Special Interests
Washington lobbyists, influence, and money are concatenate forces in the current political dynamic. The 2008 election cycle saw Barack Obama spend in excess of 730 million on his run for the Presidency. John McCain was seemingly dwarfed, spending only 333 million" (OpenSecrets.org. N.D. 1). The spending however was only a portion of the 5.2 billion spent nationally in the 2008 election cycles (OpenSecrets.org. N.D. 1). Further, the situation seems to be accelerating. In 2010, a midterm election year when political spending tends to wane, the election cycle proved "the most expensive in history, with a total cost that is now expected to equal roughly $4 billion" (Kurtzleben 2010, 1) This figure will be seemingly insignificant to the 2012 election spending, which according to Bill Holman, government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen, could be as much as $8 billion" (Gorenstein, 2011, 1).
The growing ubiquity of money in the political system highlights the enormous influence which insiders and special interest have in Washington. James Barnes article Insiders Say Special Interests Here to Stay discusses this influence in the context of President Obama's new ethic rules.
The Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel
requires that lobbyists who become members of Obama administration will not be able to work on matters they lobbied on for two years, or in the agencies they lobbied during the previous two years. Anyone who leaves the Obama administration will not be able to lobby his administration. The orders also instituted a ban on gifts by lobbyists to members of the administration. (ABC News 2009, 1)
If the influence of special interests will only continue to grow, how will the political process be impacted, who will be the winners and losers, and will the average citizen's voice be drowned out, if that fact has not already occurred?
Bipartisan Agreement
Rarely does one find agreement between Democratic and Republican parties in Washington on any issue however, in the context of the lobbyist influence prevalent in the Nation's Capital, "more than two thirds of the Democratic Insiders said that the Obama guidelines would not reduce the influence of special interests in Washington, and an astonishing 100% of Republican Insiders concurred" (Barnes 2009, 1). The Obama guidelines are designed to stop the turnstile of lobbyists who become political consultants...
Special Interest Groups and Politics Interest Groups and Politics Special interest groups are organizations whose members are organized, mobilized and share specific agendas and objectives (Dincer, 2012). They work to gain favor with politicians and legislative officials in order to influence governmental policy. Interest groups are very common in the United States (Thurber, 2010). They operate very differently from political parties that ultimately try to gain control of the government (Naoi &
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Interest Groups Describe the different types of interest groups (single issue groups and public interest groups) and the goals that each type pursues. Single-issue interest groups are exactly that: groups concerned with one issue, and one issue only. Although the single interest might overlap with broader issues or related interests, the main goal of a single-interest group is to promote legislation related to the target area. For example, the National Rifle Association
17). The third secondary source we will look at here is Kaiser (2009). Kaiser argues that money has corroded the electoral process in the United States. He gives statistical data on the rising cost of political campaigns as an indication of how money's importance has grown in the last several decades. If the campaigns of all the candidates for President, the House, and the Senate cost less than a billion
Each of these was included in the initial Senate bill, but was struck from the final Senate version. Despite the victories, the group isn't ready to pledge support for health reform bills. The AMA will not endorse any legislation unless Congress gets rid of the mandated payment cuts of more than $200 billion over 10 years in the government's Medicare program for the elderly. The cuts are part of
But there more to the personal side for Duke Cunningham, for doling out contracts was more than a matter of choosing the most qualified and lowest priced as mandated by federal rules. It was also a matter of choosing the contractor that could provide the most for him. The white collar criminal always looks to personal advantage. Lobbyists, like the now-convicted Mitchell Wade, helped steer paying clients to Cunningham.
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