Lobbying in Politics

What Is Lobbying

Lobbying is trying to influence government decisions. A pharmaceutical company hiring a former senator to argue against drug price caps is lobbying. So is a parent calling a school board member about bus routes.

The legal definition is narrower than the common one. Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, a lobbyist is someone paid to make more than one contact with a covered official on behalf of a client, who spends at least 20% of their time on that work for that client. Federal lobbyists must register with Congress and file quarterly reports.

That 20% line is high enough that a lot of influence work is never reported. A strategist who advises a client on how to win over Congress, but makes few contacts personally, can stay under it. OpenSecrets calls this shadow lobbying. The money rarely goes to politicians directly. It pays people who can reach them, so what clients buy is access and know-how.

Who Spends the Most on Lobbying

Federal lobbying set a record in 2025. Organizations reported spending $5.08 billion, according to OpenSecrets, up 14% from 2024, or 11% after inflation. Both were the largest one-year increases since quarterly reporting began in 2008. The number of organizations that lobbied rose to 15,768, from 14,061.

The climb is long-running. OpenSecrets counted almost $37 billion in federal lobbying from 2015 through 2024, and spending passed $1 billion in every quarter of 2023 and 2024.

Health care and finance both set records in 2025. Health care, which includes drug companies, hospitals, and insurers, spent $868 million while Congress cut Medicaid. Finance, insurance, and real estate spent $711 million, driven in part by the securities and investment industry at $195 million.

The single biggest spender in 2025 was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at $72.1 million. The drug industry’s trade group, PhRMA, raised its spending about 20% to $38.2 million. In 2024, the pharmaceutical and health products industry spent $384.5 million, and it has been the top-spending industry since 1999.

Real estate was the fastest-growing industry in 2024. Its lobbying rose 37% to more than $150 million, led by the National Association of Realtors, which had agreed in March 2024 to a $418 million settlement that required changes to its commission rules.

What the Money Buys

The clearest cases show money moving shortly before a government decision. In September 2025, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance paid a new lobbying firm, Checkmate Government Relations, $450,000 for one month of work lobbying the White House on issues including cryptocurrency and “executive relief,” according to its disclosure report (OpenSecrets). Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, had pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering. The president pardoned him at the end of October, a month later. The disclosure does not show what was said; it shows what was paid and when. The pardon power covers how that kind of clemency works.

Most influence is less visible than that. When the 2025 tax and spending law moved through Congress, 2,354 organizations reported lobbying on it, more than three times as many as on any other bill. The health care sector’s record year came as that law cut Medicaid.

Some fights run for years. The FCC first classified broadband providers as common carriers subject to net neutrality rules in 2015, reversed that in 2018, and restored the rules in 2024. On January 2, 2025, a federal appeals court set the 2024 rules aside, holding that the Communications Act does not let the FCC treat broadband as a common carrier (Sixth Circuit opinion).

Researchers can measure what access is worth. A study in the American Economic Review followed lobbyists who had worked for a U.S. senator. When that senator left office, the lobbyists’ revenue fell 24%, immediately and for years afterward. Their expertise had not changed. Their connection had.

Most States Let Lobbying Happen in the Dark

Federal lobbying gets quarterly disclosure reports. Most states require far less. OpenSecrets’ 2022 state lobbying scorecard found that only 19 states make meaningful lobbying spending data available, and 17 do not require lobbyists to disclose their compensation at all. Every state collects the names of lobbyists and their clients.

The result is that in most states, you can see who registered as a lobbyist but not how much they were paid to influence lawmakers.

In the lowest-scoring states, the public cannot see what lobbyists are paid. The gap is old: in 2001, the Center for Public Integrity found that states were outpacing Congress in upgrading their lobbying laws.

Citizens Have the Same Right to Lobby

The First Amendment protects the right to petition the government. When you call your representative about a bill, you are lobbying. When you testify at a city council hearing, you are lobbying. When you organize 50 neighbors to show up at a school board meeting, you are lobbying.

The difference between corporate lobbying and citizen advocacy is resources, not rights. A pharmaceutical company hires 30 former congressional staffers. You have your phone, your story, and your vote.

How to lobby your representative

1. Name the specific bill or agency action. “I’m calling about H.R. 1234” is more effective than “I care about health care.”
2. Explain how it affects you or your community. Personal stories change minds. Staff track constituent concerns by volume and specificity.
3. Ask for one concrete action. “Will the representative co-sponsor this bill?” gives them something to respond to.
4. Follow up across channels. Call, email, attend town halls, and bring other constituents. Local pressure from real voters matters more than polished language.
5. Show up in groups. Five constituents at a town hall asking the same question is harder to ignore than 500 emails from a form letter campaign.

Can Nonprofits Lobby?

Yes, most nonprofits can lobby, but the tax code sets different limits for each kind of group. A charity that asks its supporters to call Congress about a bill is lobbying, and the IRS counts it. A private foundation that pays for the same campaign owes a tax on every dollar.

The charity rules carry teeth. A group that elects the 501(h) test and goes over its limit pays a 25% tax on the excess, and one that lobbies too much across four years can lose its tax exemption. Churches and private foundations cannot choose that test at all. A social welfare group, by contrast, may make lobbying its primary activity, though it may not campaign for or against candidates as part of its social welfare work.

Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Became Law

The pharmaceutical industry has been the top-spending lobbying industry since 1999, according to OpenSecrets. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 still required the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate maximum prices for certain brand-name drugs under Medicare.

Lobbying Set Records in 2025

The firms closest to the White House grew fastest. Ballard Partners earned a record $88.1 million in 2025, 3.5 times its 2024 revenue, and gained more than 100 clients after the election. Its founder chaired the Trump Victory PAC in 2016 and 2017, and two former Ballard lobbyists now hold top jobs: White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and BGR Group were the only other firms to pass $70 million.

Smaller firms with personal ties grew too. Checkmate Government Relations reported $70,000 in its first quarter in late 2024 and $22.2 million in its first full year, according to OpenSecrets. It is led by Ches McDowell, whom OpenSecrets describes as a hunting companion of Donald Trump Jr.

Big Tech kept spending. Meta spent a record $19.7 million on federal lobbying in the first nine months of 2025, according to Issue One.

Artificial intelligence became one of Washington’s biggest subjects. Lobbyists reported working on AI for 774 organizations in 2025, up 423% from 2020. More than one in four federal lobbyists now work on AI issues, according to a Public Citizen analysis, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fielded the most, 91 lobbyists.

The ethics pledge for appointees is gone. On January 20, 2025, the president revoked the ethics pledge that political appointees had signed under the previous administration (Executive Order 14148). The Federal Register shows no replacement pledge order since. By October 2019, in the first Trump administration, ProPublica had found 281 lobbyists had served, four times as many as the Obama administration had appointed six years in.

States set records as well. New York reported that lobbying spending reached $384.8 million in 2025, a fourth straight record. In California, bills that would have put lobbyists’ letters to lawmakers online appeared dead for the year by May 20, 2026, CalMatters reported.

The Revolving Door and What Reform Would Change

The revolving door describes members of Congress and senior staff leaving government to lobby their former colleagues. In 2025, 866 members and congressional staffers moved into lobbying, a 60% jump from 2024, according to LegiStorm. Of the members who left office in January 2019 and kept working, more than half became lobbyists or similar advisors, according to a 2021 release from Rep. Jared Golden, who has pushed a lifetime ban.

Under federal law, former House members must wait one year before lobbying Congress and former senators two. Some former members skip registration by working as “senior advisors” whose contacts stay under the 20% line.

The BLAST Act, short for Banning Lobbying and Safeguarding Trust, would permanently bar former members from working as registered lobbyists and from making lobbying contacts with Congress, registered or not. Senators Rick Scott and Elizabeth Warren introduced it on May 14, 2026.

The Close the Revolving Door Act, reintroduced by Senator Michael Bennet in May 2025, targets staff and shadow lobbying. It would raise the staff cooling-off period from one year to six, require lobbying firms to report former members and senior staff who do paid consulting, create a searchable lobbyists.gov site, and raise the maximum penalty from $200,000 to $500,000.

Where Lobbying Rules Stand in 2026

Not All Lobbying Is Corruption

Lobbying is a mechanism, not a crime, and petitioning the government is a First Amendment right. The problem researchers point to is the scale imbalance and the weak disclosure, not the act of advocacy itself.

• Nonprofits lobby too. The American Cancer Society, the Sierra Club, and the ACLU all lobby for their members.
• Citizen lobbying is lobbying. When you call your representative, you are exercising the same right as a drug company. The right is the same. The resources are not.
• The scale is uneven. Political scientist Lee Drutman wrote in 2015 that corporations spent $34 for every $1 that unions and public-interest groups spent on lobbying, and that 95 of the 100 biggest spenders represented business.
• Reform has tradeoffs. A registration threshold set too low would sweep in volunteers and small nonprofits alongside corporate influence shops. The fixes with the broadest support target disclosure and the revolving door, not the right to petition itself.
• Lobbying is not the same as campaign money. Lobbying is disclosed spending on influence. Dark money is political spending that hides its donors, and astroturfing disguises paid campaigns as grassroots ones.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is lobbying legal?

Yes. The First Amendment protects the right to petition the government. Federal lobbyists must register and file quarterly reports under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. The concern is the scale gap between corporate and citizen resources, and the weak disclosure in most states.

What is an example of lobbying?

A drug company hiring a former Senate aide to argue against price limits is lobbying. So is a union meeting a committee staffer about a labor bill, or a parent calling a school board member about bus routes. Only paid lobbying above federal thresholds has to be registered and reported.

Is lobbying corruption?

Not by itself. Lobbying is legal advocacy protected by the First Amendment. It becomes corruption when a public official trades an official act for something of value, which is bribery. The harder problem is legal influence: studies of the revolving door find that clients pay for access to former colleagues, not only for expertise.

How much does lobbying cost taxpayers?

Lobbying is paid for by the organizations that hire lobbyists, not by taxpayers directly. The cost shows up in policy. In 2025, 2,354 organizations lobbied on the tax and spending law, and the health care sector spent a record $868 million while that law cut Medicaid.

What is the revolving door?

Former members of Congress and their staff leaving government to lobby their old colleagues. LegiStorm counted 866 members and congressional staffers who moved to lobbying jobs in 2025, up 60% from 2024. Former House members must wait one year before lobbying Congress and former senators two.

Which industry spends the most on lobbying?

Health care, at a record $868 million in 2025, according to OpenSecrets. Finance, insurance, and real estate was second at $711 million. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the single biggest spender at $72.1 million.

How many states disclose lobbying spending?

Only 19 states make meaningful lobbying spending data available, according to OpenSecrets’ 2022 state lobbying scorecard. Another 17 do not require lobbyists to disclose their compensation at all.

What You Can Do

1. Push for state lobbying disclosure. If your state is one of the 31 without meaningful spending disclosure, contact your state legislators. Ask for electronic filing, spending reports, and public search tools. OpenSecrets’ scorecard shows where your state ranks.

2. Follow the money on the issues you care about. OpenSecrets tracks federal lobbying by industry, company, and bill. FollowTheMoney.org tracks state lobbying and campaign money.

3. Lobby your own representative. You have the same constitutional right as any corporation. Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or use our guide to writing a letter to Congress.

4. Ask your senators to cosponsor the BLAST Act. It would permanently bar former members of Congress from lobbying their old colleagues. Use the letter and call script below.