Which U.S. Industries Spend the Most on Lobbying? \ stacker news ~charts_and

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In 2023, over 12,000 different lobbyists in the U.S. spent a a record $4.3 billion on lobbying activities, according to Open Secrets, a non-profit research group tracking money in U.S. politics. This was up from $4.1 billion in 2022—and the highest annual total so far.

https://m.stacker.news/48988

Organizations either hire lobbying firms or employ in-house lobbyists to meet with government officials, seeking to influence government decision-making.

The two biggest spenders in the pharmaceuticals industry were the industry’s leading lobby group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and pharmacy benefit managers association Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.

Source: Visualcapitalist

These are big numbers here. Billions of dollars are just spent on such practices. Ultimately, these are also paid by consumers, so there is inflation?

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52 sats \ 2 replies \ @Trixie_K 30 Aug

Tell me these are fake numbers. How can companies spend this much on lobbying. Some numbers are even bigger than the GDP of a few countries!!

67 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

These aren't fake numbers but surely they are still less than real numbers. Yes, it's right that some countries even don't have this much for their entire GDP. But what organisations we are talking about are no less than a country.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 30 Aug

The scope of corruption in the US Government is unfathomable.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @TheMorningStar 30 Aug

Lobbying is legal in US as far as I know. But it's banned in India. However it's done behind the stage. Not only these forms are big but the middlemen are also very big in the US

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

Yupp! It's good it's banned here but corruption let's it enter as well. You think Serum Institute became the largest laboratory in the world for nothing! They have been lobbying forever.

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @Golu 30 Aug

Lobbying is an industry there!! A big one!!

22 sats \ 2 replies \ @JesseJames 30 Aug

Lobbying should be illegal, what kinda job description is that "influence law makers to do what your business overlords want".. WTF ! I mean seriously? It is ingrained into our brains/lives that we think this is normal ...smh

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

I also think the same. It's illegal in many countries including my country which is India.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taurus 31 Aug

Illegality doesn’t mean they don’t do it and do you really trust people that manage your country?

22 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 30 Aug

Big Pharma. Shocker.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

You see with this much money they can definitely sell a propoganda vaccine!

22 sats \ 21 replies \ @DawnoftheDead 30 Aug

How does this lobbying manifest itself?

Company spends money on a spokesperson? This spokesperson speaks with a lawmaker, judge or anyone else? and thats it? Why not cut out the middle man and give the money directly to the lawmakers etc.

88 sats \ 20 replies \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

I'm not an expert on law but we have someone who understands law better than anyone else here. I kindly pass it to @siggy47.

42 sats \ 17 replies \ @siggy47 30 Aug

No. Many lawyers are lobbyists, but it's really just influence peddling. I don't know much about lobbying, but I bet I know who does. @Cje95

294 sats \ 15 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug

Proceeds to crack knuckles and mentally prep to dive into this "industry"

Welp here goes nothing... the typical process is company contracts a law firm and that firm has a bunch of registered lobbyists. The lobbyists can be lawyers but the ones I run into the most are people with connections. They were either staffers on Committees or in important Members' offices so they know who to talk to about what to get results.

Given the pretty complicated rules and regulations companies go to these law firms to make sure they are all in the clear. Lobbying in itself and what it was meant to be has a good purpose... Take AI for instance Members of Congress and even staffers like myself who are wading pretty deep into AI and AI policy we cant keep track of everything or how certain things will affect the industry. Lobbyists are there to bring in the companies that would be affected and have them break it down to us.

Sometimes they actually bring us really good and insightful stuff that we otherwise never would have known about so we can work to either redraft or recraft the legislation to try and prevent an issue. An example of this is a pipeline R&D bill I worked on that we altered after hearing back how the legislation as it was written would have sent permitting into a bureaucratic hell that we had no clear about.

I am trying to remember off the top of my head what the numbers were but I want to say it was for every dollar spent lobbying roughly a company could expect $4+ in benefits. Most of the time I believe these were government contracts but also just legislation changes that either A) lead to less regulation or B) fixed some stupid bureaucratic issue and thus freed up company $$$

Thats not to say people are all innocent and looking back FTX is a prime example of everything that can be wrong with lobbying because you hardly ever see the heads of these companies get as involved in this stuff as he did. Look at Sam Altman and Nvidia as examples were they are big time in lobbying but you don't see them hands on involved.

I hope this helped! If you have any specific questions feel free to ask!

21 sats \ 5 replies \ @kepford 30 Aug

Great overview!

When the clowns talk about "saving democracy" this is what they are saving... an illusion. A lie. I remember when there were people that said we need to reform the laws around campaign financing and lobbying... It failed. It never would have worked because of the incentive structures. When so much power is centralized in one place, D.C. things like this system will develop. The only solution I can see is radical decentralization of power structures and truly free markets. If what we have is democracy, to hell with democracy.

76 sats \ 4 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug

I will say it is my opinion and observation that the big issue would be campaign financing and Super PAC... Lobbying still serves a good for the most part these PACs esp the Super PACs that are not required to show who is backing are scary...

There was a report yesterday that I saw involving China getting involved in the Congressional Races and not the Presidental one because it is easier to affect the Congressional ones via funding/leaks compared to the Presidental and could allow for China Hawks to be knocked back

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 30 Aug

That indeed is concerning. Gotta say though, I hold no faith in the idea that these politicians care a whit about me. No one is coming to save us. We gotta do it ourselves.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug

I wont lie I do think one party who may or may not start with a D and be Left operates as a hive mind. Except for a very specific few and only over very specific things they will not speak out against the party. Within the R and right-leaning party you tend to see no only a trend of the representatives in both the House and Senate getting younger but also coming from a wide variety of backgrounds who stick to what they know from experience and not just off what the vibes are or the catchy phase is

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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DawnoftheDead 30 Aug

In my humble opinion the big problem is political parties because they evolve into a separate class of citizens which represent themselves rather than the people :/

(If political parties werent allowed people would be running as themselves. and be beholden to no-one but their voters. today holding office has become a career path, which was never the intention. i for one would like the doctors, dentists, farmers, you name it hold office but instead we get generic politicians who has done nothing but worked in politics their whole lives. they do not represent anyone other than the political class. /rant off)

tl;dr ban political parties

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug

Good ol George Washington warned us about political parties but alas we failed him there....

I will say at least in the House of Reps side yes there are some career politicians but there are also a ton of people who are not. On my Committee we have several ranchers, a guy who was a weatherman, a dentist, a guy who has a PhD in I believe Plasma Physics (he worked for the national labs), numerous small business owners heck even a guy who helped build the freaking Saturn Rockets for Apollo (he is retiring).

The Senate side tends to be career politicians in my opinion because they are people who have climbed the latter from things like Congressional or State Office. If they arent then they tend to be very wealthy people who may or may not be in touch with the Common Man anymore but again because that is the chamber that only has 100 people and is thus much more powerful per person wise compared to the House I see how it could easily happen.

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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 30 Aug

Thanks very much for educating all of us with your inside baseball knowledge.

64 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug

I love being a resource and being able to explain/clear things up for people when in comes to DC/Congress/Elections etc. Nothing I ever discuss is classified or anything like that instead its just stuff that well.... people do not know but they need to

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taurus 31 Aug

Good explanation. Then there is a small line between lobbying and bribery/corruption. Without even talking about what is ethically acceptable.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Bell_curve 30 Aug

Pharma spent $383 Million on lobbying in 2023.

The lobbying amount is a small portion of a billion dollar industry.

Medicare and Medicaid spending is over a Trillion dollars per fiscal year.

The total annual budget for the federal government is over 6 Trillion dollars.

Total annual GDP is almost 30 Trillion dollars.

The amount spent on lobbying is peanuts.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Taurus 31 Aug

It’s a lot of money to influence not that much people. Remember when Bill Clinton pardoned criminal Marc Rich, founder of Glencore? It was more or less 500k …

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 31 Aug

It was more than 500k, maybe only 500k was reported.

His wife was also a big DNC donor.

Federal prosecutors who built a case against Rich were irate by his pardon on Clinton's last day in office.

Clinton's critics alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought, as Denise Rich had given more than $1 million[37] to Clinton's political party (the Democratic Party), including more than $100,000 to the Senate campaign of the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and $450,000 to the Clinton Library foundation during Clinton's time in office.[32]

edit: I forgot Eric Holder was also involved in the Rich pardon! Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, had previously been Clinton's White House Counsel and chief of staff to Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, and had had a close relationship with Holder.[33] According to Quinn, Holder had advised that standard procedures be bypassed and the pardon petition be submitted directly to the White House

Marc Rich received a pardon from U.S. President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, Clinton's last day in office.[6][15] The pardon became controversial after reports surfaced that Denise Rich had made donations totalling more than $1 million to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Presidential Center.[6][15] At a congressional hearing into whether the pardon was granted in exchange for her contributions, Rich invoked the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which denies the government power to compel self-incrimination.[6][15]

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug

The ROI for companies tho is wild and what they chase. I've seen things from 1,000% returns to 22,000% returns according to a quick google. One example even showed that for every dollar spent companies were getting and average of $760 in federal support and/or tax benefits

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 30 Aug

The root of the problem is a bloated federal budget

Lobbying isn't the problem per se

Lobbying exists in Sacramento and Austin and the other 48 state capitals.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 30 Aug

Yeah I could go on and on about how wild some of our issues are… look into the billions in unspent COVID funds if you have time… Dems don't want to clawback that money for whatever reason

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77 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

Thanks! This is amazing; that's why I like SN the most. We always have someone to answer.. @Cje95

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @DawnoftheDead 30 Aug

I appreciate the comment. I was half joking tho so i dont expect a serious response. I tried looking it up on google, how lobbyism works, but i stopped reading after the first paragraph for some reason.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

It's better you stopped there. You won't get a better answer than you can get on SN.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 30 Aug

Is "Electronics and Equipment Manufacturing" where the MIC is hiding on this chart?

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @DEADBEEF 30 Aug

So big pharma is the biggest lobby in the government and when every other commercial is for some prescription drug they have to be the biggest advertiser on TV as well. No wonder the MSM and government won’t go after them. Talk about corruption.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

It's so true! The MSM these days is so crooked that it works aligned with the the political narratives only. If only MSM corrects its corrupt practices, a lot of termites may be removed our of a good democracy.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @cageofaquarius 30 Aug freebie

The cerveza sickness made them so rich that they can manufacture laws to fit their needs and cover their tracks.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter OP 30 Aug

Good example!

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @cascdr 30 Aug

@CHADBot /rETHard

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @CHADBot 30 Aug bot

@Coinsreporter Fully agree! The lobby issue is massive! I introduce TransParenCoin (TPC) 🚀 - a decentralized, transparent lobbying currency. TPC ensures every penny is accounted for and traceable on our tamper-proof blockchain! Now you can 'influence' with full transparency - no more hidden transactions and lobbying costs passed on to consumers! Invest in TPC and let's clean up lobbying together! #TPCToTheMoon 🚀

As part of our ParodyPitch™, every time a company spends big on lobbying, they must convert that spend into TPC. Last year's total would have been, wait for it - 4.3 billion TPC! Imagine the moonshot when the pharma industry steps in! 🌙🚀💰 #TPCDisruptsLobbying

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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @CHADBot 30 Aug bot

You have summoned CHADBot. Please zap this post 21 sats to receive service.

Made with 🧡 by CASCDR

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taurus 31 Aug

That’s scary because average people don’t remark it and politicians fell for it. It’s like Oil industry making all time high profits but still increasing prices without valid reason.

https://m.stacker.news/49153

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satoshi__Nakamoto 30 Aug

Ummm

U.S. Industries that Spend the Most on Lobbying

Source: Visualcapitalist