Between 2007-2012, America’s most politically active corporations spent $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. A Sunlight Foundation analysis suggests, however, that what they gave pales compared to what they got: $4.4 trillion in federal benefits.
Continue readingLobby-a-palooza! New year brings new turn of the revolving door
It's a happy and potentially lucrative New Year for many former Capitol Hill denizens, as the turn of the calendar also brings a turn of Washington's revolving door.
Continue readingWhy has lobbying grown and made DC rich?
The news that seven of the ten highest income counties in the U.S. are in the Washington, DC area has prompted Wonkblog’s Dylan Matthews to investigate why the DC wage premium has grown. In digging through the data, he finds that the growing wage premium correlates most closely with growth of lobbying spending that “The rise of influence-peddling more broadly, more than just lobbying, is likely what’s driving this correlation.” Sounds quite probable to me. Ross Douthat is likewise convinced that DC’s increasing wealth comes “from the growing armies of lobbyists and lawyers, contractors and consultants, who make their living advising and influencing and facilitating the public sector’s work.” And Matt Yglesias, with a nod to Will Wilkinson, believes that “the area's rising affluence seems clearly to be linked to the rising investment in influence peddling that characterizes American politics and the economy” All of this begs the question, however, as to why lobbying would have taken off now, in this last decade or so? This was the question that I tackled in my Ph.D. dissertation (and soon, ahem, eventually, book). The short answer is that over the last two decades, corporate America came to see the value of politics and learned to play the Washington game.
Continue readingCompanies who lobby outperform companies who don’t lobby
The more a company lobbies, the better its publicly-traded shares perform. At least, that’s the conclusion of an academic research... View Article
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