Hacker News Reader

Comment by houstonn | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. Are lobbyists in control of congress? Aren't politicians the ones who pass bills? Or not pass bills in this case.

View on HN

Reminds me this joke:

“Taught my kids about democracy tonight by letting them vote on which movie to rent and what pizza to takeaway.

I then picked the movie and pizza cos I’m the one with the money.”

The real issue is that the tax industry is a large employer. There are about 80k full time tax preparers in the US, and several times that are hired seasonally. H&R block alone hires about 80k for Jan->April. The lobbyists only have to go into senator's offices and say "We created 14,000 jobs in your district, and this bill puts those in jeopardy". Our tax payment system is, in part, a taxpayer funded private jobs creation program.

The US tax code is longer than the C++ standard if you count only the laws that are active today. If you add on the rulings in IRS tribunals, clarifying papers, and other publications, the US tax code is something like 100,000 pages. It is easy to see a profession being established around learning to read that sort of thing.

The solution to the tax prep industry isn't to have the IRS do your taxes for you, it's to reduce the size of the tax code.

With how US govt uses tax (instead of other adhoc channels) to interact with citizens, let's be honest, reducing the size of the tax code is the least likely event to happen. It would require a complete change of paradigm in how the govt works to make it happen.

Nobody is incentivized to reduce the number of laws on the books, but I would vote for any politician whose position was "I will only repeal laws."

The US government is obsessed with giving narrowly-targeted groups of people money through the most obtuse mechanism possible, and it is ridiculous. If you were just sent a check when you bought an EV (for example), a lot of the tax stuff would be much simpler.

It's both.

> Are lobbyists in control of congress?

Effectively, Yes.

> Who passes bills?

Technically the elected officials, but the bills themselves are usually written by lobbyists.

Pressure from campaign donors, either directly or through lobbyists, or through "party" channels influence votes.

"Congress should wear jackets like NASCAR drivers so we can know who bought them."

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_...

Yet another reason I wish the US were a real democracy. For all the good that checks and balances do, let's not forget that the founders were trying to entrench the power of their class.

Yes because having a Twitter mob rule the US would be such a great improvement../s

I know there were issues that precipitated the direct election of Senators but I think we would be better if we went back to State Senate control of the Senate, that would force people to focus more on their state and local politics where they have more power rather than ignoring them and shouting how the US Senate is doing nothing.

I think usually is a stretch but some bills certainly are written by lobbyists (or think tanks/do tanks)

Even if they aren't written by Lobbyists I'd be surprised if most bills weren't influenced at least a little by at least one lobbyist group.

Hmm, probably depends on what you define as a lobbyist. If you're writing a bill about education reform and including more tech in the classroom (just a hypothetical example) and ask the teacher's union, Brookings, and a major education company about what would be important to include or not include, would that be influenced by a lobbyist group?

Congressional members commonly have no idea what is in the legislation they propose. Nancy Pelosi is on the record saying as much:

https://posey.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...

>Are lobbyists in control of congress?

Yes, lobbyists and intelligence agencies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com