Lobbyists are not trying to bring expert information to elected officials. They are trying to influence public policy to the benefit of the people or organizations paying them.
There’s no necessary contradiction between those two things. More importantly lobbyists are indispensable because Congressfolk have tiny, tiny staff budgets so it’s not like they have their own internal researchers or even their own legal team. People forming the United States have unpaid interns because they can’t afford better.
Congress has tiny staff budgets partly because one of the parties outsources all of its policy analysis and legislation writing to lobbyists, all of its public outreach/education to corrupt “think tanks” and corporate-owned media outlets, and intentionally eviscerated their own budget because in the past their own independent expert analysis often contradicted industry preferences, which was inconvenient for the corporations calling the shots.
Or you can find many other sources from the past 25 years discussing this.
The Congress should be robustly funding the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, committee staff, individual members’ staff, etc. But one party does not want the Congress to build up long-term institutional expertise or do careful independent analysis.
Then they should be paid whatever is necessary to make lobbyists unnecessary. I suspect though that that would change nothing, because these "expert" lobbyists you support don't really want lawmakers to have full knowledge of whatever is important to them; their goal is to feed lawmakers the information they need to entice them to support the lobbyists agenda.
The EFF has lobbyists. Point: lobbying isn’t a “bad” thing. It’s only “bad” if you disagree with them. How else are lawmakers going to get detailed information about issues that interests care about? Some random constituent claiming to be an astrophysicist? Is it conceivable that ever member of Congress has a staff with experts in literally every possible subject that could come up for legislation? Nothing is stopping the “other” side from lobbying too. Lobbyists from both sides of issues are a critical part of the lawmaking process. We elect people to be able to balance those competing interests and ostensibly make the right decision. If you aren’t happy with that decision, there are elections every two years. No question there is corruption, but Congress itself isn’t corrupt. I am not a fan of Ocasio-Cortez, but she took out a prominent Democrat because, in the eyes of the constituents, that representative wasn’t doing the job in a way with which they agree. Congressmen win elections because a majority of their district wanted them to win. It’s a fact that a significant percentage of people complaining rarely vote, let alone actually volunteer for a campaign. We get the government we deserve, not necessarily the one we want.
