Politicians love to rev-up their supporters by promising to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C.

Nancy Pelosi promised to do this in 2006. Throughout his campaign, President Trump promised to, as well. The phrase has become a standard line in campaigns, right up there with “if elected, I’ll represent all Americans” and “good jobs at good wages.”

The reality is that the swamp cannot be drained. Or, put another way, the swamp as it is seen by ordinary Americans is a myth.

Lobbyists

Wait! I agree that corruption needs to be fought, hard. Breaking the law, making shady deals, and plain old graft are never acceptable.

And without question, money talks. Corporate donations to candidates and elected officials influence votes and policy decisions. But as often as not, those donations are given to support people whose convictions about the free market and economic growth motivate them to vote for bills that create jobs, lower taxes, and rein-in government. Bills corporations like, for the most part.

But more broadly, just what is the so-called “swamp?”

Work for a company of any size? It’s more likely than not that your firm has representatives in Washington, DC. They might be corporate lobbyists, people who are employees of the same company as you.

They might be lobbyists who work for themselves or for a lobbying firm and who are hired to represent your company.

They might be lobbyists who work for a business association or trade group your company belongs to. Say, the National Grocer’s Association or the Balloon Council (yes, it exists, and lobbies on helium issues). Or any one of thousands of other such organizations.

In total, there are about 11,000 lobbyists in your nation’s capital. Most of them are not cigar-smoking fat-cats who lurk in the shadows. Most make middle to upper-middle incomes, ride the subway to and from work, live in the suburbs and mow their lawns on Saturdays.

A handful are corrupt, ethically if not legally. They schmooze and flatter and wheedle and manipulate. But so do people in every sphere of business in every city in every state in the union. That doesn’t make their occupation corrupt or fake in itself.

Why They Lobby

So, why are people paid to lobby?

Because the federal government taxes businesses so much, for so many things, and in such a complicated way. Lobbyists seeking tax advantages often do so because without tax relief, the companies or industries they represent would decline.

In 2016, the IRS “revised its estimated paperwork burden for the Business Income Tax Return by roughly 2.5 billion annual hours (from 360 million hours to 2.8 billion),” reports Dan Goldbeck of the American Action Forum. “On December 31, 2015, the nation’s cumulative paperwork burden was slightly more than nine billion hours. Once the IRS paperwork imposition was processed, the nation’s paperwork burden grew to more than 11.5 billion hours.”

High and complex taxes on businesses of all sizes injure them as they try to create new jobs and market new products. Congress is often oblivious to the realities of what it takes to make the economy tick, so lobbyists spend their time trying to shake some fiscal sense into the House and Senate.

And remember, companies are taxed as persons. The very term “incorporate” comes from a Latin term meaning to “to create a body.” Corporations exist legally as persons. They have legal rights and duties.

If they are going to be taxed as persons, they have the same right as every other citizen: No taxation without representation.

Lobbyists also exist to fight the regulation that spews forth from Washington at a rate no one person can account for. In 2015 alone, the Obama Administration added “43 new major rules (that) increased annual regulatory costs by more than $22 billion, bringing the total annual costs of Obama Administration rules to an astonishing $100 billon-plus in just seven years,” according to James Gattuso and Diane Katz of The Heritage Foundation.

A 2012 study by the National Association of Manufacturers states that “the average U.S. company pays $9,991 per employee per year to comply with federal regulations. The average manufacturer in the United States pays nearly double that amount — $19,564 per employee per year. Small manufacturers, or those with fewer than 50 employees, incur regulatory costs of $34,671 per employee per year.”

That’s not all, folks. The Federal Register is the daily record of all existing and proposed federal rules and regulations. In total, at the end of last year, “the number of Federal Register pages stood at 95,894, 19.4 percent higher than the previous year’s 80,260 pages.”

They’re People, Too

Lobbyists fight regulations. Yes, some regulations are beneficial. Some rules about food and drug quality and that prevent concentrations of economic power (read: monopolies) are among the regulations that make sense. But those that encumber job-creators with unnecessary, nannying, “Washington knows best” demands and duties need to be fought. We can be glad there are advocates making this case on Capitol Hill and in the Administration.

I have not yet touched on litigation reform, and won’t now take the time. Just this: Does anyone really think that any company or industry exists just to be a cash cow for trial lawyers?

There are down-sides. The so-called “revolving door” — work in government, go back to the private sector, bounce back into government, get a great-paying job because of your contacts in government and knowledge of federal policy — can be dangerous. But do you want to be governed by people who don’t know anything about the companies they regulate? Who create laws affecting people who struggle to earn a living? Or whose lack of institutional knowledge prevents them from knowing where, in the vast maze of the federal government, pressure needs to be brought?

Lobbyists aren’t saints. Nor are they incarnations of evil. They’re people. They have jobs that need doing. They don’t dwell in a swamp. We need to drain that image from our minds to understand what really happens in Washington, DC.