Few (if any) US representatives or senators at the federal level are actually writing out legislation themselves. They hire staffers (see the "Personal staff" section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_staff), sometimes lift language straight from lobbyist proposals (aka "model legislation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_act, which is widely used at the state level), or defer to committee staffers (who are subject matter experts) to do the heavy lifting. For example, Lina Khan served from 2019-2020 as counsel to the House's "Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law", and you can see her fingerprints all over the written work that the committee produced. The framing, and sometimes direct language, of committee report sections are clearly lifted from her legal academia work.

This is comparable to the fact that US federal judge at all levels (including SCOTUS) lean on their clerks to write the first drafts of their opinions, and serve primarily as editors of the final text.

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In regards to the empirical claim about the backgrounds of lawmakers, see page 8 of this report from the Congressional Research Service (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46705). They say that 144 House members (32.7% of the total), and 50 senators (50%) hold law degrees. While I think you may have been using a bit of hyperbole, it is worth pointing out that there are not enough lawyers in Congress for "ALL of the democrats" to be lawyers.

In terms of occupation (page 3), 85 reps and 28 senators were previously educators; 14 reps and 4 senators were physicians; etc.

Yes there are plenty of law degree holders, but it's also worth considering what law-related job they held. Per the CRS report, 29 reps and 9 senators were previously prosecutors, and 1 rep and 6 senators were previously attorney generals. It's unclear to me why a career in the criminal side of our legal system would have much bearing on how someone drafts laws affecting taxation, provision of government services, etc.

There's also the fact that many law degree holders practiced law for not long at all before winning elected office, or had more substantial "chapters" of their life not related to their degree. Take Jason Crow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Crow). He spent as much time as an Army Ranger as he did as a lawyer. One could easily construct a narrative that Mr. Crow, who has complained often about the bureaucracy of accessing veterans' healthcare, should be allergic to red tape and bureaucracy. But with the crude taxonomy of "he has a law degree", the other parts of his life would be overlooked.

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IMO, a big part of the bloated and inhumane parts of the bureaucracy have to do with the outgrowth of "administrative law" and "rulemaking" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_law; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_administrative_l... https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32240.html). Once a bill has been signed into law, the rulemaking process begins. These are where the actual details of a new law are hashed out. A bill may designate $X in funding for a program. Which contractors receive those contracts, hours of service, the amount of paperwork required, etc. are all handled at the administrative level. And it's certainly the case that for 99.9% of citizens, no one is submitting public comments during this period, and the input of ordinary people is often lacking.

So when the IRS makes a free-file options for taxes difficult to use, in large part due to Intuit's lobbying (https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...), this is not the result of a carve-out or giveaway spelled out in actual legislation's text. It's the result of an actor exploiting the opacity of the rulemaking and administrative law practices.

Then why are lobbyists writing so much of it?

Now, this seems to be a failure where there were not protests raised to this amendments or the lawmakers ignored such things. Either way, the point of lobbyists is to allow industry experts to provide input. If there is nothing wrong with their suggestions, I don't see a problem with verbatim including of their wording.

(I disagree with how the NY law was changed, but there are reasons lobbying exists).

The legislators' job is to represent their constituents, not those who pay enough to tell them what to legislate.

A good story my professor told me is when he took a trip to Congress, met his Congressperson, suggested a law that would help entrepreneurs, then sat down with him and they both drafted it in about 2 hours, then he took it to Congress to table it for a vote. It didn't pass, but that's how laws get written.

But then again, is lobbying bad? I mean, it's not stacks of money passed under a table, it's literally arguing your case. I mean isn't that what Congresspeople are there for? To hear their constituents concerns and desires?

Would anyone on HN argue that EFF shouldn't be allowed to spend donations they receive to do work that helps them lobby congress for say, privacy laws?

That's a good thing to me.

Writing laws is hard work.

Congress cannot afford the lawyers needed to write that kind of legislation. The lobbyists write the laws they advocate for.

You don’t want generalist lawyers to write laws. You don’t want specialists to write laws and then have generalists debate them, since apparently the current multi-week unfinished legislative process is rubber stamping to you.

Also, I never said it didn't exist - I said it's more common at the state level than the federal level

It will be written by think tanks behind lobbyists for industry interests that donate to campaigns.

> the one thing [Congress is] supposed to be doing

. . . is getting reelected. We do not elect them because of competency in law-writing or even in voting for their constituencies' interests. We elect them because they spend lots of money to tell us how monstrous "the other choice" is.