Big Government, Lobbyists, Gingrich and You

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich released his tax returns that show he earned $3.16 million as a peddler of influence in Washington. Tuesday’s New York Times lead editorial says this makes a mockery of Gingrich’s “claim to be an insurgent Washington outsider, the supposed anti-establishment candidate.”

According to the website OpenSecrets.org, the number of registered Washington lobbyists in 2011 was 12,242, and they spent $2.47 billion influencing the nation’s lawmakers. The website also notes that the number of lobbyists has declined by 688 as have their budgets – by $1.04 billion. The economy being what it is, there doesn’t seem to be all that much scratch to spread around. It also points to a more obvious truth: with government austerity an unavoidable reality, the companies these lobbyists represent are moving their financial resources away from politicians and into their struggling businesses where it belongs.

It’s amusing that the Times would criticize Gingrich for lobbying the Progressive state. With so much power (a.k.a., money) centered in Washington, it’s only natural that big business would dedicate so much manpower and money to protect its interests and gain a commercial advantage over the competition. In Progressive America, all roads lead to Rome.

From 1908 to 1910, the Ford Motor Company produced only 12,000 Tin Lizzies. In 1933 – the year Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated his progressive transformation of America – Ford produced 1,234,356 vehicles. Henry Ford managed this accomplishment without the help of one lobbyist. According to OpenSecrets, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) increased their lobbying presence in Washington the same year Obama assumed the presidency. “SEIA’s increased lobbying pressure paid off when Congress passed the eight-year extension of the solar investment tax credit, which allowed the organization to move on to lobby regarding climate, renewable energy standards, green jobs and appropriations,” said OpenSecrets. And the bankrupt Solyndra was the result. That “investment in the future” cost taxpayers $528 million.

According to records obtained by the Associated Press, Freddie Mac, which holds $5 trillion in US mortgages ($1 trillion of which is subprime), paid 52 lobbyists and consultants $11.7 million in 2006 to stymie Congressional efforts to examine the quasi-governmental agency’s books and business practices. Since Republicans were the majority party at the time, Freddie Mac enlisted the aid of former GOP heavy hitters: Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York ($240,000); Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota ($360,297); Rep. Susan Molinari of New York ($300,062); and former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom Delay, Susan Hirschmann ($240,790).

Interestingly, Freddie Mac paid political consultant and Fox News favorite Frank Luntz to find “the right buzz words” to throw Congress off the mortgage giant’s scent. Meanwhile, Gingrich “talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model,” said AP. In the eight years the former Speaker worked for the mortgage giant, he earned between $1.6 and $1.8 million in consulting fees.

Freddie Mac was created in 1970 because – get this – the Democratically-controlled Congress feared Fannie Mae (created by FDR in 1938 to “fix” America’s Depression-era housing crisis) was a monopoly and needed a little competition. And a Republican President, Richard Nixon, was more than happy to sign into law the legislation that made Freddie such a big part of our lives.

So, let’s recap, shall we?

• FDR expands the roll and cost of government. His New Deal, some economic historians contend, exacerbates and extends the misery of the Great Depression. Through clever alliances with big labor, his creation of the nation’s first entitlement programs, Roosevelt buys the votes of desperate Americans. In turn, the nation makes FDR America’s first president for life. Twelve long years later, the cold hand of death ushers Roosevelt from office.

• Americans (Republicans and Democrats) continue rewarding politicians for maintaining and expanding FDR’s entitlement state, which grows dramatically in the 1960s.

• In 2007, federal affordable housing programs and government-sponsored mortgage underwriters topple the housing market, topple the mortgage-backed securities market, nearly topple the global banking system, and throw millions of Americans out of work.

• Americans become angry at the all-powerful state’s mishandling of the economy and elect the junior Senator from Illinois 44th President of the United States. He expands state power further by forcing every American (Democrat and Republican) into an authoritarian health care system as the price of citizenship. Americans get even angrier.

• Today, the president’s approval rating is at its lowest and the people’s love of Congress is even lower.

• In 2012 Americans search desperately for the perfect politician untainted by the very Progressive system they themselves elected to power, under both parties, for nearly eighty years. Stranger still, they are outraged to discover that the politicians who once served them made millions of dollars lobbying the very monster the people created by way of the ballot box.

Americans built a Progressive monster that taints everything and everyone it touches. And they’ll hold Gingrich or whoever else responsible before they ever blame the real culprit – themselves.