In the last three sessions of congress, Mike Synar (D-Oklahoma), chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee, has tried to reform the federal grazing fees program, which he considers a government giveaway. Synar has submitted numerous bills to Congress that would change the fee formula and move it closer to the fair market value of the service. Two of the bills he introduced in the 102nd Congress, the Department of the Interior Appropriations bill (HR 5503) and the reauthorization of the Bureau of Land Management bill (HR 1096), passed the House, but successful lobbying by ranching interests led the Senate to take no action on HR 1096 and to strip HR 5503 of its fee-raising mechanism.
To promote its interests in Congress and influence the electoral process, political action committees (PACs) representing ranching interests contributed $930,556 to house candidates and $443,228 to senate candidates between 1983 and 1992. During the 1992 election, the ranching lobby, which opposes higher federal grazing fees, set up an independent expenditure campaign and went after Synar. It distributed a poster that made the congressman look like an Old West caricature and declared that he was "wanted for the destruction of the West's social and economic structure and other acts against the peace and dignity of the Western States."
Today, Synar remains unfazed by the lobbying pressure; in fact, he accepts it as a normal part of the political life in the nation's capital. "If you don't want to put out fires, don't be a fireman," he explains. "If you don't want to vote on tough issues, don't be a congressman." U.S. legislators, as Synar points out, must learn to handle lobbyists; otherwise, they will be at a disadvantage when it comes to playing the biggest political game in town.
Lobbying is an important way to get their agendas through Congress, spokespersons for industry and the environmental community say. "We have to lobby and deal directly with Congress to get them to consider the ideas we think will make good environmental policy," explains Bill Roberts, environmental director for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the organization's chief lobbyist. "Just writing a report or producing a think piece is not going to do it."
Lobbying--the practice that seeks to alter legislation or administrative action on political issues--is big business. It is impossible to find out how many groups are lobbying specifically on environmental issues, but overall, nearly 3000 organizations, most of which represent businesses of some kind, have Washington, DC offices. In the last quarter of 1992 alone, the house clerk listed more than 6000 registered lobbyists. Supported by tens of thousands of support personnel, these individuals lobby on behalf of 40,000 registered clients, which include doctors, senior citizens, foreign governments, religious organizations, and environmental public interest organizations and industries affected by environmental issues. "When we have a big issue like Superfund or the Clean Water Act going on, I need a traffic cop at my door to keep the lobbyists in line," Synar says.
Organizations that lobby in the environmental policy area fall generally into three groups: industries and their trade associations, such as Monsanto and the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA), which operate on a profit motive and have a vested interest in energy and environmental issues; not-for-profit public interest groups, such as EDF and Greenpeace, which depend on foundation grants or public subscriptions and are concerned about the environment's welfare; and scientific and research organizations that want to advance science with regard to environmental issues.
The industrial sector is the best funded and staffed of the three groups. Take Superfund reform, for example, which is now before Congress. Industries and their trade associations have spent millions of dollars to hire hundreds of lobbyists to work on an issue that could take years to resolve. The CMA and the American Petroleum Institute (API) have their own governmental relations crew, but they have also hired outside lobbyists to work specifically on Superfund. E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company is a member of CMA, but it has installed its own team of Washington lobbyists. "It's amazing how much money is involved and how many lobbyists are working just on Superfund," marvels one congressional aide.
CMA, API, du Pont, and many other members of the industrial sector have PACs, whose purpose is raising and distributing campaign funds for political office. In the 1992 election, PACs gave more than $172 million to political candidates. A small part of that amount came from environmental public interest organizations. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that the League of Conservation Voters, which describes itself as the bipartisan political wing of the U.S. environmental movement, and the Sierra Club, one of the few environmetal organizations to have a PAC, gave $159,884 and $410,210, respectively.
Most organizations sponsoring PACs also maintain lobbying operations. The result is that lobbying and campaign contributions often go together. According to John Wright, a political science professor who studies lobbying, scholars, and politicians acknowledge some connection between PAC money and lobbying. In an article in the American Political Science Review, Wright explains, "It is widely believed that contributions--even if they don't buy votes--buy access to subsequent lobbying efforts."
Nancy Watzman, research director for Public Interest, a 150,000-member organization that Ralph Nader founded in 1971, says the influence of PAC and lobbying money on the political process concerns her organization. Watzman explains, "Members of Congress are fond of saying they are never influenced by campaign contributions, but if you look at the contributions and the candidates and their voting records, you will see some connection." Watzman adds that Public Interest has nothing against lobbying itself. "People and organizations need to promote their interests," she explains. "What concerns us is how money can pervert the system."
Congressional insiders concede that money can indeed open doors on Capitol Hill, but that doesn't mean Congress is the hostage of special interests. "You can't buy a congressman or even rent him," Synar maintains, "but it's human nature for a congressman to be responsive to people who have supported him in his reelection efforts."
Industry lobbyists see nothing wrong with being labeled a special interest group. "We are representing the best interests of our membership," explains Rowland McElroy, vice president for governmental relations at the American Forest and Paper Association. "Environmental groups are representing the best interest of their membership. Almost every American has some organization or somebody in Washington, DC representing their interests, whether they are young or old, a homemaker, a veteran, an environmentalist. . . . People who think lobbying is bad don't stop to think that they have somebody in Washington representing them."
Still, many industries and trade associations seem to be shy when it comes to talking about environmental lobbying. Several industrial organizations declined to be interviewed, including the API, CMA, and the Chlorine Chemistry Council. "You will never see our people talk to the press," says Tom Gilroy, the CMA's associate director for media relations. "They feel their job is to talk to Congress."
Environmentalists, on the other hand, love to talk about what they say is the huge amount of money the industrial sector can generate to lobby their agendas through Congress. They complain that it puts them at a big disavantage. "In the way the system is set up, it overwhelmingly favors industry," contends Rick Hind who directs Greenpeace's toxics campaign. "For one thing, more money means a lot more lobbyists can be hired to push their agendas. I did a study a few years ago to see how many lobbyists were working on Superfund. I discovered that 122 lobbyists from industry were working on the issue, but only 8 from the environmental community."
Environmentalists like to portray themselves as having a disadvantage when it comes to raising money, but they actually do quite well. It's true they can't begin to match industry's well-oiled lobbying and PAC machines in terms of money, but they do have large membership rolls that generate more than enough money to maintain a dedicated group of experienced Washington lobbyists. According to the Activists Almanac, "Five million American households contribute to environmental organizations, which together receive over $350 million in contributions from all sources."
And as Congressman Synar explains, money alone does not persuade a legislator. "Environmental groups are very astute at getting media attention for their causes," he explains. "A lot of the issues are visual. What they lack in money, they more than make up in the political pressure they can exert through the media."
Generally ackowledged as the most powerful social movement in America today, environmentalism has tremendous support at the grassroots level. Some 6000 environmental groups are active at the local level. "Environmental groups can't compete financially with industry, but they can turn out hundreds of volunteers who can open doors during a political campaign and get votes," observes Ronald Lang, President of the American Industrial Health Council.
Lobbying involves both an inside and an outside game, environmentalists believe. "Grassroots lobbying is just as important as what goes on in Washington," explains Dan Weiss, a Sierra Club spokesperson. "Politicians need to get reelected. You have to have people back home in the districts who can turn the issues into votes."
The environmentalists' adeptness at grassroots lobbying has led their opponents to mimic their strategies. Industry has tried to mobilize its managers, employees, shareholders, and retirees to undertake such strategies as door-to-door canvassing and letter-writing campaigns. Industry, however, is the first to admit that it has a long way to go before it can compete with the environmentalists at the grassroots level.
Despite its success at mobilizing the masses, it's wrong to think of the environmental community as one big monolith. At the national level, lobbying on the issues are 12 major environmental organizations with a wide range in experience, size, style, and philosophy. The mainstream Sierra Club (650,000 members), for example, prefers grassroots action, while the more radical Earth First (15,000 members) shuns the strategy of lobbying Congress directly and prefers to use 60s-style protest and street theater to further its agenda. The EDF (150,000 members) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (125,000 members) prefer legal action and employing lawyers to lobby and litigate. Greenpeace (1.4 million members) has built its powerful organization by emphasizing direct action rather than lobbying Congress. "We're not going to play by our opponents' rules," says Hind. "We don't have their money or staffs. Instead, we believe in going over their lobbyists' heads directly to the people."
These differences have led to disagreement over policy objectives. "There is a feeling within our community that we should be working together more, but the environmental field is so enormous, and everybody has their specialty," explains Peter Kelly, communications director for the LCV. "So a certain amount of competition does exist."
Industry, like the environmental community, often divides over policy goals and at times along tactical lines. During the debate in 1990 over the Clean Water Act, for example, it was impossible to reach a consensus among industries and even within industries on clean air goals. Oil and gas companies disagreed among themselves about the need for a new law, while the auto industry divided on the issue of gasoline refueling evaporation. In this year's debate over Superfund, insurers, chemical manufacturers, and other large manufacturers have split over liability and cleanup standards.
"I like to think we have more agreement among ourselves than does industry," says the EDF's Roberts, "We do disagree on tactics for achieving our common goal [protecting the environment]- how to get there and what policies should be implemented once we do. But our agreement on the overall premise is what binds us together."
To achieve political objectives on Capitol Hill, most lobbying has to be done as a coordinated effort. As Wright explains, "Congress seldom acts alone, in isolation from other groups. Not only do interest groups tend to work through coalitions, but when these coalitions form, they usually form on both sides of the issue." So, as Tom Helscher, director of government affairs for Monsanto Company, explains, "You have to find and fashion solutions that are win-win for everybody who has a stake in a particular issue."
The environmental community can claim many victories as result of coalition building, but that hasn't meant they are willing to compromise on principle. Environmentalists admit, however, that they have had to refine their lobbying strategy. "In order to sell our policies to Congress, we must be better advocates on the economic issues," Roberts admits "Environmentalists are now talking about how the environmental impact on jobs must be balanced against environmental gains. In fact, we have to show that environmental gains will lead to an increase in economic gains."
Congressional insiders say they definitely see a change of attitude within the environmental community. One congressional staffer calls it "a maturing of environmental advocacy" and gives an example of the new attitude in action: in 1989 and 1990, when working on the Clean Water Act, her office began to address the difficult issue of global warming. The EDF worked closely with her office in developing a market-based approach to solving the problem. "Seeing that a command-and-control strategy often doesn't work, environmentalists are being more open to new approaches," she explains.
To fashion solutions to a staggering number of environmental issues, legislators need information, and that is where lobbyists play an important role in the political process. Policy makers need to see all the available information for democracy to function well. As lawyer and lobbyist Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr., explained in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Facts are the first source of a lobbyist's power. Forty-three percent of the house members have served less than five years. Newspapers can't give them the substantive detail they need. Congressional staffers are overworked and underpaid. Lobbyists help fill the information vacuum."
Congressional sources say it doesn't take long before they figure out which industry, environmental organization, or scientific group is giving them good information and which isn't. "Eventually you identify some reliable groups that have something to say," Synar says, "so you use them as the leader of their sides in providing information for you."
McElroy says that the best lobbyists are those who can go to Capitol Hill and present both sides of an argument. "It's wise to acknowledge when the other side presents information that has some merit to it. If you do, congressmen will come to trust you, listen to you, and seek your advice."
Honesty does pay when it comes to playing the lobbying game. "Lie to a congressman or don't give him all the information, and you won't get a second chance," says Synar. "This is a drop-dead town. It's either the truth or nothing at all."
That is where the third group of lobbyists, the scientific community, plays an important role. "We need a voice in Washington," says Kathleen Rheam, head of the department of goverment relations and science policy for the ACS. "It's foolhardy not to be involved in politics. Don't represent yourself and someone else will."
Spokespersons for the scientific community, who work with industry, seem comfortable with the lobbying label, but Synar likes to describe the community as a kind of "truth squad" and "the one we go to for information when we are trying to find out which lobbyists are telling the truth."
Independent scientific groups not allied with industry, such as the National Research Council (NRC) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), say the label of "truth squad" is flattering, but they don't see themselves as lobbyists.
"When the government asks advice, we use science to give it to them," says Susan Turner Lowe, a spokesperson for the NRC. Founded in 1916 as an administrative arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the NRC's purpose is to facilitate the day-to-day operation of scientific reports. It has more than 1670 member scientists from different scientific fields.
Ellen Cooper, a spokesperson for the AAAS, says her group views the congressional lobbying game much the same way the NRC does. "We don't have a legislative agenda," Cooper explains, "We more or less facilitate the exchange of information and prepare reports, if asked." The august AAAS has 140,000 individual members worldwide.
The scientific community doesn't have the financial resources or the PACs of either industry or the environmental community, and they don't spend much time on Capitol Hill arguing their case. Instead, they mostly research and write scientific papers and send them to Congress.
Lobbyists, no doubt, have a significant impact on the legislative process, whether they come from industry, the environmental community, or science. But many say the way we do lobbying needs fixing. They call for campaign finance reform, stricter disclosure laws so the public knows where the money is coming from, and employment restrictions for government officals and employees. Despite the imperfections, there seems to be a consensus that lobbyists have a legitimate role to play in the environmental policy-making that takes place on Capitol Hill. "Lobbying is not necessarily a bad thing," says Lang. "It's the traditional American way that we let Congress know our point of view."
Ron Chepesiuk
Ron Chepesiuk is a freelance writer in Rock Hill, South Carolina.