Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

Congressional bickering over a $1 trillion-plus stimulus bill may make it seem like everything in official Washington has changed for good.

The fiscal conservatives and libertarians are gone. We’re all ultra-Keynesians now.

Except…there is one part of DC culture that hasn’t changed a bit. If anything, the current crisis atmosphere has kicked it into high gear.

The DC lobbyists:

Lobbyists in the nation’s capital are readying for the ultimate honey pot: a massive stimulus package that could prop up entire modes of business that have buckled as the outbreak has worsened. Reports on Tuesday suggested lawmakers could end up passing a bill with a price tag north of $1 trillion. While about half of that is expected to take the form of either a payroll tax holiday or direct cash payments to everyday Americans, a portion is destined to go to struggling industries as well. And in order to get their hands on that pie, those industries are turning to the best of pie-getters: K Street.

The price tag is rapidly approaching $2 trillion, and, at least as of this writing, includes provisions for corporations, state and local governments, individuals…the list is long and may get longer.

Thanks in no small part to the very active, never-changing, efforts of the DC lobbying corps.

Image credit: By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons