In the Right

In an interview pubished in a home-state newspaper over the weekend, Murtha had something to say about lobbyists and their role in the appropriations process.

But what’s instructive is what the article quoted him saying about himself:

“There was, in the case of Mr. Murtha and PMA, frequent agreement on what projects deserved funding.

“Part of the reason could be found in Mr. Murtha’s candid admission that he and other members rely heavily on lobbyists to get the committee’s work done when, annually, it dispenses a budget of $533 billion.

“We can’t do it. I have a small staff of 15 people. I depend on somebody else to be able to recommend to that community, to that hospital, to that university how to present it to the committee,” Mr. Murtha said.

“They’re absolutely necessary because of the size of our staff,” he said of the lobbyists. “A lobbyist is part of the business. That’s all there is to it.”

When I first got to that part of the newspaper article, I knew where it was going: Murtha was going to defend lobbyists as “essential” to the process, for their role as “information envoys” or some other such gobbledygook.

Why, without lobbyists, no Member of Congress would know anything about what was behind the funding requests it was their duty to consider. It’s a defense of lobbyists and lobbying taken straight off the web page of the American League of Lobbyists

Ah, but Murtha is nothing if not surprising.

Not for he, the traditional defense of lobbyists — no, for Murtha, there would be a new and somewhat unconventional defense of the profession: “I depend on somebody else to recommend to that community, to that hospital, to that university how to present it to the committee.” (emphasis added)

According to Murtha, that’s how lobbyists are helpful to him — by helping advise their clients on how to put together an attractive funding proposal, so he can more easily win the support of the full committee to pass out the goodies.

That is to say, Murtha doesn’t see himself as the representative of the taxpayers to the funding-seekers; he sees himself as the representative of the funding-seekers to the taxpayers. His job isn’t to guard the Treasury so much as it is to figure out ways to plunder it from the inside.

DISCLAIMER: When I write about the politicians in my past, CQ Politics says I have to turn the cards face-up. I worked for a candidate who ran against Murtha back in my campaign operative days.