The K Street Gang

“You’ve got to understand, we are ideologues,” Tom DeLay once told a journalist. “We have an agenda. We have a philosophy. I want to repeal the Clean Air Act. No one came to me and said, ‘Please repeal the Clean Air Act.’ We say to the lobbyists, ‘Help us.’ We know what we want to do and we find the people to help us do that. We go to the lobbyists and say, ‘Help us get this in the appropriations bill.”   It was a stunning admission. Lawmakers, DeLay was basically saying, relied on paid lob