> Lobbying does not involve any exchange of value.
That's quite a whopper. Instead of buying your congressman dinner, how about hiring his son or nephew for a "job?" It took me about 2 minutes of searching to find a huge report on how congressmen pipeline campaign funds to relatives "working" as "campaign consultants."
Holding a bake sale for the Sierra Club is just a time-waster to keep the peons busy while the real Washington is playing a whole different game, by different rules, with several orders of magnitude more money.
The short answer seems to be that in return for good committee assignments, congressmen are required by their party to meet certain fundraising goals. If congressmen do not meet these goals then they may get removed from choice committees and the lack of funds will put them at a competitive campaign disadvantage. It's to the point where congressmen may spend over 2/3 of their time soliciting funds and must regularly solicit lobbyists for money.
If money always wins in Washington, why isn't there drilling in ANWR right now? I picked that example for a reason.
Because everything costs money, it's possible for every side of every argument in Washington to level accusations of corruption. That does not mean that they are all right.
And, money is hardly the only corrupting influence in human affairs. Religion, racism, sexism, xenophobia, environmentalism, empathy, and a whole host of other emotions and beliefs power the fights at the federal level. In fact the adjudication of these competing beliefs is the express purpose of our system of government.
That's quite a whopper. Instead of buying your congressman dinner, how about hiring his son or nephew for a "job?" It took me about 2 minutes of searching to find a huge report on how congressmen pipeline campaign funds to relatives "working" as "campaign consultants."
Holding a bake sale for the Sierra Club is just a time-waster to keep the peons busy while the real Washington is playing a whole different game, by different rules, with several orders of magnitude more money.