Today the Senate will take up an ethics and lobbying reform bill as its first order of legislative business, reports ($) Kenneth P. Doyle in the BNA Money & Politics Report (January 8, 2007). Senate aides say that a provision to disclose grassroots lobbying will “definitely” be included.
Democracy 21, an enthusiastic supporter of grassroots lobbying disclosure, reassures us “[t]hese reforms would not require registered lobbying organizations to disclose the amounts they spend to communicate with their own members about lobbying Congress (traditional grassroots lobbying campaigns), but would only apply to paid communications campaigns aimed at the general public and intended to stimulate the public to lobby Congress (professional Astroturf lobbying campaigns).”
Grassroots lobbying disclosure of the kind Democracy 21 describes is as “harmless” as King George having the foresight to require “horse stable disclosure” in the 18th Century, including information on those who stabled the steed Paul Revere would mount on his historic midnight ride. Recall that Revere did not plan to “communicate” to his “own members,” but rather “aimed” his message “at the general public.”
Do you imagine "stable disclosure" of that kind would more benefit the colonists, or King George?
Public Citizen, another enthusiastic supporter of grassroots lobbying disclosure, is engaging in the very activity we are told to fear. “It is up to you to call your Senators", they say, "and make sure they vote for amendments that would create the strongest reform bill possible and would close the loopholes…” Blah, blah, blah. They even provide a sample script: “Hello. I am calling to urge Senator _____ to take action to strengthen S.1, the weak reform bill introduced by Majority Leader Harry Reid….”
Is anyone really damaged in not knowing who paid for this kind of rudimentary grassroots effort? Do we really fear that Public Citizen will create a groundswell of support for lobbying reform? The truth is Public Citizen and other grassroots organizations do not create groundswells; they tap them. People have pre-formed notions about issues and how much they care about them. Whatever spurs a person to get involved, once she is involved she speaks for reasons of her own, and speaks directly to her elected representatives. This is precisely the point of participatory democracy and of a republican form of government. As noted by Ron Faucheux, “Critics who decry the artificiality of grassroots campaigns and disparage the manufacturing of public sentiment by well-heeled corporations and interest groups miss one point: grassroots lobbying … is a valid way to increase public awareness and participation in the governmental process. In failing to make that point, they suggest an even more telling one: grassroots lobbying works.” Ron Faucheaux, The Grassroots Explosion, reprinted in The Road to Victory 598 (Ron Faucheux ed., Kendall/Hunt Publ’g Co. 2d ed. 1998) (1995).
But we suspect that advocates of grassroots lobbying disclosure know all too well that grassroots lobbying works, and suspect they feel that one groundswell too many may have been tapped in the past, much to their consternation. We suspect, as we have said here, that grassroots lobbying disclosure is the first step in an effort to back money and skilled consultants away from unpopular causes.
We have wondered how much 1950s Alabama could have thwarted the Civil Rights movement had it known about the NAACP what the 21st-century Congress proposes to learn about today’s grassroots organizations.
We have pointed up that retribution is real and cited the example of Exxon Mobil and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an example that frankly surprised us, where Sens. Snowe and Rockfeller urged ExxonMobil to end its support of what Snowe and Rockefeller termed “climate change denial front groups” like the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They also “ask[ed]”, in a way only the government can, that ExxonMobil “acknowledge the dangers and realities of climate change [and] the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it,” stating that findings to the contrary are “pseudo science.” The Washington Times called this “bullying at its worst—lawmakers don’t like what a private organization [like CEI] believes, so they try to ensure that those organizations can’t get private funding.”
Grassroots lobbying disclosure is getting a free pass because people think disclosure is always a good thing. This is not so. Protecting the right to speak anonymously with fellow citizens about issues, even issues of official action or pending legislation, protects citizens from abusive officeholders no less than disclosing who contributes to potentially abusive officeholders and who directly lobbies abusive officeholders in the halls of Congress. Protecting the right to speak anonymously reduces an officeholder’s ability to visit retribution on those who would oppose his policy preferences.
Citizens learn much about the relative merits of a candidate by knowing who supports him. They learn about the legislative process by knowing who is paying consultants to meet with officeholders directly; officeholders have freewill, may change course, or misrepresent themselves. Citizens, however, learn little about the relative merits of a clearly presented policy issue by knowing who supports it. And abusive officeholders would learn far too much. Recall, then extrapolate, the example of ExxonMobil and CEI.
