{"id":242796,"date":"2010-01-28T13:45:40","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T18:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.opensecrets.org,2010:\/news\/\/8.1340"},"modified":"2010-01-28T13:46:50","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T18:46:50","slug":"lobbying-boom-continued-in-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/242796","title":{"rendered":"Lobbying Boom Continued in 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 15,600 companies and organizations spent at least $3.2 billion on federal lobbying in 2009, the Center for Responsive Politics<\/a> has found, based on a preliminary analysis of lobbying data filed with the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

Additionally, CRP preliminarily found that the health- and health insurance-related companies and organizations spent more than $537.5 million on federal lobbying in 2009, an increase of about four percent above their 2008 spending — a sum that will certainly increase after the final reports are tallied.<\/p>\n

Of the lobbying reports filed last week, the Senate Office of Public Records has made roughly 80 percent of them available in their xml feed. The researchers at CRP have finished processing these, and updated our website<\/a> accordingly. As the final 20 percent of reports are processed in the coming week or so, these sums will likely increase even further, and specific dollar amounts for clients, lobbying firms and industries will change.<\/p>\n

At this point in time, the Center for Responsive Politics has processed the reports of 15,612 clients. This represents an approximately four percent increase in the number of clients since 2008.<\/p>\n

These companies and organizations hired some 13,590 lobbyists to advocate for them at the White House, at federal agencies and on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

Influential lobby shops, including Patton Boggs<\/a>, Akin, Gump<\/a>, Van Scoyoc Associates<\/a>, the Podesta Group<\/a>, and Brownstein, Hyatt<\/a>, were among the top firms<\/a> cashing in on the boom. <\/p>\n

Patton Boggs earned approximately $40 million in 2009. Both the Podesta Group and Brownstein, Hyatt pulled in at least $8.8 million more in 2009 than they did in 2008 — some of the largest increases among all firms.<\/p>\n

Pharmaceutical and health product companies<\/a> look to be the largest industry spender on lobbying in 2009, spending at least $245 million. Other big spenders include the oil and gas industry<\/a>, the insurance industry<\/a> and electric utilities<\/a>, all of which spent more than $135 million on lobbying in 2009.<\/p>\n

The top lobbying clients<\/a> were all groups that have actively opposed or tried to water down major legislative proposals pushed by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce<\/a>, with $144.46 million spent on lobbying; Exxon Mobil<\/a>, with $27.43 million spent on federal lobbying and the drug industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America<\/a> (PhRMA), which spent $26.15 million.<\/p>\n

After the final lobbying reports are processed next week, Capital Eye<\/i><\/a> will weigh in with more analysis, so be sure to stay tuned.<\/p>\n

CRP Research Director Jihan Andoni and Lobbying Researcher Matthias Jaime contributed to this report.<\/i> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 15,600 companies and organizations spent at least $3.2 billion on federal lobbying in 2009, the Center for Responsive Politics has found, based on a preliminary analysis of lobbying data filed with the U.S. Senate. Additionally, CRP preliminarily found that the health- and health insurance-related companies and organizations spent more than $537.5 million on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3993,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3993"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}