Most of the K Street lobbyists are hired guns representing corporate interests with very narrow and often-changing agendas. They are well-paid and heavily-funded with plenty of money to make sure their ideas are both heard and acted upon. Yes, there are some that represent private citizens--AARP, the NRA, even the ACLU--but most of the lobbyists are writing legislation and paying off Congress people and Senators with gobs of campaign contributions to assure that their bills are passed.

I don't think that the lobbyists for the banks, investment banks and real estate companies that made $600,000 in campaign contributions to Ginny Brown-Waite last year did so because they represented any broad group of private citizens. Congresswoman Brown-Waite serves on Barney Frank's finance committee, which I suspect was a much larger reason that she got the contributions than her great job of representing the residents of Sumter County and The Villages in her relatively small Florida district.