Money has a lot of influence in Washington, D.C., especially through expensive and persistent lobbying. It goes without saying that those with money have a lot of power.
It isn't surprising that interest groups supporting the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, had spent over $605 million lobbying Congress as of the end of 2012. Opponents of the bill had only spent around $4.3 million at that time.
This gap in spending borders on obscene, and it shows just how much power that large industries, companies and organizations (wrongly) have over the legislative process.
CISPA is a bill that will, in the words of its supporters, facilitate the transfer of information to the government to improve cyber security and is industry-friendly.
CISPA also poses numerous civil liberties concerns, as it could possibly infringe upon U.S. citizens' constitutional right to privacy.
These voices should not be muted just because they cannot compete on a monetary level; their concerns are valid and deserve more attention from legislators. Congress should certainly consider all sides of the argument when debating legislation. The opponents of the bill, however, simply lack some of the financial resources that its proponents possess to lobby for it.
IBM, along with other corporations, has shelled out millions of dollars and ridiculous amounts of manpower to help influence the outcome of the bill in the House, including sending 200 executives to Capitol Hill on Monday.
Opponents of the bill, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Reddit users, unfortunately have low budgets and just cannot compete. That doesn’t mean that they don't pose important questions for members of Congress to consider.
Without copious amounts of funding, these organizations' voices are quieter and heard less often than those with more funds. That only makes it so much easier for the moneyed to win.
Many think that is the way it should be. Maybe those ideas with the strongest monetary support should easily displace those that lack such assistance.
But what kind of legislation does that produce?
It would produce legislation that singlehandedly favors the side with the heaviest and most effective lobbying. Such legislation would not necessarily work in the interests of the people, but would instead work in the interests of those organizations and corporations that lobbied for it.
Allowing the organizations with the most money to triumph over those with less would almost constitute a "tyranny of the majority" — or, in this case, "a tyranny of the rich."
Citizens of a country that values free speech enough to enshrine it in its constitution should advocate for smaller organizations and dissenting opinion to be considered alongside and with equal weight as larger and better-funded groups, instead of merely letting the most-funded idea reign.
Ultimately, CISPA may not become law in its current form. It still must battle its way through the Senate, and it may face a veto from President Barack Obama.
The bill still reflects a horrifying pattern in the crafting of legislation that skews in the favor of interest groups with large donations to campaigns and millions of dollars spent lobbying Congress. Money should not have such a large influence in these cases.
If a law like CISPA may disproportionately affect the people at large, then the people deserve to have their interests considered, even if they lack the funds to lobby Congress as corporations can and do.
We should not want to create a world in which laws are made in the interests of we the rich and powerful, rather than we the people.
Reach the columnist at jelanza@asu.edu or follow her at @jentrylanza
