It was my impression lobbyists usually write the bills themselves. I don't know if this is how it's always done, but my company recently worked with lobbyists and a senators assistant and the lobbyists wrote a paragraph that, once approved by this assistant, went straight into the appropriations bill. Perfect example of pay to play.
> It was my impression lobbyists usually write the bills themselves
Here's a fairly recent example:
> When the legislation that became known as "Obamacare" was first drafted, the key legislator was the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, whose committee took the lead in drafting the legislation. As Baucus himself repeatedly boasted, the architect of that legislation was Elizabeth Folwer, his chief health policy counsel; indeed, as Marcy Wheeler discovered, it was Fowler who actually drafted it.
What was most amazing about all of that was that, before joining Baucus' office as the point person for the health care bill, Fowler was the Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs (i.e. informal lobbying) at WellPoint, the nation's largest health insurance provider
...as Wheeler wrote at the time: "to the extent that Liz Fowler is the author of this document, we might as well consider WellPoint its author as well."
To add insult to injury, the same lobbyist was later put in charge of drawing up the rules to implement the law.
>More amazingly still, when the Obama White House needed someone to oversee implementation of Obamacare after the bill passed, it chose . . . Liz Fowler.
Senators wouldn't even return our phone calls. So we had to resort to hiring a lobbyist who they would answer the phone for.
Anytime we'd have a call with the senators assistant, we'd have a call with the lobbyist first. He'd coach us on how to behave, dress, and what to say. We'd then call the assistant and perform our rehearsed parts just like any other theater production.
Access to our representative is gate-kept financially.
I can’t think of any punishment harsh for what Baucus did to the country during Obamacare. He basically singlehandedly f..ked it up. The damage he did will be felt for decades in the form of bankruptcies and people dying because they can’t afford care.
Even more recently, Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, West Virginia all passed laws within the last year or two that deny state contracts to any company who divests from oil/gas. Just insanely unconstitutional and vague, and a good reminder of why there's so much astroturfing around ESG, but those laws were adopted largely verbatim from "sample" text written by oil & gas lobbyists and energy companies;
