“DOGE is being made up as it goes along by people who remain much more entrenched in their pre-existing private sector professional circles than they are within any network of public policy experts.”
“The problem is that this is not your typical administration, where you could call up a staffer, schedule a meeting, place a few op-eds, and move somebody to see things your way. Elon Musk is nearly un-lobbyable.”
“Washington is really used to deliberative processes where stakeholders get input … Musk doesn’t believe in any of that.”
These are but three of the quotes in a Thursday piece in Politico. It’s supposed to be straight news, although the slant certainly seems to be against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
Why, you may ask? Well, they don’t play nice with the lobbyists on K Street in Washington, the District of Columbia. That’s right: We’re asked to pour one out for the lobbyists. Why, they have mouths to feed at home, too! And how are they going to feed them without being able to use a little of someone’s money to convince the federal government to give that person a lot of your taxpayer money? Huh?
Look, one gets that Politico is a publication that focuses on the viewpoint of Beltway insiders — I mean, it’s named “Politico,” for the love of Pete — but one is also hard-pressed not to find moments of unintentional hilarity in an article that starts thusly: “Washington’s lobbying class is grasping for an effective approach to an unprecedented challenge: how do you influence a mercurial outsider like Elon Musk who has immense but unofficial power and is the world’s richest person.”
Wait: We’re supposed to be alarmed at rich people having “immense but unofficial power?” Because, see, Musk does have official power; he’s at the helm of DOGE, which (like it or not) is a government office which makes policy suggestions which the president seems, on most days, to be keen on following.
When you want to talk about rich folks who have “immense but unofficial power,” you can go to K Street, the street in D.C. where most of the offices of the district’s most powerful lobbying firms are found. There, those who weren’t famous enough to take the revolving door from Capitol Hill or 1600 Pennsylvania to a media gig take the revolving door to a lobbying gig, where they transmute access to power into hefty salaries.
But — alas! — it turns out that the DOGE head isn’t exactly the type who plays along with that game. Which I thought was kind of the point of putting him in charge of the operation in the first place, but maybe I’m the slow one and not Politico’s reporters.
Should lobbyists’ power be curtailed?
A number of anonymous and non-anonymous sources were used for the article. The first and third quotes at the top are from Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project, a left-leaning group, and Alex Conant, co-founder of Firehouse Strategies, respectively. Hauser had more entertaining stuff about how the DOGE employees are making it up “as it goes along.”
“[I]t wouldn’t surprise me that people or companies with whom Musk and his team used to collaborate prior to Trump’s inauguration retain the best channels to DOGE and greatest influence with Musk,” Hauser said, without providing any evidence of this.
Yeah! How dare those plutocrats get access and the left’s plutocrats don’t, hmm? Apparently, it’s oligarchy when you can’t buy government from a perch on K Street. Who knew?
Other lobbyists spoke anonymously; Politico’s reporters noted that “[s]ome lobbyists, unwilling to promise results they can’t deliver, are turning away clients with DOGE asks that appear impossible, such as saving foreign development projects.
“Others are focusing their DOGE-related efforts on federal agencies or the DOGE Caucus on Capitol Hill. Or they are trying unconventional tactics, such as reaching out to influencers Musk engages with on X or seeding stories in conservative media.”
Not that this is working, according to a quote from a Republican operative on K Street.
“They all say, ‘I want to meet with the DOGE people,’ and we joke, ‘All right, just email bigb***s@doge.gov,’” he said, in reference to the juvenile online moniker of one young DOGE employee. (Breaking: Anonymous young people online tend to act stupidly in ways they’d probably be embarrassed of when they get older and/or get their first job. Film at 11.)
And, of course, there’s the fact that K Street lobbyists smell opportunity in government efficiency, as well: “It’s not just trying to save government contracts that have kept D.C. lobbyists busy — they’ve also been asked to scope out potential opportunities from DOGE’s work. As the government seeks to sell off federal buildings, another Republican lobbyist has been asked for information from real estate investors looking to capitalize on such future sales from the General Services Administration.”
“There’s a lot of real estate investors who are interested in that,” the lobbyist said.
Ah, but therein lies the problem, Politico’s reporters noted.
“The secrecy surrounding DOGE contributes to the perception that Musk is a black box. He doesn’t maintain a conventional political team, and his tight circle of Silicon Valley loyalists and DOGE operatives executing his visions are tough to reach,” they reported. It’s almost like that’s by design, one would assume — but again, perhaps I’m the dullard here and not the folks at Politico.
If you’re reading Politico’s article from a ledge on a K Street building, the authors give you a reason not to jump toward the end of the piece: “While members of DOGE have taken the lead on identifying cuts, Trump has publicly stated that his Cabinet will have the final say, so Washington operatives are working to preemptively frame their clients’ projects in a positive light before they land on the chopping block.”
“Depending on what it is, you really have to go through the political channels of each agency and say, ‘Hey, can we just talk about this factually first?’” one in-house lobbyist for a Fortune 50 company said. “I think there is value in that. If you can make a good case, they’re happy to identify what it is … but it’s not easy.”
Which, again: Duh.
Yes, lobbyists do have their place in Washington, but it shouldn’t be an outsized one. The fact that there’s a demonym for the lobbying district in D.C. — and it happens to be one of the choicest thoroughfares in our nation’s capital — is a good sign that the industry has grown far beyond the role of merely representing stakeholder interests in government legislation should need be.
Remember, one of these lobbyists — the one quote in the first few paragraphs that was anonymous — described a “typical administration” as one “where you could call up a staffer, schedule a meeting, place a few op-eds, and move somebody to see things your way.” They couldn’t have made a better case for Elon Musk if Elon had impersonated a lobbyist and made the call himself. (In fact, given Elon, there’s always an outside chance he really did that. If so, props.)
“Every client has a worry right now,” that lobbyist added. Yeah, they should. If this is how easy the Biden administration — as well as every other “typical administration” — was to buy off, I can’t think of a more salient argument for Trump 2.0 than this.
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