker 5: that show the middle class has been completely wiped out,
Speaker 5: the wealthier getting wealthier, the poor getting poor, and there's
Speaker 5: there's no more middle class.
Speaker 3: Politicians have one job. It's just to get re elected.
Speaker 5: It's not to collect campaign checks, it's not to talk
Speaker 5: to lobbyists, it's not to do any of the things
Speaker 5: that I think a lot of people assume it is.
Speaker 5: It's to get re elected, and the best way to
Speaker 5: get re elected is take positions your constituents want you
Speaker 5: to take. So, you know, with with the elimination of
Speaker 5: the middle class and these poor constituencies looking at different
Speaker 5: parties in a way that they haven't. You know, recent
Speaker 5: polling shows Trump's doing really well with black and Hispanic voters,
Speaker 5: and I think Trump, you know, supercharged a lot of
Speaker 5: this populism and a lot of this coalition shifting. When
Speaker 5: I was on Capitol Hill, you know, the Republican orthodoxy
Speaker 5: was the social issues Second Amendment, abortion, reducing regulations and
Speaker 5: corporate taxes and fighting the trial bar with like maybe
Speaker 5: a fourth leg of the stool being you know, bash unions. Today,
Speaker 5: only one legs stand solidly. It's abortion and gun rights.
Speaker 5: And if you think that the reason Republicans are taking
Speaker 5: those positions is for campaign.
Speaker 3: Checks, I've got news for you. That's not why they
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 5: Mike Bloomberg spent a gazillion dollars on gun safety bills
Speaker 5: and hired lobbyists all over town, and the NRA went bankrupt,
Speaker 5: and they're still powerful because they got a lot of
Speaker 5: people that live in congressional districts that tell their members
Speaker 5: how they want them to vote.
Speaker 7: Do you think most lobbyists spend a lot of time
Speaker 7: with the type of people who would either vote for
Speaker 7: Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 8: I'm shaking her head over here.
Speaker 3: Yeah I do.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think you're somewhat of an anomaly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 5: in the industry would just like to see this this
Speaker 5: time come and go, and I personally think we're stuck
Speaker 5: with this.
Speaker 4: I think something that's fascinating along the same lines is
Speaker 4: last year, I did a study at the Geral where
Speaker 4: I took the hundredths one hundred poorest districts in the
Speaker 4: country and just put whether they're represented by a Republican
Speaker 4: or Democrat. Ten years ago, sixty three out of the
Speaker 4: hundred districts were represented by Democrats. And that's what we
Speaker 4: would think poor urban districts. In the last election, it
Speaker 4: was literally the opposite. Sixty three of the one hundred
Speaker 4: were represented by Republicans, which are rural Trump districts.
Speaker 3: And the point is.
Speaker 4: That that's your Republican party. It's not the Republican party
Speaker 4: that we think of a lot of republic party right
Speaker 4: about the book is the Reagan pro business, free trade, cut,
Speaker 4: corporate tax.
Speaker 3: That party isn't really there anymore, and we're passing to
Speaker 3: see how that changes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so you've got a lot of progressive Democrats,
Speaker 6: like you said, not taking corporate pack money anymore, not
Speaker 6: as many as it should be.
Speaker 3: It's in the dozens.
Speaker 6: It's pathetic how low it is, but it's it's the
Speaker 6: trend is in that direction. And then you've got a
Speaker 6: lot of these populist Republicans as well. So how is
Speaker 6: how is corporate America adapting?
Speaker 4: I think it's I think right now. I mean the
Speaker 4: lobby so I talked to our sounds crazy, are literally scared.
Speaker 4: I mean the people who they normally go to, the
Speaker 4: people who they normally go to for help aren't there anymore.
Speaker 3: A good example is Josh Holly.
Speaker 4: Josh Holly represents Missouri, not a state that's doing well
Speaker 4: these days. He is a Republican. I'm sure he used
Speaker 4: to be a Reagan Republican. He has three bills right
Speaker 4: now with Elizabeth Warren. One would cap credit card fees,
Speaker 4: which is like a great idea if you're a Democrat.
Speaker 8: This is a Republican, weren't from a wealthy coastal state,
Speaker 8: right right.
Speaker 4: He's got a build to make it easier to join
Speaker 4: labor unions, and he's got a bill to claw back
Speaker 4: bonuses for banks and fail and these are all terrific
Speaker 4: ideas if you're a Democrat. The fact that a Republican
Speaker 4: is on those like they're probably even talk to Ellazith
Speaker 4: Warner's kind of uh, kind of amazing right now, Liz Warren.
Speaker 4: And so I mean that just shows how the party
Speaker 4: is changing. And it seems like every time a pro
Speaker 4: business Reagan iit, Senator eves like Rob Portman, you get
Speaker 4: a JD. Vance who's much more populist replacement, and the
Speaker 4: Senate and the House needed to be slowly changing that direction.
Speaker 4: Another example, a year and a half ago, there was
Speaker 4: a bill in Congress to give the Federal Trade Commission
Speaker 4: to give the federal government more money and more power
Speaker 4: to look into and block corporate mergers. This is something
Speaker 4: that Republicans would be against forever, giving the government more
Speaker 4: power to look into corporate mergers.
Speaker 3: Forty actually it was thirty nine House Republicans voted for
Speaker 3: that bill.
Speaker 4: So basically, tax big companies to give the government more
Speaker 4: power to look into corporate mergers.
Speaker 3: I mean, the political world is changing here.
Speaker 6: But here's what I mean about Washington adapting to this
Speaker 6: new system. As soon as there's this populist wave and
Speaker 6: as soon as people start to get control of their
Speaker 6: members of Congress again, like all right, now Hawley is
Speaker 6: responsive to actual Missouri Republicans.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, lawmakers don't matter anymore.
Speaker 6: And it's just what they call the bi for uh,
Speaker 6: you know, the Senate leaders, the Senate Democratic Leader, Senate
Speaker 6: Republican Leader, House Democratic Leader, House Republican Leader, and then
Speaker 6: you've got four hundred and thirty three NPC's basically on
Speaker 6: in the House, who are just kind of told what
Speaker 6: the deal is that was struck between these big four.
Speaker 6: You and I were talking last night about how it
Speaker 6: was much more interesting how things were able to get done, say,
Speaker 6: ten years ago. But now just as people are getting
Speaker 6: a hold of the system, the system is like, actually,
Speaker 6: we're not doing it like that anymore.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: The collapse of regular order, which is you know, how
Speaker 5: a bill be comes along, you know, the Schoolhouse rock.
Speaker 5: You know, it passes the House committee, a committee, a committee,
Speaker 5: the House, the floor of the House of Representatives goes
Speaker 5: over to the Senate. Senate goes to this similar process
Speaker 5: and then if the bills are different in anyway.
Speaker 3: At all, they're cut there.
Speaker 5: You know, they call it a conference committee where the
Speaker 5: you know, there's there's compromises worked out, and then it
Speaker 5: goes to the White House for either a signature or veto.
Speaker 5: And I don't have the stats on this, but my
Speaker 5: guess is the bills that go through regular order in
Speaker 5: the last five six election cycles, you know, Congresses, this
Speaker 5: really really limited.
Speaker 3: So it used to used to be the case back.
Speaker 5: In the Podesta manifort, you know Tommy Bogg's era, where
Speaker 5: if you had the ear of an important chairman, say
Speaker 5: the Banking Committee chairman or the Appropriations Committee chairman, that
Speaker 5: chairman decided he was with you as a lobbyist and
Speaker 5: was going to insert your language and a bill. The
Speaker 5: whole system is different in that, you know, that smoke
Speaker 5: filled room or that quiet conversation was quietly inserted and
Speaker 5: voted on, and the and the members on both sides
Speaker 5: kind of were team players in a way that they
Speaker 5: just currently aren't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll let that slide.
Speaker 5: Who care, Yes, the chairman wants it, this is his,
Speaker 5: you know, the prerogative of the chairman, and you know,
Speaker 5: the leaders were inclined to help the chairman, and before
Speaker 5: you knew it, you know, your language is stuffed in
Speaker 5: an appropriations bill or some other type of vehicle that's
Speaker 5: going to become law. These days, you know, members towing
Speaker 5: the line for their chairman is I don't want to
Speaker 5: say it's not done, because it still is. But the
Speaker 5: amount of media coverage from websites or mainstream media or
Speaker 5: you know, bloggers makes everything such a transparent process. There's
Speaker 5: so much pressure on these members from different constituencies that
Speaker 5: care about different issues, where these things really get nitpicked,
Speaker 5: and it's cratered the whole kind of legislative experience in
Speaker 5: a way where they're not getting almost anything done through
Speaker 5: committees anymore. And we have these, you know, these fits
Speaker 5: where we kind of bump up against the deadline and
Speaker 5: we have to fund the federal government and you know
Speaker 5: we'll pass we call it a Christmas Tree omnibus type
Speaker 5: legislator vehicle that has you know, some stuff that Chuck
Speaker 5: Schumer wants, some stuff that Mike Johnson wants, and you know,
Speaker 5: it passes. And it's kind of how the Ukraine Israel
Speaker 5: funding kind of came to be.
Speaker 3: You know, enough people decided something.
Speaker 5: Had to happen where you know, the Big Four hash
Speaker 5: it out rather than the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Speaker 3: So if you're a lobbyist, then how do you do it?
Speaker 6: Like, how do you You just have to have somebody
Speaker 6: who knows Chuck Schumer and they'll get it in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I was gonna rewind for a quick
Speaker 4: history lesson or a reminder. So before Watergate, power was
Speaker 4: held by the government in based by three people, the President,
Speaker 4: the House Speaker, and the sena MAJORI leader. They were
Speaker 4: all guys and there are just a few lobbyists. And
Speaker 4: if they had a relationship with those one of those
Speaker 4: three or two or those three, you get anything done
Speaker 4: you want.
Speaker 3: There's less rutiny.
Speaker 4: Like you said, after Watergate, the country rebelled against that system.
Speaker 4: We elected fifty or sixty reformers who came to Washington,
Speaker 4: who who changed government power and took power from the
Speaker 4: White House and moved it to Congress and from the
Speaker 4: cougrecial leaders and push it down to committees and subcommittees
Speaker 4: and give everyone lots of power, so that tons of
Speaker 4: people were committee chairman of sub committee chairman, Tommy Boggs,
Speaker 4: one of the top lobbyists of that era, used to
Speaker 4: joke that when he went up to Capitol Hill and said, hey,
Speaker 4: mister chairman, half the people would turn around because have
Speaker 4: to eat more sub Committee chairman. And it shows a
Speaker 4: power diffuse that, as Sam is saying, has started to
Speaker 4: kind of boil back together, where power is going back
Speaker 4: to just the House lead House and Senate leaders and
Speaker 4: the White House. If Trump is elected, that's reelected, that's
Speaker 4: really going to push things back to the White House again.
Speaker 4: I mean Trump just openly doesn't do anything in Congress.
Speaker 4: He just legislates and tries to create laws through the
Speaker 4: executive branch and through executive orders. So I think that
Speaker 4: if he is re elected, we're going to go back
Speaker 4: to that era where there's just a handful of really
Speaker 4: important lobbyists. Power will be not just in the Trump administration,
Speaker 4: but really just in the White House or really just
Speaker 4: in the Oble Office. I mean, he just does things
Speaker 4: on his own, So it's really going to bring us
Speaker 4: back to an era that we sort of moved from.
Speaker 8: That brings me to a.
Speaker 7: Question I really wanted to put to both of you,
Speaker 7: based on an anecdote of just of my own. I
Speaker 7: was once in a green room with a fairly high
Speaker 7: profile media personality, and I think I was ranting about
Speaker 7: lobbying or something like that, and this person sort of
Speaker 7: took me aside and said, you know, a lot of
Speaker 7: people don't realize this, but lobbying is actually a good thing,
Speaker 7: because otherwise nobody would know what to put in these bills.
Speaker 8: The lobbyists are the.
Speaker 7: Only ones who know intimately some of these issues, because
Speaker 7: congressional staffers are twenty five, have a million things in
Speaker 7: their portfolio and have no idea what is actually going
Speaker 7: on in this district in let's say Missouri. So I
Speaker 7: think that's probably true, but also ridiculous.
Speaker 8: Defense.
Speaker 7: I still don't want to put that out to both
Speaker 7: of you to see if you have thoughts on you know,
Speaker 7: maybe people like myself Ryan rage against the industry. You know,
Speaker 7: if we got what we wanted, just eliminated at whatever,
Speaker 7: what are the downsides and that sort of hypethetical world.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I was raised by two very liberal parents. My dad
Speaker 5: was a criminal defense attorney who represented violent criminals, and
Speaker 5: he raised me saying that you know, you may not
Speaker 5: like my clients, but their rights to be defended make
Speaker 5: this country great.
Speaker 3: And I don't know that I necessarily.
Speaker 5: Like bought it when I was a kid, but I
Speaker 5: used the arguments against this is a good rhetoric. I
Speaker 5: used it against them when I became a lobbyist, Like
Speaker 5: my clients deserve the right to complain about Congress speech,
Speaker 5: Like yeah, like they don't do everything great, and you know,
Speaker 5: to tell anyone they don't have the right to amplify
Speaker 5: their voice to complain that they're getting something wrong. And
Speaker 5: the more you get to know members of Congress, the
Speaker 5: more you know they definitely aren not exactly getting things
Speaker 5: exactly right. So you know, it's the first Amendment. And
Speaker 5: I'm proud to you know, represent my clients and tell
Speaker 5: staff or the members themselves why we think they got
Speaker 5: it wrong.
Speaker 7: And do you think they appreciate it sometimes because they
Speaker 7: genuinely are unaware of things that you bring to them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean depends if we're going in with someone
Speaker 5: that's really working hard against what we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 5: But yeah, for the most part, you know, you know,
Speaker 5: we have a lot of clients, so you know, it's
Speaker 5: not in my business model to you know, kind of
Speaker 5: blow up one relationship over one single issue. So you know, I,
Speaker 5: you know, sometimes I go in and it's for something
Speaker 5: very good that everyone here would think it's the right
Speaker 5: thing to do, and you know, maybe the next week not.
Speaker 6: And part of the history here, and you could talk
Speaker 6: about this a little bit, is that it was deliberate
Speaker 6: in the sense that lawmaking was privatized by new Gingrich
Speaker 6: when when Gingrich took over after the ninety four wave,
Speaker 6: he got rid of what was called what was it
Speaker 6: called his Democratic Study Group.
Speaker 3: And he took book.
Speaker 6: So there was basically this entire apparatus that existed in
Speaker 6: Congress where members could and their staff could get help
Speaker 6: doing legislation from basically tech people who were just technically
Speaker 6: proficient at it. And Gingrich just took an axe to
Speaker 6: it and said, you know what, and cut, you know,
Speaker 6: cut staff salaries, cut cuts member office budgets such that
Speaker 6: it was just no longer you know, physically possible for
Speaker 6: them to write legislation like oh, that's did he have
Speaker 6: a Plan B?
Speaker 3: And yes, he did have a Plan B. It was
Speaker 3: K Street. And so then he also then.
Speaker 6: At the same time insisted that that was delayed right
Speaker 6: through the K Street project, saying you got to hire
Speaker 6: Republicans because at the time there's so many Democrats from
Speaker 6: the legacy era.
Speaker 3: It's controlling Washington.
Speaker 7: Well, ideologically it made more sense for a Republican like KNUW. Gingrich,
Speaker 7: who was limited government, pro free enterprise, pro slash pro
Speaker 7: corporate at the time, that union made a lot more sense.
Speaker 6: And so he basically privatized the function of legislating out
Speaker 6: to Case And it did become true that the only
Speaker 6: people that knew how to do it.
Speaker 3: Were Case Street.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I said before that lobbyists, good lobbies are translators.
Speaker 4: They're also subject matter experts. I mean, our federal government
Speaker 4: are all of our agencies are incredibly complicated, incredibly bureaucratic,
Speaker 4: incredibly hard understanding.
Speaker 3: The laws are written by lawyers.
Speaker 4: Who are, you know, not the easiest people that understand sometimes,
Speaker 4: so creating laws and legilation is very difficult.
Speaker 3: This subject matter is very difficult. You're regulating industries.
Speaker 4: That have incredibly complicated business models and plans, so you
Speaker 4: want experts writing the law. Unfortunately, the people who are
Speaker 4: working on working in commerce are really twenty five or
Speaker 4: thirty five year old at most. You know, they're not
Speaker 4: expert experts. And it's not the it's not their fault.
Speaker 4: It's just that they haven't had that experience. So therefore,
Speaker 4: as you say, lobbyies sort of become the experts. I
Speaker 4: know for myself as a reporter, I rely on lobbyists
Speaker 4: lots of times to understand rules and regulations because they
Speaker 4: used to work at the EPA and the Air and
Speaker 4: un or subcommittee where they wrote the law, and it
Speaker 4: could explain to me why this law of provision is
Speaker 4: the way it is or isn't. The issue is that,
Speaker 4: in fact, going back to Framer, of the country knew
Speaker 4: that the government wasn't going to create rules of regulations
Speaker 4: in a vacuum. They knew there'd be these interest groups lobbyists,
Speaker 4: they call them factions back then. What they thought, though,
Speaker 4: is that to be sort of a fair fight, it'd
Speaker 4: be labor unions against environmental groups against corporate lobbyists. And
Speaker 4: what we've seen in the last ten years or twenty
Speaker 4: years is that it's really just the corporate lobby ot there.
Speaker 4: Unions have been decimated. Ralph Nader used to be incredibly influential.
Speaker 4: He doesn't exist anymore public although.
Speaker 6: You try to get him on, he doesn't do zoom anymore.
Speaker 6: He said he would do it by phone. Oh interesting,
Speaker 6: he said, didn't want to zoom.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But the point is I did talk to him.
Speaker 3: The point is in this era he's a big character
Speaker 3: in your book. That's is Yeah, whis why I mentioned
Speaker 3: when reached.
Speaker 4: Down to well to roll back on that in the
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies and nineteen sixties, Ralph Nader might have been
Speaker 4: the most influential person In watching Ralph Nader, people.
Speaker 3: May not realize that how powerful. It's kind of unthinkable exactly.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the point that.
Speaker 6: Is seen in mad Men. Have you seen I saw it?
Speaker 6: There was a scene in Madmen where there's a corporation
Speaker 6: has a problem. In terms of the problem is Ralph Nader?
Speaker 6: Is there anything you guys they're going to all their
Speaker 6: powerful firms working for him?
Speaker 3: Is there anything you can do about Ralph there? And
Speaker 3: they're like, no, no, there is not.
Speaker 4: Well, Ralph Nader took on General Motors back when what
Speaker 4: was good for GM is good for the country, and
Speaker 4: he took them on and won on auto safety regulation,
Speaker 4: which shows one how much power and influence he had.
Speaker 3: But also companies.
Speaker 4: Didn't have any influence until the nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties,
Speaker 4: and so today the problem is, you know, there's nothing
Speaker 4: inherently wrong or illegal with lobbyists. As you say, lobbyists
Speaker 4: have the right to petition their government. They have the
Speaker 4: right to raise money and give campaand donations. The problem
Speaker 4: is that lobby is the only voice being heard because
Speaker 4: the other side just doesn't have the resources that they
Speaker 4: used to have. So so, in fact, for a book,
Speaker 4: we spoke to a professor who had done a study
Speaker 4: and he talked to seventy corporate lobbyists and said, hey,
Speaker 4: who is the number one person you're fighting against?
Speaker 3: And not one of them's at a labor union. Some
Speaker 3: companies are not.
Speaker 4: The other side of company fights isn't labor union, other
Speaker 4: corporate lobbist, right, It's company against companies these days.
Speaker 6: And so and sometimes it seems like companies are just
Speaker 6: or going back to the parasite host UH situation. Sometimes
Speaker 6: you'll have people in Washington just kind of create feels like,
Speaker 6: create problems for corporations who then have to then come
Speaker 6: in and pay lobbyists who are their friends to solve
Speaker 6: those problems. Very much like how the mob would go
Speaker 6: to UH, you know, to a small business right and
Speaker 6: be like, you know, would you like to put me
Speaker 6: on retainer to make sure your your window doesn't get smashed?
Speaker 8: Would you like me to advertise in axios for a week?
Speaker 3: And they're like, what you're talking about?
Speaker 6: There's no crime here my windows.
Speaker 5: I've never I've never extorted anyone, but uh, you bring
Speaker 5: up a disturb and maybe bring up point about axios right,
Speaker 5: Like it's like back in the day, back in the
Speaker 5: Tommy bogs mana fort era. You know, our job was
Speaker 5: to you know, transcribe and track a mundane, boring committee
Speaker 5: hearing right well now beg of big of is a
Speaker 5: bloomberg function of their news outlet or political pro or
Speaker 5: action shows or punch bowl.
Speaker 3: They performed these services more and more.
Speaker 5: You know, we're competing with media for jobs that used
Speaker 5: to be our jobs, like those you know from south Park,
Speaker 5: those our gerbs, you know, thought Brody says in the book,
Speaker 5: I found the most interesting parts of the book, the
Speaker 5: media parts.
Speaker 3: Roll Call was this sleepy Uh did you write for
Speaker 3: role Call? Never did no, but I seem all the time,
Speaker 3: you know, we wrote for Politico Political it was two
Speaker 3: days a week roll Call.
Speaker 5: And then in your book, and like the fifth chapter
Speaker 5: you talk about how they went to five days a
Speaker 5: week and ultimately seven days a week, not because they
Speaker 5: had so much content, they had advertising dollars. So you know,
Speaker 5: like I listened to these conversations and you go on
Speaker 5: rants about lobbyists and like I feel this like it's
Speaker 5: all of us here, like you know, like we're journals.
Speaker 5: We live in this political industrial complex where the media
Speaker 5: outlets or have a vested interest in taking the job
Speaker 5: that you know some kid used to do at a
Speaker 5: lobbying firm and transcribing a hearing transcript and now you know,
Speaker 5: one click of the button and Bloomberg or political pro
Speaker 5: or punch Bowler doing it. And you know, no one
Speaker 5: is is hitting this twenty percent threshold, so no one's registered.
Speaker 5: And you know, I just though you are registered, I am,
Speaker 5: and you got all that. You have a lot of data,
Speaker 5: I do. Well, we can put this next chart up
Speaker 5: on this.
Speaker 3: No data on any of you three?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 7: Well, no, I mean I think it's interesting because not
Speaker 7: you probably rub Ebbels with a lot of people who
Speaker 7: don't register. So here's Sam twenty eighteen in the top
Speaker 7: I think you were the top ten that year. Of
Speaker 7: lobby registered lobbyists. It's actually incorrect to say lobbyists, because
Speaker 7: there are a whole lot of people doing a whole
Speaker 7: lot of lobbying without registering in political contributions. This is
Speaker 7: just some general stuff. On the left and the right
Speaker 7: of the screen you see total spending a lobbyists adjusted
Speaker 7: for inflation over time. And then on the right, although
Speaker 7: it only starts in I think nineteen ninety eight, on
Speaker 7: the right you see in twenty twenty three, So last
Speaker 7: year the biggest spenders US Chamber of Commerce, National Association
Speaker 7: of Realtors, American Hospital Association, Blue Cross, Blue Shield. Down
Speaker 7: to the bottom you get Amazon Business Roundtable, Meta, et cetera.
Speaker 7: But I mean saying that's quarter of a million, two
Speaker 7: hundred and forty six thousand dollars in contributions that year
Speaker 7: twenty eighteen, actually less than.
Speaker 8: I would have thought. And you see C. Boyd and Gray,
Speaker 8: big conservative lobbyists.
Speaker 3: I think it used to be at the top, weren't you.
Speaker 3: There was There was a time when I was more
Speaker 3: number one, or shoot.
Speaker 7: I just met all of the because you see the
Speaker 7: difference between Boyd and Gray and the person on underneath
Speaker 7: him huge, So even the second highest person here. We're
Speaker 7: talking about five hundred thousand dollars. That's actually less than
Speaker 7: I would have expected.
Speaker 6: Because it's interesting because that's nothing for like an I e.
Speaker 6: In a in a campaign now like independent expenditure, a
Speaker 6: super pack.
Speaker 3: That's all a spread out you know, you can only
Speaker 3: give right back around.
Speaker 6: That's seven hundred thousand spread out among lots of members
Speaker 6: they'll come in with.
Speaker 3: There used to be a cap. Some the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: cut rid of.
Speaker 6: The cap, I think, but what's not a cap on
Speaker 6: individual cap? Supreme Court Supreme Court cut rid of the
Speaker 6: there was an overall cap of what you could give,
Speaker 6: not anymore.
Speaker 8: To same' spoint.
Speaker 7: What's not included in that is all the money that
Speaker 7: the Chamber and Business Roundtable and Amazon spent on Politico
Speaker 7: and axios and events and all kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker 8: There's different things happening under the curtain.
Speaker 6: One quick story on that, and I want to hear
Speaker 6: your response to this. I was told that, and I
Speaker 6: think this is in my second book, that Pelosi, before
Speaker 6: she would take a meeting with a trade group, trade association,
Speaker 6: a lobbyist group basically would ask to see Politico, the
Speaker 6: Hill and Roll Call, which are the three print publications
Speaker 6: that are circulated free on Capitol Hill, And she'd go
Speaker 6: through and look to see if they had full page ads.
Speaker 6: Those are ten twenty thousand dollars a pop. And if
Speaker 6: they had in each one, then that was a proxy
Speaker 6: kind of for how much water they're drawing in town,
Speaker 6: Like how much?
Speaker 3: How seriously do I need to take these people based.
Speaker 6: On how much they're going to be spending in Town's like, ooh,
Speaker 6: full page ads in every single one. But it doesn't
Speaker 6: show up on Open Seat, right, But that wouldn't show
Speaker 6: up as although it might if they had to spend
Speaker 6: it through some lobby shot anyway, any event, how does
Speaker 6: the media play it a part in lobbying today in
Speaker 6: the way that it didn't before.
Speaker 4: It's a great question. So members of Congress get their
Speaker 4: information in various ways. You can get it from your staffer,
Speaker 4: you can get it from a lobbyist, or you get
Speaker 4: it from the media. And for the last few decades,
Speaker 4: members of Congress and staff you read these publications.
Speaker 3: Where you know, I work for many of them. I
Speaker 3: work for Congress DAYLA, work for Roll Call.
Speaker 4: There's also political and punch Ble, and members of Congress
Speaker 4: hit staff need to read these publications and know what's
Speaker 4: going on Capitol Hill. But the reporters are also writing
Speaker 4: stories about you know this this credit card cap bill,
Speaker 4: how is it doing? How many sponsor does it have?
Speaker 4: Is it getting committee hearing? Does it have momentum? Does
Speaker 4: it not have momentum? And lobbyists and interest groups have
Speaker 4: realized if you can sort of lobby the reporters, if
Speaker 4: you can influence those stories, it's another way of getting
Speaker 4: to a member of Congress, either through ads or actually
Speaker 4: talking to reporters. So one of our main characters a
Speaker 4: guy named Jim Kordovic, who realized this first that if
Speaker 4: you can go and be friends with the reporters who
Speaker 4: are writing the stories for Capitol Hill and get your
Speaker 4: client's message into one of those stories. You know, this
Speaker 4: credit card bill has got a lot of momentum.
Speaker 3: It's going to pass. You should jump on board. Do
Speaker 3: you want to be with the winner?
Speaker 4: Or conversely, you know no one's going to you know
Speaker 4: this Bilitic gate killed and subcommittee, doesn't you know, why
Speaker 4: waste your time becoming a co sponsor of the bbilicying
Speaker 4: to go anyway? They would sort of try to influence
Speaker 4: these stories to create momentum for bills or against bills,
Speaker 4: and he was sort of a genius at him talk
Speaker 4: about how he did that, because it's kind of a
Speaker 4: Washington classic Washington. Until recently, he was not registered as
Speaker 4: a lobbyist, but he would throw parties.
Speaker 3: He'd throw big parties in Washington.
Speaker 4: He'd invite reporters, he'd invite members of Congress, he'd invite lobbies,
Speaker 4: kind of whoever is like a boldface name in DC.
Speaker 4: And then he would send his guest list to Axio
Speaker 4: sort of punch hol didn't exist back then, or a playbook,
Speaker 4: and people would write about his story to sort of
Speaker 4: further elevate the mystique about these great parties would have
Speaker 4: so everyone in Washington, all the players wanted to go
Speaker 4: to these parties, and he would sort of use them
Speaker 4: for his business. One he would tell clients, Hey, look
Speaker 4: at all these important people I know. But two, he'd
Speaker 4: sort of befriend reporters who we can then go to
Speaker 4: and say like, hey, you know this bill is coming up.
Speaker 4: You know you should write about it or not write
Speaker 4: about it, or here's you know. He could sort of
Speaker 4: create relationship with reporters to then try to pitch his
Speaker 4: client's interests to get to the eyeballs and members of Congress.
Speaker 7: So we'll add this in post. But I had to
Speaker 7: mention this was a couple of weeks ago. I got
Speaker 7: the act Yes morning newsletter, so it's May tenth, and
Speaker 7: at the top I always look at who's presenting it
Speaker 7: that day, because it's their corporate sponsor. It's presented by BP.
Speaker 7: And then down the second item, not even like down
Speaker 7: far at number ten. The second item was called Trump's
Speaker 7: Big Oil bargain, and it was basically criticizing Donal Trump
Speaker 7: for making a bargain with big oil in a newsletter
Speaker 7: that was clearly a bargain between the media outlet and
Speaker 7: big oil. And that happens literally every day if you
Speaker 7: read Playbook or punch Bowl or whatever. But in that sense,
Speaker 7: I mean, it's so egregious. I think if you had
Speaker 7: done that, I don't know, twenty years ago, it would
Speaker 7: have been a lot people would have been a lot
Speaker 7: more grossed out by it.
Speaker 8: It seems like that's true.
Speaker 4: I remember twenty years ago or so, maybe fifteen years ago,
Speaker 4: the Washington Post had this idea of having salon dinners
Speaker 4: where you would invite a member of Congress, I think,
Speaker 4: and have sponsors paid for it.
Speaker 3: And people got fired over that.
Speaker 4: I mean they were a laugh out of town and
Speaker 4: everyone said, this is a horrible idea.
Speaker 3: How this is pay to play?
Speaker 6: Now everyone does it, right, It's the thing that funds
Speaker 6: what semaphore punchble. Actually, like the main thing that's funny
Speaker 6: them is these corporate events, right and.
Speaker 4: The wo we have big conferences all the time where
Speaker 4: people pay to sponsor the events.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's part of the business durals and model. Now.
Speaker 5: I remember I was getting those types of emails from
Speaker 5: these media outlets and.
Speaker 3: I tried to blow one up.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 5: I did so I would respond like, if I pay
Speaker 5: this much, can I sit next to whoever the post
Speaker 5: is hosting and will they absolutely vote yes? Like just
Speaker 5: like you know, like kind of like you know, like
Speaker 5: I don't know, like the jerky boys, I like get
Speaker 5: them in a frank phone call. So, and I mean
Speaker 5: emailing with like a serious person and she's not getting
Speaker 5: my sarcasm.
Speaker 3: She's like ironyar at all?
Speaker 5: Right, So I'm like, how much do I need to
Speaker 5: get a yes voted? You know, like just back and
Speaker 5: forth and you know before after a while she realized
Speaker 5: I was just you know, goof and on her or whatever.
Speaker 5: So you know, she goes dark and I sent the
Speaker 5: emails to you guys. I mean, like, it's not just
Speaker 5: the lobby, it's this whole city. It's like everyone in it.
Speaker 6: You weren't offended at the behavior, You were offended at
Speaker 6: the competition.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm offended at the moral preenening over lobbyists are
Speaker 5: bad while I'm being asked to give money to a
Speaker 5: salon dinner that's not reportable, non non disclosed, so someone
Speaker 5: else can stuff money in their pockets and accuse lobbyists
Speaker 5: of being crooked. Like, at least we register, at least
Speaker 5: our data is out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 4: You put up a stat earlier from Open Secrets. There's
Speaker 4: thirteen thousand registered lobbists in DC. There's five or six
Speaker 4: million people who live in the Washington, DC area. And
Speaker 4: if you're not working for a school or a bus driver,
Speaker 4: or work in retail or maybe university or drinals, like,
Speaker 4: you're here to affect policy and legislation. And what Stam's
Speaker 4: point is that he needs to register and disclose activities
Speaker 4: and there's millions of people who don't, and you know,
Speaker 4: and that's that's not right.
Speaker 7: Well, although there was a point made earlier that you know,
Speaker 7: the requirements to register created in a sense, more corruption
Speaker 7: and because people were just not registering. So I pose
Speaker 7: this question to both of you, what, if anything, do
Speaker 7: you think, based on your experience reporting this living that
Speaker 7: needs to change, either in media or in lobbying or
Speaker 7: in the entire political industrial complex to make the system
Speaker 7: more fair.
Speaker 4: So I don't think we can regulate and we shouldn't
Speaker 4: regulate speech or money. I think we should do things
Speaker 4: to make things more fair, and I think ultimately have
Speaker 4: more disclosure. Again, in your stats that you put up
Speaker 4: a few minutes ago, it showed in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: how are.
Speaker 3: Many lobbyists are were at that moment when we.
Speaker 4: Passed the law to ban gift giving by members of
Speaker 4: Congress and lobbyists, the number of lobbyists every year went down,
Speaker 4: you know, and that's crazy. If anyone who thinks there
Speaker 4: are fewer lobbyists today than there were two and seven,
Speaker 4: you know, it's crazy. So people are just gaming the system.
Speaker 4: So there should be disclosure of everyone who's trying to
Speaker 4: influence legislation.
Speaker 3: I think that's.
Speaker 4: Totally fine, and then the American publicans say I like
Speaker 4: that or I don't like that, and use their vote.
Speaker 4: I think the same thing for money, it seems to
Speaker 4: me un fair at the political parties, who you would
Speaker 4: think should be the most important voice in campaigns are
Speaker 4: the ones that face most onerous rules and regulations on
Speaker 4: their campaign donations. And the billionaires have no regulations. We
Speaker 4: don't even know who they are, what they want, and
Speaker 4: they're spending money. However, you mentioned the example in Oregon.
Speaker 4: They're doing whatever they want and we don't know what
Speaker 4: they're doing. It seems like let's just have a fair fight.
Speaker 8: What they're doing with the Washington Post, for example.
Speaker 9: The Salon dinners or well, no, what Jeff Bezos billionaires,
Speaker 9: I mean, we have to take the Posts word for it,
Speaker 9: or Access puts at the bottom of their letters that
Speaker 9: you know, their partners don't affect the editorial content, so
Speaker 9: you just have to take.
Speaker 8: Their word for it.
Speaker 6: Right, How would public financing change Washington? So there was
Speaker 6: a bill by John Sarbanes, who actually this is quite
Speaker 6: quite ironic, and we covered this briefly. John Sarbanes, the
Speaker 6: son of Paul Sarbines, fought his entire career in Congress
Speaker 6: for public financing and again dark money in Washington. That
Speaker 6: was his one issue. He retired this year. He was
Speaker 6: replaced by a woman who won because she got millions
Speaker 6: of dollars dark.
Speaker 3: Money contributions from I mean, there's no doubt done.
Speaker 4: If you remove money from the system, the system will
Speaker 4: be better.
Speaker 3: I just don't think you can remove money from it.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't think you can remove money, but on
Speaker 6: the equalizing front, because like the Supreme Court's clear, they're
Speaker 6: going to let the billionaires and others do whatever they want.
Speaker 6: But his bill would have said the federal government will match,
Speaker 6: and they were gonna He had a clever way that
Speaker 6: corporations who got fined by the SEC that money would
Speaker 6: go into a fund that would then so it.
Speaker 3: Is corporate funded. So corporate it is corporate funded, yes.
Speaker 8: And putting more corporate greed in policy.
Speaker 5: It would CB is better at getting those those fees
Speaker 5: or those those penalties than maybe the SEC.
Speaker 3: So let's add them both in there. But it would match.
Speaker 6: Let's say if you gave ten dollars would match at
Speaker 6: six to one, and so it would it would try
Speaker 6: to level the playing field and get regular people the
Speaker 6: chance to come in uh and balance out.
Speaker 5: Though I would just say, as like a as a
Speaker 5: Republican staffer, that would have been like, you know, my
Speaker 5: hair would have been on fire. The idea of public financing,
Speaker 5: what a waste of taxpayer dollars for campaign ads that
Speaker 5: annoy almost every constituent.
Speaker 3: Like you know, but.
Speaker 5: The longer you're here and you're seeing the bedfellows change rapidly,
Speaker 5: like we are getting, Republicans are getting outraised like three four,
Speaker 5: five to one to Democrats.
Speaker 8: These days, people don't realize that.
Speaker 3: Wasn't the case. And you know, I could see me
Speaker 3: like in swing districts.
Speaker 5: All the billionaires in this country minus the two that
Speaker 5: are always mentioned are Democrats, and they're giving heavily to Democrats,
Speaker 5: you know, like this whole fact check then they're all Democrats.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a vibe.
Speaker 7: Well, but the thing is that the two that's as
Speaker 7: Sam said that, like we just saw Sea Boyd and
Speaker 7: Gray right up there. So see Boyd and Gray is
Speaker 7: just you know, quadrupling what the other guys were given, and.
Speaker 8: He was, but he's like the Republicans that.
Speaker 5: Way, there are a lot of wealthy Democrats increasingly that
Speaker 5: are giving their party, like you know, and I guess
Speaker 5: I'm not complaining about it. I'm just saying, like you
Speaker 5: could see Republicans move to a place where, you know,
Speaker 5: if they keep getting out spent three four, five to one,
Speaker 5: maybe public finances. You know, it's just like, you know,
Speaker 5: like I watched the statistics on Hispanic voters with Trump,
Speaker 5: and it's like, you know, maybe you know, Democrats might
Speaker 5: want to close the border soon if it keeps going
Speaker 5: in this direction, like you know, like you can't predict everything,
Speaker 5: and what's true today might not be true tomorrow. And
Speaker 5: when I was a Hill staffer, I thought we'd have
Speaker 5: a funding advantage as long as the day was long.
Speaker 5: You know, we're never going to lose this corporate America
Speaker 5: loves us, you know, change.
Speaker 6: And that's the end of Brody's books. Yeah, you watched
Speaker 6: it unravel. How did it change? How did how did
Speaker 6: we get to a place where Republicans are no longer
Speaker 6: necessarily the place that's going to get the corporate contributions.
Speaker 3: I think Trump really sped it up in sixteen.
Speaker 5: You know, in one election he knocked off the Bush
Speaker 5: dynasty and the Clinton dynasty without spending a.
Speaker 8: Dollar like two birds one stone, right, Like.
Speaker 5: Didn't spend any of his own money either, you know,
Speaker 5: and they he was outspent probably one hundred to one
Speaker 5: in that cycle, I'm sure. And then certainly, you know,
Speaker 5: midway through Trump's term, corporate America started shifting on him.
Speaker 5: You know, they were not you know, full throated supportive
Speaker 5: of Trump. I think that's probably when, like, you know,
Speaker 5: that was the tipping point when Dems really kind of
Speaker 5: started exaggerating advantage.
Speaker 6: Exact same time he's sending trillions corporate tax cuts through
Speaker 6: i mean, through Paul Ryan, But how did you watch
Speaker 6: this happen? Both things happened at the same time. What
Speaker 6: was it like to watch that where on the one hand,
Speaker 6: your your your clients are getting the biggest gift they've
Speaker 6: gotten in decades, right, and at the same time they're
Speaker 6: so furious that the people giving them the gift.
Speaker 5: The clients are furious at the person giving them the gift,
Speaker 5: and the person giving them the gift is furious right back.
Speaker 3: And I think that was a little different. I feel
Speaker 3: like Trump just wanted to win.
Speaker 4: He didn't care what it was at the time, for sure,
Speaker 4: Ryan had teed up this big win and he just
Speaker 4: took it.
Speaker 3: I agree with that.
Speaker 4: And what's really interesting is if he wins most that
Speaker 4: tax cut is up in the in the.
Speaker 3: Early next year, that would be up to him.
Speaker 4: That tax cut expires because they did it through reconciliation.
Speaker 4: Now the most corporate tax doesn't expire, but anyway, the
Speaker 4: whole ball of wax will be up for renewal.
Speaker 7: And he's already allegedly promising, according to some reports, that
Speaker 7: he'd bring back a big tax cut.
Speaker 8: For the for the rich.
Speaker 4: So that'll be interesting to see what actually happens because
Speaker 4: the biggest beneficiary, one point three trillion dollars of that
Speaker 4: was for corporate America. And is Donald Trump going to
Speaker 4: renew that or does he take some of that and
Speaker 4: give it to his consistent constituents, which he could, you know,
Speaker 4: the sort of more blue collar workers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, the shifting demographics that the party is
Speaker 5: taking more seriously right now, would lead you to believe
Speaker 5: that this Republican Party in twenty twenty five, whatever comes
Speaker 5: our way with the election in the Senate, it would
Speaker 5: not be the same as what twenty seventeen brought U.
Speaker 4: Yes, which goes right to the Chamber of Commerce that
Speaker 4: the Ways and Means Republican Chairman is launching an investigation
Speaker 4: into the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce will
Speaker 4: be the lead lobbyist for this corporate tax cut bill.
Speaker 4: It's being written by the Ways It Means Chairman. I mean,
Speaker 4: the world is upside down. But how does that dynamic
Speaker 4: work out?
Speaker 7: That fascinating potentially the anti swamp ways and means Chairman,
Speaker 7: because there's a lot of depending on who's elected. I mean,
Speaker 7: you hear a lot of that on the right these days,
Speaker 7: and maybe not always, you know, walking the talk or
Speaker 7: however the phrases on that question, the one this is
Speaker 7: maybe we'll see how you guys want to answer this.
Speaker 7: Is there anyone you could say, is like the most
Speaker 7: corrupt member of Congress?
Speaker 8: Is there anyone?
Speaker 7: I mean, Bob Menendez is a real candidate. Is there
Speaker 7: anyone or maybe even the most corrupt member of the
Speaker 7: political industrial complex? Are there standouts right now?
Speaker 3: It's a hard question.
Speaker 8: Some people would default to Hunter.
Speaker 7: Biden, probably James Biden, Frank Biden, we go down the
Speaker 7: list side.
Speaker 4: I always felt in my time Chattel Hill and lobbying
Speaker 4: that most people in Washington are good people here to
Speaker 4: do the right thing, hard workers, but it's always one percent.
Speaker 4: There was one percent of people who are corrupt and problematic,
Speaker 4: and that means that as a reporter, there's there's five point.
Speaker 3: Three five members of Congress. You gotta go find them.
Speaker 4: They're the bad guys, and in lobbying sort of the
Speaker 4: same way. But who the individuals are I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think right now we have probably five point three
Speaker 4: five scandals going on right now with members of Congress,
Speaker 4: so some of those are.
Speaker 3: Already out there.
Speaker 6: What's post cong life like now for lawmakers compared to before?
Speaker 6: Like in the past, you do your ten twenty years right,
Speaker 6: you go out, you set up a shingle, you get
Speaker 6: or you get hired by a big firm, and you
Speaker 6: know lots of people in Washington, so that's why you're valuable.
Speaker 6: There seems to be so much more turnover now there's
Speaker 6: a ton more turnover. That Like, if I were a
Speaker 6: seventy year old member of Congress retiring right now, they
Speaker 6: might not know ninety percent of the people in the House,
Speaker 6: and so then that makes them worthless.
Speaker 5: And the staff too. I mean, it's I guess i'd
Speaker 5: call it a brain drain. I don't know what else
Speaker 5: you call it. You know, twenty years ago, I would
Speaker 5: assume the average term of a member in a safe
Speaker 5: district that we're you know, not concerned about getting beat
Speaker 5: would have been ten terms.
Speaker 3: You know, twenty years.
Speaker 5: I bet it's half that now, and the staff aren't
Speaker 5: staying is long, so it's become it's to your point
Speaker 5: about educating people. You know, the members don't stay as long,
Speaker 5: the staff don't stay as long, and they're still dealing
Speaker 5: with really complex issues that you know, you need a
Speaker 5: lot of time under your belt to become an expert
Speaker 5: on some of these really arcane issues.
Speaker 3: And you know, when we bring you know, a client in.
Speaker 5: That can speak articulately about what a regulation means and
Speaker 5: if it's written this way, it means this, or that
Speaker 5: it's generally helpful.
Speaker 3: I really don't see anything wrong with it except the
Speaker 3: other sides not in there.
Speaker 6: Like you know, if if an articulate, smart, well briefed
Speaker 6: person come in and talk to a twenty three year
Speaker 6: old who got there a year ago has no idea
Speaker 6: what they're doing, by the end of the meeting, they
Speaker 6: were like, yes, guy, sounds.
Speaker 7: Right, Ryan was was a crunchy weed lobbyist back in
Speaker 7: the early oughts, and that was you know at the time.
Speaker 7: Now just John bayn Er other people are like have
Speaker 7: lobbied on behalf of cannabis. It's become a big business
Speaker 7: we've talked about last week, But at the time that
Speaker 7: was not a perspective that was well represented.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but also everybody knows what weed is and so
Speaker 6: it's not the kind of thing and you can kind
Speaker 6: of snow anybody on.
Speaker 5: I just don't agree that the other side doesn't have
Speaker 5: a voice. I mean, there's so much money in politics.
Speaker 3: Because if it's another corporation they do yeah.
Speaker 5: Or you know, there's a million interest groups and think
Speaker 5: tanks that have positions. I don't know why they take them,
Speaker 5: but they do. I assume they're well funded. I assume
Speaker 5: there's someone out there that cares. And look, you know,
Speaker 5: every time a Republican tries to do something, there's a
Speaker 5: Democrat sitting on the other side of the aisle that
Speaker 5: doesn't want them to do it.
Speaker 7: And even on these like little municipal issues that end
Speaker 7: up in the omnibus bills. We were talking about earmarks earlier,
Speaker 7: and obviously that's different now, But there are all these
Speaker 7: things that are crammed in, like Ted Cruz just got
Speaker 7: a big win in this direct flight from Houston to DCA.
Speaker 7: Things like that, not even necessarily partisan, but from a
Speaker 7: business perspective, you have one airline competing with another, like
Speaker 7: those little types of things.
Speaker 5: If it was a big win, then someone was opposed,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure they were well funded. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 5: you know, whoever was on the other side was probably
Speaker 5: working hard to make sure Ted Cruz didn't win. You know,
Speaker 5: with a fifty to fifty or fifty one to forty
Speaker 5: nine Senate and a whatever three vote margin in the House,
Speaker 5: like you know, it's it's just incredibly difficult to win
Speaker 5: at all. And you know, that's kind of back to
Speaker 5: your book. The environment that those three lobbyists were dealing with.
Speaker 5: They had forty fifty seventy seat margins in the Democratic
Speaker 5: you know, kind of controlled house. I think it had
Speaker 5: been forty years of kind of solid Democratic control. It
Speaker 5: was just this environment, with the media landscape the way
Speaker 5: it is, that the margins in the House, in the
Speaker 5: Senate the way they are, it's.
Speaker 3: Very hard to accomplish a lot.
Speaker 5: And you know, the executive orders, whether your form or
Speaker 5: against them, are great for four years, but you're four
Speaker 5: years away from them all being completely unrung when the
Speaker 5: opposing party wins. So you know, if Trump wins, you know,
Speaker 5: it'll take one hundred days and I'll have you know,
Speaker 5: executive orders, you know, all day long, every day and
Speaker 5: undo everything Biden accomplished.
Speaker 3: And that's no way to run a country either.
Speaker 5: So you know, getting back to legislating probably would be
Speaker 5: a better solution for the country.
Speaker 8: More staff, higher paid staff. Yeah, but well, I mean
Speaker 8: really though.
Speaker 6: Yeah, actually, that is my populist argument that I don't
Speaker 6: think would be I'm glad we agree on this. I
Speaker 6: don't It wouldn't be popular. It would be hard to
Speaker 6: sell to the public. But I think if you never
Speaker 6: made it past them.
Speaker 4: But if you had a million dollar salaries for members
Speaker 4: of Congress and their staff, would be a better place
Speaker 4: the public.
Speaker 6: The way to pitch it to the public, we look,
Speaker 6: you get what you pay for. If you insist on
Speaker 6: paying these kids thirty thousand dollars a year and never
Speaker 6: giving Members of Congress arrays and having them, you know,
Speaker 6: they have to have a place in DC and a
Speaker 6: place back home, then you're you're gonna get what you
Speaker 6: pay for. You're not gonna get anything out of them.
Speaker 6: The people who pay them are the ones that are
Speaker 6: gonna get something.
Speaker 3: So yes, exactly, and.
Speaker 4: All the same time we haven't spoken about is sort
Speaker 4: of race and socioeconomic background. The people who can move
Speaker 4: to Washington and live on a twenty five or thirty
Speaker 4: five thousand dollar year salary. People have money from their
Speaker 4: parents or don't have, you know, debts to pay, or
Speaker 4: don't have children, or don't have other expenses. So we're
Speaker 4: setting just a certain amount of people to Washington to
Speaker 4: run the government.
Speaker 3: Would not agree more with this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and even they their parents at some point are
Speaker 6: going to run out of being able to pay for them.
Speaker 6: So then they hit they have a kid, and now
Speaker 6: then the schools are so terrible around Capitol Hill that
Speaker 6: like there's a joke on Capitol Hill that as soon
Speaker 6: as a staffer has a kid, it's like up, they're
Speaker 6: gonna start.
Speaker 3: They're gonna go downtown. That's what it's called around here.
Speaker 6: Go downtown and they're gonna quadruple their salary and move
Speaker 6: to the suburb.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that.
Speaker 5: You know, Look, there's good lobbyists and bad lobbyists and
Speaker 5: scessful ones and unsuccessful ones. It's it's not like, you know,
Speaker 5: like you just leave Capitol Hill if you're a staffer
Speaker 5: and you do really well in the lobbying sector. It's
Speaker 5: it's a different way to make a living. You know,
Speaker 5: not everyone's good at it. So I feel like that's
Speaker 5: a bit of a generalization, but I do think that
Speaker 5: diversity when it comes to class is a tremendous problem
Speaker 5: in this country. Yeah, you know, when I moved here,
Speaker 5: I was twenty two years old, probably had a little
Speaker 5: backstop with my parents if I you know, didn't have
Speaker 5: a job right away and knew that I could have
Speaker 5: my rent paid if for some reason I couldn't do
Speaker 5: it on my own.
Speaker 3: No college debt, no college debt, and not much to
Speaker 3: speak of.
Speaker 5: And you know a lot of kids just like me
Speaker 5: show up here, and there's kids that don't look like
Speaker 5: us that wind up in Washington and struggle with you know,
Speaker 5: getting enough dress shirts to wear under a suit, or
Speaker 5: you know, not really knowing how to hold a fork
Speaker 5: and knife in a way that you know is socially
Speaker 5: acceptable at a cocktail party, and the city not lobbying
Speaker 5: the city, you know, makes them feel unwelcome.
Speaker 3: And then you.
Speaker 5: Know, we lack the diversity of very rural, kind of
Speaker 5: poor you know, kids that tried to come to Washington
Speaker 5: because they just gave up on it, Black and Hispanic
Speaker 5: kids that come from situations where they can't have a
Speaker 5: backstop on rent and they kind of cycle out and
Speaker 5: Washington looks exactly like us, and it's just like.
Speaker 3: Here we all are.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm proud of how I made it
Speaker 5: in this city. You know, I think I did it
Speaker 5: by my bootstraps, but you know, stepped over a bunch.
Speaker 3: Of kids that gave up too soon.
Speaker 5: And it's a lack of perspective, a lack of diversity
Speaker 5: that you know. Now we're all in our forties and
Speaker 5: fifties and it's our turn and and there's nothing to see,
Speaker 5: like just like, you know, we've all convinced ourselves that,
Speaker 5: you know, we got here and everyone else can too.
Speaker 5: And I'm not sure that's right. And it's it's not
Speaker 5: it's not just a race thing. It's a class thing.
Speaker 5: It's class and I.
Speaker 3: Think we need to do better. Well said, before I
Speaker 3: let you go.
Speaker 6: We're talking about form members of Congress who move on.
Speaker 6: One of the most successful is your boss John Bayner,
Speaker 6: maybe the most successful, and he took a completely different path.
Speaker 3: She's like, I'm just going to work with the weed people.
Speaker 8: He blazed a trail, blazed the trail.
Speaker 3: Absolutely genius move.
Speaker 6: But you have a fun story about his his transition from.
Speaker 3: Having an entire kind.
Speaker 6: Of suite of assistance as the Speaker of the House
Speaker 6: too not becoming that can you allow to tell me?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he never confirmed this to me, so it's hearsay,
Speaker 5: but I have pretty good So he was the Speaker
Speaker 5: of the House and after he stepped down from from
Speaker 5: the role. Uh, he lost his secret service detail fairly
Speaker 5: quickly after he stepped down, and he was learning about Uber.
Speaker 5: Didn't didn't quite know exactly what it was. He had
Speaker 5: secret service taking him everywhere for four years. So a
Speaker 5: friend puts Uber on his former another former member I think,
Speaker 5: put put Uber on his phone in the app and
Speaker 5: he does his first Uber.
Speaker 3: He's proud of himself that you know.
Speaker 5: The Uber comes and there's a young woman in the
Speaker 5: back seat and he's doesn't confused, why are you here?
Speaker 8: And oh it was when you were it was uberpool.
Speaker 5: And then then the uber picked someone else up, and
Speaker 5: you know, Bayner's like, no, we're going that way.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, going to pick up Johnny or whatever
Speaker 3: over here.
Speaker 5: So, you know, Bayner's riding in the back of a
Speaker 5: you know, Toyota Corolla or something with two millennials and
Speaker 5: they're like, you look.
Speaker 3: Like John Banner. Yess I am.
Speaker 8: I hope that welled, but.
Speaker 3: Probably wanting to smoke. I don't know if it did.
Speaker 3: And uh so he's complaining, you know what.
Speaker 5: I'm running around with, you know, twenty three year old
Speaker 5: kids in an uber what's going on? And they quickly
Speaker 5: figured out it was the toggle button was selected to uberpool.
Speaker 5: So I think he took two or three rides with
Speaker 5: uberpool before he figured it out.
Speaker 6: They kept winding up in Arlington on the way back
Speaker 6: to Capital America.
Speaker 7: Any final thoughts, just when you guys have both been
Speaker 7: very generous with your time, but anything we haven't mentioned
Speaker 7: you think might be helpful for you know, I.
Speaker 3: Just feel like this period we're living in is fascinating.
Speaker 4: You know, when my brother first started writing this book
Speaker 4: in twenty seventeen is about the rise of corporate power,
Speaker 4: and uh, when you're wrapping it up.
Speaker 3: Last year we realized.
Speaker 4: Oh crap, like this air of corporate power may be
Speaker 4: coming to an end, and this area that we're moving
Speaker 4: into now, with both Republicans and Democrats going after big business,
Speaker 4: going after corporations is just fascinating. A normal world corporations
Speaker 4: and corporate lobbyists like Sam would see here and say like, oh,
Speaker 4: all we need to do is elect a Republican president.
Speaker 4: Everything go back to normal. But if Donald Trump wins,
Speaker 4: it's still the world. This world's still upside down. So
Speaker 4: it's just a fascinating time to be around.
Speaker 3: Them and follow this. People are pissed. Oh yeah, Well.
Speaker 7: The book is called The Wolves of k Street. This
Speaker 7: is Ryan's copy. You can't see the cover because he
Speaker 7: took it in a lazy river. That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 7: If you're wondering why he has a new computer, he
Speaker 7: left it in the rain. All kinds of like water
Speaker 7: based crises in your life recently, Ryan, But you've both
Speaker 7: have been so dents as your time and so candid.
Speaker 8: We really appreciate you stopping by the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Thanks, excellent book. Can't can't recommend it enough. The Wolves
Speaker 6: of k Street.
Speaker 7: Thank you, all right, Ryan, I thought that was a
Speaker 7: lot of fun and super interesting and also importantly not
Speaker 7: the type of conversation that you hear outside independent media
Speaker 7: and maybe even outside the show, because it's one of
Speaker 7: those relationships. We're talking about media a lot. It's one
Speaker 7: of those relationships that a lot of outlets are not
Speaker 7: willing to burn. It's not something it condemns them. In
Speaker 7: many cases, they're not willing to dive too deeply into it.
Speaker 7: So I thought it was really fascinating, not the type
Speaker 7: of thing you see every day.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I hope people like it because it's hard for
Speaker 6: me to tell because since I've been immersed in this
Speaker 6: for twenty years or something like, it's sort of like
Speaker 6: water and the corruption just washes around you. But I
Speaker 6: think it's important for people to understand, like how how
Speaker 6: the system is structured now, because if you want to
Speaker 6: change it, you got to understand what it's like now.
Speaker 6: The corporate money and big money is so good at
Speaker 6: adapting and finding new ways of you know, pushing its
Speaker 6: message that it's something you have to constantly beyond guard.
Speaker 6: For like with the example of how now you got
Speaker 6: Josh Holly, I was pushing legislation like a Democrat with
Speaker 6: a Democrat Elizabeth Warren. Meanwhile, the system is saying like, actually,
Speaker 6: we don't We're not going to give individual senators input anymore, Right,
Speaker 6: how who cares on how we legislate?
Speaker 7: Right, We'll just you know, do an executive action or
Speaker 7: an administrative agency. And this is one of the things
Speaker 7: that I find interesting. Chevron is quite literally on the docket.
Speaker 7: In the next couple of weeks, we're going to hear
Speaker 7: a decision in the Chevron case before the Supreme Court,
Speaker 7: and you and I should debate sometime the merits of
Speaker 7: doing something like that, which would cut down in these
Speaker 7: administrative agency's ability to make decisions in a legislative vacuum
Speaker 7: where Congress hasn't made a decision. This case is involving
Speaker 7: some fishermen in Maine, Massachusetts, one of the two.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think because of the way these cabinet
Speaker 7: agencies have grown, there's a real problem just in that gap.
Speaker 7: When you look at how broken and gridlocked Congress is too,
Speaker 7: there's a lot that needs to be fixed.
Speaker 6: This goes back to what we were talking about last week,
Speaker 6: where there was this study in the Annual Study that
Speaker 6: asked people, do you basically do you live in a democracy?
Speaker 3: And the top ten in the top ten.
Speaker 6: Of people countries where there were the people in those
Speaker 6: countries said they live in a democracy.
Speaker 3: You could not find the United States. Yeah, you found
Speaker 3: China in that list.
Speaker 6: So people need to ask themselves what's going on that
Speaker 6: people here in the United States are less likely to
Speaker 6: say that they live in a democratic country than people
Speaker 6: in China. All we want when we're complaining about lobbying,
Speaker 6: I think what we really want is the ability of
Speaker 6: people collectively to determine how they are governed, to be
Speaker 6: represented self government, right you want representative self government, And
Speaker 6: the sense among most people is that we do not
Speaker 6: have self government right now.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean absolutely.
Speaker 7: And Washington is really uncomfortable with quote representative people, even
Speaker 7: if they're members of the House of Representatives. And that
Speaker 7: applies to Alexandrocasia quartets, and it applies to mac Gates.
Speaker 6: It's just across could represent the Panhandle better than that
Speaker 6: Gates exactly exact.
Speaker 7: And for people on the right who find Brooklyn Bartenders
Speaker 7: to be vapid and out of touch, there's a representative
Speaker 7: from that district and you should take it up her.
Speaker 3: Bar was in Manhattan.
Speaker 6: I didn't, but like so many of the bartenders in Manhattan,
Speaker 6: she doesn't didn't live in Manhattan.
Speaker 3: Right up in the Bronx.
Speaker 8: There you go, Oh, that's right, the Bronx.
Speaker 7: But anyway, the point remains that Washington is very uncomfortable
Speaker 7: with people who actually represent the American people if they
Speaker 7: don't happen to be from like a wealthy suburban district
Speaker 7: or a blue coastal city.
Speaker 8: That gets really uncomfortable right.
Speaker 7: Away, and not in the way some lobbyists like to say,
Speaker 7: which is we just need compromise. Well, that compromise is
Speaker 7: just oil for it's just grease in your skins, basically.
Speaker 6: And there's kind of different kinds of corrupt lobbyists. There's
Speaker 6: some that are just massively distorting the state system, like
Speaker 6: strip mining the wealth from around the world and from
Speaker 6: the American people and sending it to their clients and
Speaker 6: taking a piece along the way. That to me is
Speaker 6: the most destructive kind. The others are like just cabbes
Speaker 6: and Cairo. You have you ever been to Cairo, So,
Speaker 6: for instance, you get off at the airport, it's Cairo's
Speaker 6: super confusing.
Speaker 3: One of the most confusing places you can ever imagine.
Speaker 6: And so you're going to have all of these taxi
Speaker 6: cab drivers who are just there to kind of exploit
Speaker 6: the confusion and just make a whole bunch of extra
Speaker 6: money off of tourists. So it's like people just kind
Speaker 6: of fleecing tourists and the corporations, and that analogy. Are
Speaker 6: the tourists here in Washington were getting fleeced by the
Speaker 6: lobbist that I care less about to.
Speaker 8: Fight each other by the way, I mean, it's like.
Speaker 6: Please fleece the corporations. That's that's kind of finely. I
Speaker 6: got to drive a cab one of the it was
Speaker 6: pretty crazy.
Speaker 8: Were you on the other side of the car?
Speaker 3: I know, he let me get in the driver's seat.
Speaker 8: But I mean was the I received in Egypt on
Speaker 8: the end?
Speaker 3: That was normal?
Speaker 7: It's like American okay, yeah, interesting. I was thinking of
Speaker 7: the British Empire. It's crazy cars and all that good stuff.
Speaker 6: Now they stuck with the the I mean the right way. Yes,
Speaker 6: it's crazy. If she get rid of the metric system,
Speaker 6: seemed to be very few traffic laws.
Speaker 7: We have now devolved into the conversation about Egyptian traffic laws.
Speaker 8: That usually means that we've gone.
Speaker 7: On too long, but anyway, we hope everybody enjoyed that conversation.
Speaker 7: Just as a reminder, if you're having any issues with
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