财团游说者们是如何征服美国民主的（How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy）
Something is out of balance in Washington. Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures—more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It’s a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s.1，在华盛顿，一些东西失去了平衡。财团们现在一年花费大约26亿美元在游说支出上，这是被报道出的数据——超过20亿花费在白宫（11.8亿）和参议院（8.6亿）。自从财团游说在2000s早期开始经常超越组合的白宫-参议院花费时，鸿沟变大了。Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labor unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.2，今天，最大的公司们拥有超过100名代表他们的游说者，允许他们在任何地方，任何时间出现。大型公司和他们的合作者们花在游说工会和公共利益组织上的花费是过去的34倍。在100个游说花费最多的组织中，95个是商业公司。
One has to go back to the Gilded Age to find business in such a dominant political position in American politics. While it is true that even in the more pluralist 1950s and 1960s, political representation tilted towards the well-off, lobbying was almost balanced by today’s standards. Labor unions were much more important, and the public-interest groups of the 1960s were much more significant actors. And very few companies had their own Washington lobbyists prior to the 1970s. To the extent that businesses did lobby in the 1950s and 1960s (typically through associations), they were clumsy and ineffective. “When we look at the typical lobby,” concluded three leading political scientists in their 1963 study, American Business and Public Policy, “we find its opportunities to maneuver are sharply limited, its staff mediocre, and its typical problem not the influencing of Congressional votes but finding the clients and contributors to enable it to survive at all.”
Things are quite different today. The evolution of business lobbying from a sparse reactive force into a ubiquitous and increasingly proactive one is among the most important transformations in American politics over the last 40 years. Probing the history of this transformation reveals that there is no “normal” level of business lobbying in American democracy. Rather, business lobbying has built itself up over time, and the self-reinforcing quality of corporate lobbying has increasingly come to overwhelm every other potentially countervailing force. It has also fundamentally changed how corporations interact with government—rather than trying to keep government out of its business (as they did for a long time), companies are now increasingly bringing government in as a partner, looking to see what the country can do for them.
If we set our time machine back to 1971, we’d find a leading corporate lawyer earnestly writing that, “As every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. If one doubts this, let him undertake the role of ‘lobbyist’ for the business point of view before Congressional committees.”That lawyer was soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., whose now-famous “Powell Memorandum” is a telling insight into the frustration that many business leaders felt by the early 1970s. Congress had gone on a regulatory binge in the 1960s—spurred on by a new wave of public-interest groups. Large corporations had largely sat by idly, unsure of what to do.In 1972, against the backdrop of growing compliance costs, slowing economic growth and rising wages, a community of leading CEOs formed the Business Roundtable, an organization devoted explicitly to cultivating political influence. Alcoa CEO John Harper, one of the Roundtable’s founders, said at the time, “I think we all recognize that the time has come when we must stop talking about it, and get busy and do something about it.”This sense of an existential threat motivated the leading corporations to engage in serious political activity. Many began by hiring their first lobbyists. And they started winning. They killed a major labor law reform, rolled back regulation, lowered their taxes, and helped to move public opinion in favor of less government intervention in the economy.5，如果我们将时间机器设置回1971，我们会看到一个处于领导位置的公司律师诚实的写下了这些：“就像每个商业执行人所知道的，美国社会中几乎没有哪个元素在政府中的影响力和美国商人们和企业们甚至几百万企业股票持有者一样少。如果有人怀疑这点，让他去在国会会议之前实现成功扮演“游说者”的角色吧。”该律师就是即将成为最高法院大法官的Lewis F. Powell Jr，他的著名的“Powell备忘录”深刻分析了1970s初期许多商业界领导者感受到的挫败感来源。在新一轮公共利益集团的推动下，国会在20世纪60年对企业进行了大量监管。大型企业闲着，不知道该怎么做。在1972年，在各种成本增加，经济增长减速和工资上涨的背景下，由一流的首席执行官组成的社团组成了“商业圆桌会议”，一个目的为培养政治影响力的组织。美国铝业公司CEOJohn Harper，圆桌会议创始人之一，在当时说，“我认为我们所有人都认识到现在是时候了，我们必须停止讨论这个问题然后忙着做些事。”这种对存在的威胁的感觉促使处于领导地位的企业参与严肃的政治活动。许多人开始雇佣他们的第一批游说者。他们开始赢了。他们毁灭一项重大的劳工法律改革，放宽监管规定，降低税收，并帮助推动公众舆论，宣传减少政府对经济的干预。By the early 1980s, corporate leaders were “purring” (as a 1982 Harris Poll described it). Corporations could have declared victory and gone home, thus saving on the costs of political engagement. Instead, they stuck around and kept at it. Many deepened their commitments to politics. After all, they now had lobbyists to help them see all that was at stake in Washington, and all the ways in which staying politically active could help their businesses.Those lobbyists would go on to spend the 1980s teaching companies about the importance of political engagement. But it would take time for them to become fully convinced. As one company lobbyist I interviewed for my new book, The Business of America Is Lobbying, told me, “When I started [in 1983], people didn’t really understand government affairs. They questioned why you would need a Washington office, what does a Washington office do? I think they saw it as a necessary evil. All of our competitors had Washington offices, so it was more, well we need to have a presence there and it’s just something we had to do.”To make the sell, lobbyists had to go against the long-entrenched notion in corporate boardrooms that politics was a necessary evil to be avoided if possible. To get corporations to invest fully in politics, lobbyists had to convince companies that Washington could be a profit center. They had to convince them that lobbying was not just about keeping the government far away—it could also be about drawing government close.6，在1980s初期，企业领导者在“呜咽”（就像1982年哈里斯民意调查所描述的那样）。公司本来可以宣布胜利并回家，从而节省在政治参与上的花费。相反，他们坚持下去了。许多人加深了对政治的参与。毕竟，他们现在有游说者来帮助他们看到华盛顿所关注的问题，而所有在政治上积极参与的手段都可以帮助他们的生意。那些游说者们会继续像在1980s一样教育公司们关于政治参与的重要性。但他们需要时间才能被完全说服。正如我在我的新书“在美国生意是游说”中采访的一位公司游说者告诉我的那样，“当我开始（1983年）时，人们并不真正理解政府事务。他们质疑为什么你需要一个在华盛顿的办公室，一个华盛顿的办公室能做什么？我认为他们把这当成一个必要的罪恶。我们所有的竞争对手都在华盛顿有办公室，所以更多的是，我们需要在那里设立办公室，而这只是我们必须做的事情。“为了作成生意，游说者们不得不违背在企业董事会会议室被长期坚持的理念，就是政治是应当被避免的必要罪恶。为了让企业充分的在政治中投资，游说者们不得不说服公司华盛顿可能成为一个利润中心。他们必须说服老板们，游说不仅仅是让政府远离 – 这也可能是关于拉近与政府的关系。As one lobbyist told me (in 2007), “Twenty-five years ago… it was ‘just keep the government out of our business, we want to do what we want to,’ and gradually that’s changed to ‘how can we make the government our partners?’ It’s gone from ‘leave us alone’ to ‘let’s work on this together.’” Another corporate lobbyist recalled,“When they started, [management] thought government relations did something else. They thought it was to manage public relations crises, hearing inquiries… My boss told me, you’ve taught us to do things we didn’t know could ever be done.”As companies became more politically active and comfortable during the late 1980s and the 1990s, their lobbyists became more politically visionary. For example, pharmaceutical companies had long opposed the idea of government adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, on the theory that this would give government bargaining power through bulk purchasing, thereby reducing drug industry profits. But sometime around 2000, industry lobbyists dreamed up the bold idea of proposing and supporting what became Medicare Part D—a prescription drug benefit, but one which explicitly forbade bulk purchasing—an estimated $205 billion benefit to companies over a 10-year period.What makes today so very different from the 1970s is that corporations now have the resources to play offense and defense simultaneously on almost any top-priority issue. When I surveyed corporate lobbyists on the reasons why their companies maintained a Washington office, the top reason was “to protect the company against changes in government policy.” On a one-to-seven scale, lobbyists ranked this reason at 6.2 (on average). But closely behind, at 5.7, was “Need to improve ability to compete by seeking favorable changes in government policy.”While reversing history is obviously impossible, there is value in appreciating how much things have changed. And there are ways to bring back some balance: Investing more in the government, especially Congress, would give leading policymakers resources to hire and retain the most experienced and expert staff, and reduce their reliance on lobbyists. Also, organizations that advocate for less well-resourced positions could use more support. If history teaches anything, it’s that the world does not need to look as it does today.7，正如一位游说者告诉我的那样（2007年）：“二十五年前……游说的目的只是让政府停止干预我们的生意，我们想做我们想做的事情，”然后逐渐改变为“我们如何才能把政府变成我们的伙伴？’它从’不要管我们’发展到’让我们一起工作’。“另一位企业游说者回忆说：”当他们开始时，（管理层）认为政府关系是用来做其他事的。他们认为这是管理公关危机，听取调查……我的老板告诉我，你教会我们去做我们之前不知道如何做的事。“随着公司在1980s和1990s期间在政治上变得更积极和舒适，他们的游说者们变得更有政治远见。例如，制药公司长期以来反对政府将处方药利润增加到医疗保险中，理论上说这将通过大宗采购赋予政府讨价还价的能力，从而减少药品工业的利润。但在2000年左右，工业游说者们梦想着提出一个关于支持医疗保险D部分的大胆的想法 – 一种对处方药利润的增加，但明确禁止大宗采购 – 在10年内估计为公司带来了2050亿美元的收益。使得今天与1970s非常不同的是公司现在有资源在几乎任何最高优先级的问题上同时进攻和防守。当我调查公司游说者们他们的公司维持在华盛顿办公室的原因时，最重要的原因是“保护公司对抗政府政策的变化”。在一个一到七的范围内，游说者们将这一原因排在6.2（平均）。但紧随其后的，评分为5.7，“需要通过寻求政府政策进行有利变化来提高竞争力”。虽然扭转历史很明显不可能，但确认有多少事情发生变化是有价值的。并且有办法恢复一些平衡：对政府，特别是国会进行更多投资，将使处于领导地位的政策制定者的资源能够雇佣和留住最有经验和最专业的人员，并减少他们对游说者的依赖。另外，可以倡导对资源不足的组织进行更多的支持。如果历史教给我们任何事情，那就是世界不需要看起来像现在这样。.https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/how-corporate-lobbyists-conquered-american-democracy/390822/
