Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said Monday she will propose a bill requiring that financial institutions participating in the Treasury's $700 billion financial-markets rescue plan be banned from lobbying with that money.Fine, Sen. Feinstein, but that doesn’t go far enough.
Taxpayer-funded lobbying is a betrayal of taxpayers’ trust. No public dollars should be used to lobby.
Washington’s $3 billion-a-year lobby industry may fight the ban, but a complete prohibition should be the price of admission for accepting public dollars.
Lobbying is part of a democratic system, but it isn’t ever appropriate to lobby with tax dollars.
We’ve have seen associations representing cities, counties and school districts across the country spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying congress and state legislatures. Unfortunately, their lobby agenda is often anti-taxpayer. They lobby to defeat taxpayer protections such as spending and revenue caps. And they do it with our money.
So either accept public funding and stop lobbying or refuse public funding and lobby. It's as simple as that.
A lobby prohibition is the ticket price of admission to the public trough.
Let's see if Sen. Feinstein would support that ticket.
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I would much rather have no public funding of companies. I believe in the Laissez Faire form of capitalism, apparently many of our Republicans do not, or they just have weakness of character for self-preservation in office.
BUT, since the bill is enacting, I agree, the forfeiture of lobbying efforts should be a requirement for those who take government funding. But I doubt it will happen.
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