K Street Quotes

Senator McCain, on the current lobbying scandal, in particular, and the state of the government’s relationship with lobbyists in general.

Hollings who was one of the senior experienced senators was offended by the degree to which the George W. Bush Administration and the Republican leadership had turned to lobbyists to draft legislation and amendments to pending legislation. Lobbyists often have specialized information that members of Congress do not have, so there has been in modern times communications between lobbyists and members of Congress and their staffs. However, during the Bush Presidency the practice reached an extreme where lobbyists would even write the legislative language and give it to the members in whom they had invested by giving them large campaign contributions and many perks. K Street is the fanciest street in Washington DC with some of the most expensive office space. A substantial proportion of the lobbyists have K Street offices, hence the metaphor.

This seeming non-sequitur actually has a logic behind it. Flake argues that if the Federal government were much smaller, and spent much less money, rich individuals and companies could not be able to get as much out of government and therefore would not invest large sums of money in lobbyists who, in turn, would then not have the money with which to tempt and bribe congressmen and women.