Ban lobbyists and lobbying! These people do not speak for the people and it’s like bribing elected officials and promotes insider-like trading and favoritism towards big corporations. The corporate monopoly and stranglehold positions on most bills has been far removed from our infrastructure, safety, economic and agricultural consumer needs. Our elected officials should be voting for issues that are most important to their constituents and not favored pork-laden pork for big corporations and their ilk. Transparency on this issue is a must and wasteful spending needs to stop!
If I might suggest: the people should still be able to lobby Congress as needed. What we really need to do is ban the provision of compensation for the lobbying of Congress.
In Washington, DC, there is an entire section of the business/political section of the city commonly referred to as “K Street”. It’s the lobbyist section of the city. Literally hundreds of people are employed by corporations, unions, and special interests specifically to spend their days calling Congressional staff offices to lobby for policies and bills that benefit them. We the people have actual jobs that do useful things, and we don’t have time to compete with all that noise! Our voices get drowned out simply because we have better things to do than call Congress all day. These people don’t, because they’re being paid to do that.
End the compensation. Make it illegal to compensate - pay, bribe, offer gifts, etc. - someone to lobby Congress.