Bringing the mountain to Mohammed.

Pity the life of a Washington, DC, lobbyist. When a new piece of legislation is proposed, they need to analyze it to determine how it affects their industry. They sit for long hours through committee mark-ups, having to watch each change in the bill as it wades through the process.

Then the House Rules Committee gets a last shot, often meeting late into the evening, for final tweaking before a vote on the House floor.

And the lobbyist needs to be there for all of it.

Sound like hard work? It is. But the new Democrat majority is now taking all the guesswork out of the legislative process.

How’s that, you ask? Well, by having the lobbyists do the actual legislative work.

That’s right. Thanks to Speaker Pelosi and a host of Committee chairmen (and women), lobbyists can now write their own bills. No waiting for a high-priced fundraiser at some fancy DC restaurant to have your voice heard. You can do it right in the halls of Congress.

That’s Daimler-Chrysler over at the Energy and Commerce Committee working on “toughening” CAFE standards. Telecomm reform? Not to worry. Verizon is on the job.

Just to make sure House Democrats don’t get any ideas about interfering with Microsoft’s monopoly, they’ve put their lobbyist right at the top of Democratic leadership.

But what about those tax breaks for oil companies? Never fear. Chairperson Louise Slaughter tapped a top dog for the American Petroleum Institute as Chief of Staff for Rules. As Slaughter told her local paper: "We have the ability to change any bill."

That’s good news for big oil.

But don’t take our word for it. As the LA Times reported, Big Oil dodged a bullet when the Democrats gave a nod and a wink to “rolling back” the industry’s federal subsidies. Thanks, Louise.