This country truly needs a revolution if this article is accurate.
"Big companies see great rewards in lobbying efforts; With billions at stake, the industry booms" by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Associated Press | April 9, 2009
Not really news, is it?
WASHINGTON - Big companies that spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying successfully for a tax break enacted in 2004 got a 22,000-percent return on that investment - proof that for those who can afford it, hiring a lobbyist can pay handsome dividends.
The figures, compiled by professors at the University of Kansas for a study to be released today, offer a rarely seen glimpse at how the lobbying business works, and why - even as President Obama vows to curb lobbyists' influence - the industry is booming as never before.
The report details efforts by hundreds of companies in 2003 and 2004 to push through a onetime tax holiday that lowered for a year the tax rate they paid on profits earned abroad. All told, US companies saved about $100 billion in taxes, with pharmaceutical behemoths
All these profit-making concerns bribing, I mean, buying influence to get out of paying taxes. Only little people pay taxes, folks. It hurts just reporting this stuff.
The study zeros in on 93 firms that spent as much as $282.7 million lobbying on the issue during that period, and ultimately saved a total of $62.5 billion through the tax change. Researchers used publicly available lobbying disclosures filed with Congress and financial statements submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission to compare the amount each company saved with its lobbying expenditures.
"It calls into question what Congress did in 2004," said Stephen Mazza, who conducted the study with Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz. "It clearly is a very lucrative field for lobbyists. Congress wanted to create jobs, and what they probably did was create jobs for the lobbyists." And get kickbacks in the form of "campaign contributions."
Give them taxpayer loot and let them funnel it back into campaign coffers. What a rank, corrupt, and rotted system we have.
The results reflect one reason that lobbying, always a major industry in Washington, has experienced explosive growth in recent years. Companies and interest groups spent $3.42 billion lobbying Congress and the federal government in 2008, the last year for which figures are available, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That's a 14 percent jump from the previous year.
And there is growing evidence that companies get what they pay for, maybe a lot more, after they hire seasoned Washington hands to help navigate major legislative fights....
See why I put up the guillotine so much?
The data alarm some watchdog groups that worry ordinary Americans who cannot afford representation by a well paid lobbyist will lose out in debates with companies and interest groups who can....
Oh, ya think?
And that's all the public gets, huh, MSM? A sentence in the back?
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