Defenses of The K Street Project
The few Republicans and political conservatives who have chosen to defend the project claim that after 40 years of a near-total Democratic control of Congress, most of the top lobbyists in Washington were former Democratic congressional staffers and aides, since lobbyists are valued for their access to power more than their political ideologies. They might be more loyal to their party and former employers than their present ones.
In fact, Republicans claim, Democrats in Congress had informally done the same thing and forced lobbies to hire former staffers of their own. In this view, the K Street Project was simply a way of ensuring that those lobbying in Congress had political views in line with those who hired them to lobby. Labor unions, they noted, hire people to advocate for them in Washington who share their viewpoints regardless of their access to power.
Read more about this topic: K Street Project
Famous quotes containing the words defenses, street and/or project:
“We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our childrens children who may perchance be really free.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the minds inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The trenchant editorials plus the keen rivalry natural to extremely partisan papers made it necessary for the editors to be expert pugilists and duelists as well as journalists. An editor made no assertion that he could not defend with fists or firearms.”
—Federal Writers Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)