Papering Over the Losses
Paper to digital riles up lobby.
One of the reasons controlling waste in Washington is so difficult is that anything and everything ends up being the subject of a lobbying effort. Such is the case with the federal government’s effort to move from paper to digital. The paper lobby – yes, there is such a thing – objects because perhaps as many as a quarter of Americans don’t have home Internet service. The real reason is that our nation’s capital is the single biggest customer of the paper industry. Over the last five years, the industry has suffered a 5% annual drop in demand, so they’re seeking to artificially prop that up with more federal dollars.