Here Come the Whores

Continuing in the "Sure, we're going to be fine" line of thinking.  From Business Week:

Lobbyists Take Aim at the Supercommittee

Lobbyists are set to focus all their attention this autumn on the Congressional Supercommittee tasked with slashing $1.5 trillion from the budget.  Usually lobbyists put their effort and their cash into influencing policy decisions to break their way, now their target will be maintaining the status quo and insuring their clients avoid budget cuts that are theoretically unavoidable.  So if you thought lobbying was a waste of obscene amounts of money before, just imagine all that cash going toward making nothing happen.

In better times, lobbyists measured their success by how much cash they could wring out of the federal government. Now they’ll consider it a victory just to hang on to what they’ve got. “To try and preserve the status quo, that requires a lot of work,” says Feehery, whose lobbying clients include News Corp. (NWS), Sony (SNE), and Deutsche Börse Group.

On the "Lobbyists Are People, Too" front...

It has been a tough year for lobbyists (schadenfreude duly noted). They made out during the epic Washington battles over health care and financial reform, but then business went soft as the economy dragged and the debt fight paralyzed Congress. Lobbying revenue dipped to $1.65 billion in the first half of 2011, down 8.5 percent from the first half of 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.

Wonder how many teacher positions $1.65 billion would have saved?  But don't worry, given the raised stakes of the supercommittee, they should be able to make that up as corporations go all in to try and protect their interests.

What makes this potentially interesting is the fact that if the supercommittee fails to cut $1.5 trillion, then automatic, across-the-board cuts kick in.  So lobbyists are faced with a sort-of prisoner's dilemma.  Do you let your lobbyists relax a little bit, take a small hit, but allow the supercommittee to hit their savings goal?  Or do you play hardball knowing that your interest may not be scheduled to take much of a hit with the across-the-board cuts that kick in if the committee fails?  There could always be a next time of automatic cuts due to supercommittee failure (in fact it could happen in 2013 since I don't expect Congress to suddenly become competent).  And some of the industries you screwed over by playing hardball may decide to have long memories.

Who knows?  Only thing for certain, some noble government employees will try to spin how the increased lobbying created jobs, and good for them as they get overrun by an angry mob.