“Local” spending
More than 800 state and local governments and their agencies have hired at least one lobbyist to help them get a bigger slice of the federal budget, Business Week reports. These advocates are increasingly focused on earmarks — money specifically designated for a project such as a bridge, a new building or a special program. It’s easy to understand why small governments are signing up representatives in D.C. It works. There were more than 12,000 earmarks in the 2006 budget — six times the amount from only eight years before — with many created at the suggestion of lobbyists.
The issue isn’t just a federal one. Local governments in Texas spend $10 million to $23 million annually to lobby the state legislature, reports the Dallas Morning News. Dallas has six lobbyists in the state’s capital, Austin, in addition to its 12 elected representatives.
Although some representatives have given up resisting the onslaught, others resent the apparent slight to their abilities to bring home the bacon. One of the Capitol Hill’s most effective rainmakers, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, is famous for killing a multimillion-dollar building project because a lobbyist was hired to push the idea.
Ralph Reed loses two
The scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff has cost Ralph Reed, Abramoff’s former colleague and now Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia, the endorsement of two important Republican colleagues. Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes and state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine have sided with Reed’s opponent, Casey Cagle.
“Too many of our party officials have forgotten why they were elected, why they’re there. Cagle has not,” Forbes told attendees at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser in Atlanta, reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Forbesdid not name names but acknowledged he was alluding to Republicans caught up in the Abramoff investigation. Reed had worked with Abramoff to support an Indian tribe client’s gambling interests.
