The 'Fourth Branch' of Government

By Alex Knott, The Center for Public Integrity. Posted April 8, 2005.

Special interests and the lobbyists they employ have reported spending, since 1998, a total of almost $13 billion to influence Congress, the White House and more than 200 federal agencies. They've hired a couple thousand former government officials to influence federal policy on everything from abortion and adoption to taxation and welfare. And they've filed--most of the time--thousands of pages of disclosure forms with the Senate Office of Public Records and the House Clerk's Office.

Washington's lobbyists reported billing $2.4 billion in 2003, the most recent year for which complete data exist. That figure will almost certainly go up to more than $3 billion in 2004.

Special interests routinely spend far more on lobbying each election cycle than they do contributing to politicians and political parties. In the 2002 election cycle, the most recent for which complete data exists, the Federal Election Commission reported that $1.6 billion was raised. In that same time period, lobbyists received in payment $4 billion to press their case before the government. In 2000, the last presidential election for which complete data exist, those numbers were $2.3 billion for elections compared to $3.5 billion for lobbying.

Yet the resources devoted to tracking Washington's political mercenaries and the billions they are paid to influence the decisions of members of Congress and executive branch officials is minimal. The Senate Office of Public Records employs 11 people, and the equivalent House office employs fewer than 35. By contrast, the FEC, which has authority to enforce campaign finance laws, has 391 employees and an annual budget of $52 million.

That may explain why one in five of the companies lobbying the federal government have failed to file one or more disclosure forms required by law. In all, there are 14,000 missing lobbying documents that should have been filed with Congress since 1998, including documents disclosing the activities of 49 of the top 50 lobbying firms.

Those are some of the findings of a new study by the Center for Public Integrity, which examined all of the lobby disclosure forms filed with the Senate Office of Public Records since 1998. As part of the study, Center researchers have created an online, searchable database of every registered, federal lobbyist in America, allowing users to find detailed data on lobbyists and their clients. The database provides aggregated information over multiple years for industries, issues or agencies lobbied and access to detailed information from individual lobbying records. It takes information difficult to access from sources such as the Senate Office of Public Records and makes it user friendly and easily accessible by company, lobbying firm or issue.

The database also details federal lobbying activities by companies based in each of the 50 states and six U.S. territories, along with information about lobbying by universities and local governments. It shows, for example, that in the past six and a half years, more than 300 universities have spent nearly $132 million, while more than 1,400 local governments have doled out more than $357 million to secure funding for everything from freeways to fire trucks.

Influence Pipeline

Because of their ability to influence lawmakers and legislation, lobbyists have been dubbed "the Fourth Branch" of government. But while they wield enormous influence in the capital, lobbyists receive little attention from the press and far less public scrutiny.

A search of the Nexis database shows that in 2004, news organizations wrote ten times more stories on campaign finance issues than on federal lobbying, even though the money spent on federal lobbying is routinely twice the amount given to federal candidates and committees in campaign contributions.

Alex Knott is political editor at the Center for Public Integrity.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »