Industry Lobbying Quotes

In almost every case, whenever a tariff or quota is imposed on imports, that tax is strongly supported by the domestic industry getting the protective shield from lower-priced foreign competition. The sugar industry supports sugar tariffs; textile mills lobby for tariffs on foreign clothing.

You can't turn on your television without seeing these advertisements about clean coal, clean tar sands and the claim that there's more jobs associated with fossil fuels than other industries. That's of course not true. But they're hammering that into the voters' heads.

It is more profitable for your congressman to support the tobacco industry than your life.

When an industry has a blanket exemption and someone suggests the most modest regulation, they see it changing the universe in which they do business.

Almost every witness that has been before this committee has opposed that reform which would affect his own industry.

As the nation's elderly population grows, dozens of industries have tried to harness the political might of older Americans for corporate goals.

The federal government has more power to recall a defective stuffed animal who's little glass eye may fall off than to recall contaminated ground beef that could sicken or even kill hundreds if not thousands of people. The meat-packing industry is so powerful that it's managed to prevent the government from having this basic power of recalling a defective product.

The oil lobby, perhaps the most powerful lobby on earth, is almost matched by hospital owners and doctors.

Getting toxic lead out of gasoline, the oil industry shouted, would cost a dollar a gallon. It turned out to cost just a penny a gallon to protect hundreds of thousands of kids from lead-induced brain damage.

I was in charge of price controls in World War II and had a ceiling on overall prices. Everybody who was subject to general maximum price regulation wanted an exception and went to Congress to persuade a Congressman, or a group of people on the Hill, that I was being a menace to their industry.

Sugary drinks are blamed for increasing the rates of chronic disease and obesity in America. Yet efforts to reduce their consumption through taxes or other measures have gone nowhere. The beverage industry has spent millions defeating them.

Pharmaceutical companies have the highest number of lobbyists and they pay them the most. A lot of them are former legislators.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.