Personal Lobbying and NASCOE

For some time I had kept a post in either Crooked Timber or Monkey Cage unread, because I wanted to link to it.  That's a way of saying I don't have the URL handy.  The post reported on some research into what tactics were most effective in swaying Congresspeople.  As I remember, email campaigns, even letter writing campaigns, were of little use.  At the other end of the continuum was personal lobbying by someone the Congresswoman knew.

I mention this because I just read the latest update from NASCOE, the association of FSA employees, which reported on their annual legislative session, meaning they bring in people to walk the halls of Congress and lobby the aides and members.  Included in the reports was a lament from one of the officers saying NASCOE used to have someone in every (rural) Congressional district who knew the Congressperson and could get through to them when it was time to lobby.  The lament was that retirements in recent years had depleted the ranks so they no longer have such contacts.

Now NASCOE isn't unique; I'd wager every big widespread Federal bureaucracy has employee groups with the same approach.  It's such influence which makes it hard to do things: for example, to reorganize NRCS and FSA because the rival employee groups tend to neutralize each other.  So the known present becomes the enemy of the possible future.