Where the money is

Willie Sutton is famous for saying that he robbed banks "because that's where the money is." If he were alive today, he might have been a lobbyist.

As the credit crisis has shown, banks may no longer be where the money is. The federal government, on the other hand, seems to have unlimited deep pockets. If you want to break into the federal piggy bank, you need a lobbyist, not a bank robber.

The Associated Press reports that lobbyists have begun gathering to get a piece of the $700 billion Congress has given the Treasury Department to rescue the economy. The Financial Services Roundtable, for example, wrote to the Treasury in mid-October to ask that the government take shares in insurance companies, auto manufacturers, securities dealers and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, including banks.

The next Congress will soon be inundated with lobbyists seeking something for their clients in the "stimulus" bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has promised to bring before a post-election session this year.

Economist Robert Reich, who served former president Bill Clinton as Secretary of Labor, warned on National Public Radio last week that any general-purpose "stimulus" bill enacted by the lame-duck Congress is doomed to become a "Christmas Tree" full of special interest earmarks that will do little to lift the economy.

But it is not the lobbyists' job to worry about the economy. They just gather where the money is. As for a Congress that just says no? That'll be the day. Willie Sutton would never have been able to resist such temptation.