In a recent Des Moines Register poll, participants were asked what "key issue" was most important to them in selecting a presidential candidate. They were given 19 issues to choose from including: the war in Iraq, health care, renewable energy, and global warming. Gay marriage even made the list.
I read the article over and over but, no matter how hard I looked, lobbying and campaign finance reform weren't even mentioned. How could this be? All right, maybe I'm biased (after all, I just completed a documentary film on the influence of money in Washington) but shouldn't getting screwed by your government be as important as screwing gays and lesbians out of the "privilege" of getting married?
Semantics aside, how special interests lobby Washington and buy our elections corrupt nearly every decision our elected officials make (including most of the Des Moines Register's "key" issues).
Take health care as an example. Congress wanted to add a prescription drug benefit to its Medicare program to help America's seniors afford the drugs they need to live. But the law that Congress passed and the President signed benefits the pharmaceutical industry far more than the Americans it was designed to help. Why? The pharmaceutical industry contributed a significant amount of money to key members of the House and Senate to influence how the law was written. In fact, one leading congressional sponsor of the bill -- Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) -- ended up taking a $1.1 million job as the pharmaceutical industry's head lobbyist just months after he spearheaded the industry's special interest legislation through Congress. So, now not only does the Medicare Drug Prescription Act prohibit the re-importation of drugs from other countries such as Canada where they are often half the cost, but also it prevents the government from using its buying power to negotiate lower prices from the pharmaceutical industry for lower prices.
The Energy Bill passed last month is a more recent example of the excessive influence of special interests. After extensive lobbying by oil and utilities industries, two of the bills' most important provisions were stripped out of the legislation. According to the New York Times, "a $13 billion tax increase on oil companies and a requirement that utilities nationwide produce 15% of their electricity from renewable sources were left on the floor to secure Republican votes for the package."
And let's not forget about the environment. Concerned that a June 2006 Supreme Court decision would protect a much wider region of wetlands and streams, property developers, farm groups and mine owners lobbied the White House and Congress to scale back the proposed guidelines. A few months later, the language in the final guidelines was changed. As a result, thousands of sensitive wetlands and streams are now unprotected.
Why then did the Des Moines Register choose not to include lobbying and campaign finance reform on their list of important issues in the 2008 election? I decided to call the paper to get an answer. No one called me back so I am forced to come up with my own top 19 reasons why the Des Moines Register chose not to include lobbying and campaign finance reform in their poll:
1) Nineteen is such a nice even number.
2) Our editor though Jack Abramoff was last year's American Idol winner.
3) It would have opened Pandora's box and it's filled with lots of money for political ads.
4) The issue was redistricted by Tom Delay.
5) The sports department would have lobbied to include the baseball steroid scandal.
6) Washington lobbied heavily to keep it out.
7) Eight percent of Americans think there government is just fine.
8) Lobbying, smobbying... its freaking cold here.
9) Including it could have actually made it a key issue and that wouldn't be fair to all the other issues.
10) As promised, Democrats already fixed this.
11) Congress knows how important it is, isn't that enough?
12) We're in the entertainment business.
13) Come on, Americans aren't interested in things that actually effect them.
14) McCain told them not to worry about it... he isn't.
15) They're changing their catch phrase from, "The newspaper Iowa depends upon" to "The newspaper Iowa uses as Depends."
16) It's so important it doesn't need to be mentioned.
17) Sure a recent poll showed 58% believed Washington is corrupt but who believes polls?
18) Lobbying and campaign finance reform...Washington is too busy bringing democracy to Iraq to worry about that.
19) If you fix that we wouldn't have nineteen "key" issues to fix.
In all fairness to the Des Moines Register many pollsters and political consultants just can't seem to grasp what is truly important to voters. The "oversight" of the Des Moines Register pollster is the same oversight that most of the nation's leading pollsters made in the 2006 elections, when most pollsters too, omitted asking voters if corruption is a key issue. While these pollsters missed the beat of American voters, open-ended exit polls showed that corruption was the Number One issue that affected vote choices in 2006, even more so than the war in Iraq. Pollsters, isn't it time that lobbying and campaign finance reform get the attention it deserves?