Shocker: Bailed Out Companies Spent Millions Lobbying Congress
$10 million or so spent on lobbying in return for hundreds of billions in bailouts. Not a bad return on investment, I guess. Not a bad deal for Congress either. They get the all the cushy goodness that goes along with being lobbied, and then spend our money.
Major recipients of federal bailout money spent more than $10 million to lobby lawmakers in the first three months of 2009, including arguing against pay limits for corporate executives, according to newly filed disclosure records.
The biggest spenders among major financial firms and automakers included General Motors, which spent nearly $1 million a month on lobbying so far this year, and Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which together spent more than $2.5 million in their efforts to sway lawmakers and Obama administration officials on a wide range of financial issues.
Perhaps the most deft move in this entire transaction, which redistributed wealth from we taxpayers to the corporations who lobbied Congress, was the way the politicians (along with their buddies in the media) responded when the public got mad. They deflected that anger onto the executives of the corporations.
“Oh, look at Wells Fargo using your tax dollars for parties.” “Oh, look at AIG using your tax dollars for bonuses.”
All of that distracted from who it was that gave those companies our tax dollars to begin with. Which, of course, was Congress.
We shouldn’t be bailing out failing companies. Failing companies should be allowed to fail so that they stop doing the things that cause failure. And so that they can be replaced in the market by the companies that do the things that bring success.
This isn’t exactly rocket science. But I guess, when you’re being lobbied with millions of dollars, it’s all a little less clear.
