Money and Lobbying Ruin the Political Process

Corporate lobbying and corporate money in campaigning is the bane of our democratic process. Corporations can hire lobbyist in order to argue for or against bills on their behalf. This muddies up the democratic process because corporations hold a lot of wealth and can influence congresspeople to vote one way or the other. Congresspeople are responsible to their constituents, but because corporations have the ability to lobby and have their money spread across many congresspeople they are able to influence important votes. This is not how the democratic process should be done and it is probably one of the main reason for the amazing inability to get things done that has plagued our congress for the past six years. 

This problem is highlighted when you look at the issue of global warming. 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and man made, but no solution has been able to pass through the legislative process because of the lobbying abilities of the fossil fuel industry, such as the Koch Brothers. It is not a good sign that a single industry can influence the legislative process to minimize the impact of potential regulation. Especially since science is not on their side and their influence in the regulation process is holding up in progress we might have made in improving our environment. 

Other lobbying should not be ignored either, environmental groups also has a big budget when it comes to lobbying. I am arguing against lobbying of congress and getting private money out of campaigning. There should be absolutely no campaign donations and campaigns should be financed with public money with strict oversight. Getting rid of lobbying all together is tricky, but I believe it should be replaced with a panel who are well versed in their particular fields and they would put together a report on how a particular piece of legislation will affect certain areas of our economy or how it would affect certain industries. They would provide congresspeople with the information and the congresspeople would use this to make informed decisions. This would be quite costly, but since the payoff would be a well functioning democracy, it seems like it would be worth it.