This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, August 6, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

With dramatically increased federal spending last year and this year and in the future

should it be any wonder that lobbying to get that cash into favored pockets is

big business. Cato Institute Executive Vice President David Bowes comments.

Well indeed nobody should be surprised except that President Obama spent the whole last two years campaigning telling us he was going to clean up Washington, get rid of lobbyists and so on.

But anybody who understands the way Washington works, the way politics works, would understand. If you promise to

spend a lot more money, if you promise to regulate a lot more, of course you're

going to get a lot more lobbying. President Obama as a candidate did say that he

would keep lobbyists out largely of his administration though

and certainly he can't be blamed for things that Congress does.

Well he can be blamed for suggesting that Congress stick its nose into

every aspect of American society. Now it's true that Congress is doing this. It is

not the case, in my impression, that lobbyists are having no influence on the

administration there are lots of ways to have influence on an administration you

get people from your organization in there, you get to know people.

One of the biggest lobbyists in town is Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesa, the director of Obama's transition. So you think maybe they ever talk to each other,

you think there's some influence. Although interestingly, it appears that Obama has hired a lot more

mainstream journalists than lobbyists for his administration.

Mainstream journalists seem to love working there.

What bears out the fact that lobbying is such a popular and remunerative line of work right now.

Well I think it's interesting that Craig Holman, who runs the group Public Citizen, which was founded

by Ralph Nader, told Marketplace Radio recently, the amount spent on lobbying is related entirely to how much the federal government

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