33,000 D.C. Lobbyists Try to Get Their Share: Heritage Action CPAC Panel

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland–There are 33,000 registered lobbyists in Washington D.C. and everyone of them represents one or more clients. All of them regularly journey to Capitol Hill and request special benefits specific to their client’s wishes. Consistently, the disbursed favors prove to be what’s best for their clients, not what is best for all Americans.

“This is kind of a sick way of doing business, this is kind of a broken way of doing business,” asserted Chief Operating Officer Tim Chapman, from Heritage Action for America.

Thursday, Chapman moderated a panel of Heritage researchers at the Conservative Political Action Conference being held at the Gaylord Hotel across the way from Alexandria, Va. The Heritage Foundation is working on educating Americans the negative impact of cronyism and the importance of promoting, “Opportunity for All, Favoritism to None.”

Heritage Action for America’s aims to make sure that legislation favors all Americans and not just special interest groups. Chapman says if education legislation is passed it should be not just for children who live in good school districts, but for those who live in poor neighborhoods as well.

Moreover, when crafting energy policy, benefits should be spread evenly and subsides should not be handed out to certain companies participating in government preferred endeavors. By mobilizing grass roots activists across the country, Chapman explained, Heritage Action makes constituents aware of how their representatives vote how they favor certain special interest group.

According to the Heritage Action for America Conservative Policy Agenda:

Conservatives have solutions for the challenges our nation faces in a complex, dangerous, and interconnected world. Do we have the will to explain them, fight for them, and persevere to see them through? Margaret Thatcher believed that “you win the argument, then you win the vote.” The only way to win an argument is to have one. And while many people think Washington, DC, is broken, the truth is that it’s broken only for the American people. For the wealthy and powerful, Washington is a finely tuned machine aimed at avoiding principled arguments and keeping the gravy train rolling for well-connected interests.