Obama said "Politics has become not a mission, but a business."

Robert G Kaiser, reporter of Washington Post, and writer of "So dam Much Money" speaks on CBS.

• ROBERT KAISER: "Sure. I mean, the money has become so important in politics now. You've been reporting about this for years. The cost of a campaign has gotten so high, the compulsion of incumbents, who want to get re-elected, to raise that money, is the single biggest gift the lobbyists get. Because lobbyists see that they need that money. They know how to help them raise it. And they know how to exploit the gratitude that comes after they've raised it."
• BILL MOYERS: "And when you say a break, you're talking about, you know, $100 million to stock car racetracks. $192 million in taxpayer dollars to that Puerto Rican rum industry. $478 million for movie makers who shoot their films in the USA. And you say that did the trick? They got the bill passed?" ROBERT KAISER: "That's over ten years, though, Bill. "
  BILL MOYERS: "Right. Well, but it's still out of the taxpayers pocket."
• ROBERT KAISER: "You know, one of the themes of my book is the way the moneyed interests of America have been able to protect themselves and their own interests, over many years now. One of my favorite statistics. Since 1973, working class incomes in this country have been stagnant. In the same period, 35 years, we've seen skyrocketing incomes at the top. "
• BILL MOYERS: "I've read a lot of books on money and politics. But yours is absolutely unique, because it does, as you just said, make clear why, for the last 30 or 40 years, policies in Washington have favored the rich over the poor, right?"
• ROBERT KAISER: "You know, it's not a secret. Politicians have been embedding this. There's a wonderful quote about it from Bob Dole, from 1983 or '2. Where he says, you know, poor people don't contribute to campaigns. And there it was. You know, 30 years ago, the whole story is right in that phrase. We've watched the cost of these elections climb every two years. Like clockwork. We've seen lots of efforts at reform. We've seen some real reforms. But you know, $25 million it costs to run for the Senate in North Carolina, last November. "
  BILL MOYERS: "And they have to get that money somewhere. "
  ROBERT KAISER: "They do. Absolutely. "
  BILL MOYERS: "And it comes from corporations, lobbies, wealthy individuals, as we see with Sir Allen. "
• BILL MOYERS: And a lot of these members of the staff graduate from the staffs of their members of Congress, and go to work for the lobbyists downtown, right?
  ROBERT KAISER: To me, that's one of the biggest changes in Washington in my time. There was a famous case in the late '70s, Jim O'Hara, you may remember. A good congressman from Michigan. Liberal Democrat. Ran for the Senate and lost. And came back to town. He had five or six children, and no job. And he went to work for one of the biggest lobbying firms in town. And I remember this vividly. It was a scandal. "Jim O'Hara's become a lobbyist? Gee, that doesn't look very good."
  Well, that was then. Today we've got 185 former members of the House and Senate, registered as lobbyists. It's absolutely routine, happens all the time. And nobody's eyebrows go up the way yours just did.
  BILL MOYERS: Yeah. And it is all legal.
• ROBERT KAISER: Just a daily file of, you know, real transparency. That would have a huge impact.
• BILL MOYERS Does Obama understand this?
  ROBERT KAISER: You know, he does. Remarkably well. I credit him in a recent piece for being a good cultural anthropologist. He only spent two years, really in the Senate, before he started to run for president. But he did figure out, he's the one who said, "Politics has become not a mission, but a business." He said that during the campaign. BILL MOYERS: So, there is some hope?
  ROBERT KAISER: Well, I'm a believer.

Read the full article at this link
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02202009/transcript1.html