While America’s traditional industries collapse, we can all be heartened that one service business seems to be thriving: Washington lobbyists.

If you’ve been looking for that really hot career, consider the following: There are now 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, double the number registered in 2000. The starting salary for a well-connected congressional aide willing to take a short stroll from the Capitol to K Street is $300,000 per year.

Best of all, there are more lobbyists and more lobbying money to go around. In many cases, per-hour rates have increased 100 percent in five years.

This boom in influence peddling is fueled by three things, according to a Washington Post article appearing Wednesday: “Rapid growth in government, Republican control of both the White house and Congress, and wide acceptance among corporations that they need to hire professional lobbyists to secure their share of federal benefits.”

You’ve probably seen through our facetious tone: This is not a good development for our economy, our government or our Democracy.

What’s fueling this surge in hired guns? According to experts interviewed by the Post, corporations used to hire lobbyists to fend off taxes and restrictions that would cost them money. But with business people and lobbyists now running the executive and legislative branches, companies now sees ways to boost profits by creating tax loopholes, loosening regulations and obtaining government contracts.

So, an effective lobbyists can pay his own fee a hundred or a thousand times over just by convincing legislators to kill a tax, end a costly environmental regulation or steer a sweet no-bid contract.

“Washington,” said one lobbyists quoted in the post article, “has become a profit center.”

The new conservatives aren’t just pro-business, they are pro-government. In addition to cutting taxes, they have increased government spending nearly 30 percent from 2000 to 2004, and government is set to grow again this year.

Of course, a growing lobbyist industry needs more lobbyists. When veteran Capitol Hill staffers, like Susan B. Hirschmann, chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (r-Texas), go looking for a lobbying jobs, they now hire lawyers and agents to filter the offers and negotiate their deals.

It used to be said that the business of America is business. Maybe the business of America will soon be government.