Political snapshots from unbiased sources
Top 20 PAC Contributors to Federal Candidates, 2007-2008*
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Totals include subsidiaries and affiliated PACs, if any.
*For ease of identification, the names used in this section are those of the organization connected with the PAC, rather than the official PAC name. For example, the “Coca-Cola Company Nonpartisan Committee for Good Government” is simply listed as “Coca-Cola Co.”
Based on data released by the FEC on Monday, October 29, 2007.
From FactCheck.org:
Richardson stands out for exaggerated and inaccurate claims.
Summary
In the final Democratic debate in Iowa, we found:
Analysis
This was the final debate among Democratic candidates prior to the Iowa caucuses. It was held Dec. 13, sponsored by the Des Moines Register and televised on national cable networks.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson added to his string of inflated, false or dubious claims.
School Puffery
On education, Richardson once again repeated his unsubstantiated claim that U.S. students rank 29th in the world in math and science, which we first debunked in September. And he made these inflated claims about his own record on education:
Richardson: Well, we’ve made enormous progress in my state. We were 49th in the world in – in the country in teacher salaries. We’re 28th today. Educational achievement has increased.
The salary claim is not true, according to the National Education Association’s Rankings & Estimates report. Pay has improved, but not that much. New Mexico’s teacher pay ranking was 44th the year before he took office and now is 36th, according to the most recent report.
It’s true that educational achievement has increased since Richardson took office in 2003, but not by much. And in the case of reading scores for eighth-graders, the state has actually lost ground. In 2002, for example, 36 percent of New Mexico eighth-graders scored below basic levels in reading in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This year it was even worse; 38 percent failed to achieve basic reading competency. That’s hardly “enormous progress,” and New Mexico remains in the national test-score basement.
The state’s eighth-graders were in a statistical tie with five other states for next to last among the 52 states and jurisdictions covered. Their reading scores weren’t statistically different from those of Mississippi or Alabama. Only the District of Columbia scored significantly worse.
A Shaky Claim on Health Spending
Richardson used a questionable figure on health care costs, saying that “one-third” of the $2.2 trillion spent on health care “goes to administration and bureaucracy.”
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services does project that health care spending in the U.S. will be more than $2.2 trillion in 2007. But the figure for administrative spending given by CMS’ National Health Expenditure Data tables is far lower than one-third. The data show 7.4 percent of all national health expenditures in 2007 will go to “program administration and net cost of private health insurance.” (Net cost is the difference between benefits and premiums.)
Richardson’s statistic does have some support, however. A survey conducted by PNC Financial Services Group, which says it’s “a leading provider of electronic financial services to the health care industry,” said that nearly a third of expenditures went to administration. But that finding, released this year, was merely the opinion of the 200 hospital and insurance company executives queried. “There was no hardcore data or a number that they have,” confirmed PNC spokeswoman Amy Vargo.
Also, a 2003 article in the New England Journal of Medicine said that in 1999, 31 percent of health care expenditures went to administration. The authors included indirect costs, such as an estimate for the time physicians spend on administrative work.
Greenhouse Gasbag
Richardson blithely claimed he would slash greenhouse gases:
Richardson: Also, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and I would do so by 90 percent with a cap-and-trade program.
What Richardson didn’t say is that he isn’t promising to achieve that 90 percent reduction until 2050, a detail we found on his Web site. Richardson didn’t specify what his plan would do to the prices of electricity, manufactured goods and so on, saying only that he would be “asking the American people to sacrifice a little bit.” But according to one recent estimate, a less ambitious plan now pending in the Senate could cost the average household the equivalent of $800 to $1,300 a year in today’s dollars by 2015. That’s just one guess, of course. But there’s little doubt it would require more than “a little bit” of sacrifice to accomplish a 90 percent cut.
Dodd on Chinese Slaves
Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd unfairly accused the “Chinese government” of using slave labor.
Dodd: When you have the Chinese government, as they just did, even make it more difficult for us to access even entertainment, not to mention, of course, the intellectual property theft that goes on on a daily basis; here you’re still using slave labor; you know, you manipulate your currency to give you a 40 percent advantage over our manufacturers and our people working in this country here, that’s no longer just a competitor. That’s a very different relationship.
Dodd is right that slave labor exists in China. In June 2007, a group of parents in Shanxi Province discovered that owners of many of the region’s brick kilns were kidnapping and enslaving children, forcing them to work up to 18 hours per day. But Dodd is wrong to suggest that the Chinese government is sanctioning slavery. Nearly 35,000 police officers descended on Shanxi province, raiding more than 7,500 work places. And less than a month after the story garnered international headlines, Chinese courts had sentenced 28 overseers at the kiln to prison and ordered another executed.
We agree that enslaving children is reprehensible, but Dodd was wrong to suggest that the Chinese government condones the practice.
Dodd Fails Math
Dodd also miscalculated when he said, “the cost right here at the University of Iowa has gone up 141 percent the last six or seven years.” The costs went up, but not nearly by that much.
In 2000, an in-state student could expect to pay $7,503 a year for tuition, room and board, and the school lists the current figure at $13,543. That’s an increase of 81 percent. For out-of-state students the cost of tuition, room and board has gone from $15,265 to $26,715, an increase of 75 percent.
Big Fat Trillion
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois used an estimate of uncertain provenance when discussing Medicare savings:
Obama: If we went back to the obesity rates that existed in 1980, that would save the Medicare system a trillion dollars.
Obama got this claim from a “candidate briefing book” put out by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank run by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. CAP cites the CDC and the Commonwealth Fund as sources for the estimate, but representatives from both organizations told us that the claim was unfamiliar to them.
We worked up our own back-of-the-envelope estimate, using official figures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially estimates that obesity cost $75 billion in 2003. The CDC also says that “approximately half” of the cost burden for both overweight and obese people is borne by Medicaid and Medicare. Obesity rates doubled between 1980 and 2000, also according to the CDC. So if obesity rates returned to “rates that existed in 1980″ they would be cut in half, and that in turn would imply that Medicare and Medicaid together (not just Medicare alone) would save about a quarter of $75 billion, or roughly $18.75 billion per year.
– by Brooks Jackson, with Viveca Novak, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson
Correction, Dec. 14: In our original article, we said that a New England Journal of Medicine piece was published in 1999. The article was about 1999 data, but it was published in 2003. We also mistakenly referred to Bill Richardson as the former governor of New Mexico.
Sources
Reading 2007 State Snapshot Report, National Assessment of Educational Progress
National Education Association, Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2006 and Estimates of School Statistics 2007. Washington: GPO, 2007.
National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2005 and Estimates of School Statistics 2006. Washington: GPO, 2006.
National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2004 and Estimates of School Statistics 2005. Washington: GPO, 2006.
National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2003 and Estimates of School Statistics 2004. Washington: GPO, 2006.
National Education Association. Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2002 and Estimates of School Statistics 2003. Washington: GPO, 2006.
Tuition Rates Schedule 2000, University of Iowa Archives.
Estimated Costs, 2007-08, University of Iowa Website.
Prepared Statement of Anne E. Smith, Ph.D. at the Legislative Hearing on America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, S.2191 of the Committee on Environment and Public Works United States Senate 8 Nov 2007
“Text of statement release by VNS after decision not to release exit poll results.” The Associated Press. 5 Nov. 2002.
Delaware Senate Exit Poll Results. 6 Nov. 1996. CNN. 13 Dec. 2007.
Exit Polls. 6 Nov. 1996. CNN. 13 Dec. 2007.
Elegant, Simon. “Slave Labor in China Sparks Outrage.” Time 20 June 2007.
French, Howard W. “Child slave labor revelations sweeping China.” International Herald Tribune 15 June 2007.
Schearf, Daniel. “China Kiln Worker Sentenced to Death in Slave Labor Case.” Voice of America 17 July 2007.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “NHE Projections 2006-2016, Forecast summary and selected tables,” updated 21 Feb. 2007.
PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. “PNC Health Care Industry Study: Reducing U.S. Health Care Costs Through Electronic Claims and Payment Processing, 2007 Study Highlights,” 2007.
Woolhandler, Steffie, et. al. “Costs of Health Care Administration in the United States and Canada.” The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 349: 768-775, 21 Aug. 2003.
From Opensecrets.org:
Shopping in (Partisan) Style
Capital Eye’s holiday guide to buying blue or red.
December 13, 2007 | If you’re looking for that perfect gift for your loved one this holiday season…we at Capital Eye can’t help you out. But if you’re looking for a gift from a retailer that shares your political ideology, then look no further.Retailers, just like many other industries, actively make campaign contributions, revealing a bit about the company’s political leanings—or at least those of the employees who give at least $200 of their hard-earned money to political campaigns. Until this year, retailers overall had given more money to Republicans, who tend to be more in line with the pro-business and anti-union policies that retailers support. In the 2006 election cycle, employees and PACs in the industry gave $13.2 million to federal candidates, parties and PACs, 58 percent of which went to Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. In the first nine months of this year, however, Democrats received 52 percent of the $6.9 million from the industry.
The presidential candidates have received $2.1 million of that total, with Democrats collecting 64 percent of retailers’ donations. Hillary Clinton collected the most of any candidate at $631,800, while Republican Rudy Giuliani led his party with $270,800 in receipts.
The biggest contributor in the retail industry is also the world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart. Employees of the big-box retailer, which stayed out of politics until it started getting criticism for its treatment of its employees, has given $727,830 so far this year, 60 percent of which went to Republicans. Behind Wal-Mart are Home Depot and Target, both of which also support the GOP financially.
The employees and political action committee of Gap clothing store have supported Democrats both cycles, by contrast, which didn’t surprise Gap shopper Maura Halpern. “I’d associate them with corporate social responsibility. They try to reach out to the community,” Halpern, a graduate student, said as she shopped at a Gap in Arlington, Va., for winter scarves and gear this week. She added that the political leaning of a retailer would definitely play a role in her decision to shop there. “I’m a Democrat, and I would want to align myself with a store that shares my beliefs,” she said.
Another Gap shopper, however, predicted that the chain’s employees supported Republicans because its “prices are kind of high” but said political leaning didn’t matter much to her. “Does anyone ever think if retailers lean left or right?” asked Maryland resident and police officer Deborah Tyler, who was shopping this week for her 8-year-old daughter at GapKids. “I’m just in a crunch and I need a holiday outfit quick.”
The retail industry also spends money on shaping policy in another way—through lobbying the federal government. So far this year, retailers have spent $9.5 million to lobby on Capitol Hill, pushing for tax cuts that induce consumer spending and opposing tightened port security that would limit imports. Much of the industry also supports bankruptcy reform that makes it harder for consumers who have declared bankruptcy to escape entirely from their debt. The National Retail Federation this year pushed for tax relief for small businesses in conjunction with raising the minimum wage to $7.25. Retailers were also concerned about provisions of this year’s immigration bill, including what they said was a burdensome requirement that businesses verify their employees’ citizenship through a complex electronic system.
For some holiday shoppers, a retailer’s political leaning is less important than its stance on certain issues, said Rob Eelkema, a resident of Alexandria, Va., and software salesman who was shopping this week for gifts from Macy’s for his wife and kids. Eelkema said he wasn’t surprised that employees at Macy’s, which he called “Big Business,” gave Republicans 61 percent of their $32,700 in contributions. As someone who’s not a party-line voter, Eelkema said he’d be more interested in whether a company was environmentally friendly. But ultimately, he said, he wouldn’t take the time to check the company’s stance on issues. “You don’t go and look up Macy’s and see what they support. I just want to make it easy to go shopping,” he said.
However, if you’d like to buy blue or red this holiday season, use the following information about popular retailers from the Center for Responsive Politics as your guide:
Barnes and Noble
2006 total contributions: $156,180 (84 percent to Democrats)
2008 total contributions: $55,067 (100 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat John Edwards
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $20,000
Bed Bath & Beyond
2006 total contributions: $100,800 (91 percent to Democrats)
2008 total contributions: $33,200 (87 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Republican Rudy Giuliani
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $0
Best Buy
2006 total contributions: $134,300 (87 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $31,175 (64 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Republican Rudy Giuliani
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $235,000
Borders
2006 total contributions: $9,600 (54 percent to Democrats)
2008 total contributions: $1,350 (100 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: None
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $0
Circuit City Stores
2006 total contributions: $4,300 (72 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $2,750 (100 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $0
CompUSA
2006 total contributions: $3,000 (67 percent to Democrats)
2008 total contributions: $300 (100 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: None
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $0
Costco Wholesale
2006 total contributions: $166,150 (87 percent to Democrats)
2008 total contributions: $77,190 (98 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $0
Gap
2006 total contributions: $250,900 (76 percent to Democrats)
2008 total contributions: $68,550 (72 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Hillary Clinton
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $100,000
Hallmark Cards
2006 total contributions: $230,170 (78 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $66,350 (66 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Hillary Clinton
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $200,000
Home Depot
2006 total contributions: $1,119,360 (77 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $510,050 (57 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $570,000
Limited Brands
2006 total contributions: $408,200 (76 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $228,100 (80 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Hillary Clinton
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $360,000
Linens N Things
2006 total contributions: N/A
2008 total contributions: $2,500 (92 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Republican Rudy Giuliani
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $0
Lowe’s
2006 total contributions: $18,150 (79 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $23,150 (71 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Hillary Clinton
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $20,000
Macy’s
2006 total contributions: $130,200 (66 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $32,700 (61 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Republican Mitt Romney
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $40,000
OfficeMax
2006 total contributions: $5,550 (77 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $2,725 (91 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain (tie)
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $45,000
Sears Holdings Corp (parent of K-Mart)
2006 total contributions: $450,550 (66 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $89,450 (52 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Republican Mitt Romney
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $140,746
Target
2006 total contributions: $663,140 (73 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $277,400 (72 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Republican Rudy Giuliani
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $100,000
Toys R Us
2006 total contributions: $2,100 (72 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $250 (100 percent to Democrats)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $0
Wal-Mart
2006 total contributions: $1,781,800 (71 percent to Republicans)
2008 total contributions: $727,830 (60 percent to Republicans)
No. 1 recipient among presidential candidates: Democrat Hillary Clinton
2007 total lobbying expenditures: $685,000
From FactCheck.org
More exaggerations and misstatements in the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucuses.
Summary
In the Dec. 12 Republican presidential debate in Des Moines:
From Opensecrets.org
Lobbyists do represent ordinary Americans, as Hillary Clinton claims, but those contributing to her campaign mostly represent big industries, the Center for Responsive Politics finds. Obama and Edwards eschew lobbyists’ money, but their biggest contributors still lobby in Washington.By Lindsay Renick Mayer
November 29, 2007 | As John Edwards and Barack Obama continue to assail Hillary Clinton for accepting campaign contributions from Washington lobbyists, she has tried to dispel their accusation that being the top recipient of K Street’s money puts her in the pocket of entrenched corporate interests.Among Clinton’s defenses is that lobbyists also work in the interest of ordinary people. “A lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans. They represent nurses, they represent social workers—yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people,” Clinton said at a Democratic candidates forum in August. That’s when Edwards and Obama, who refuse contributions from federal lobbyists, first strongly called on their front-running rival to do the same.
According to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, however, Clinton’s assertion doesn’t quite hit the mark. While some lobbyists certainly do represent “real” people and large corporations, those who are contributing to the 2008 presidential candidates—including the senator from New York—aren’t on Capitol Hill to talk about the issues of nurses or social workers, or firefighters or cops. By matching lobbyists who have donated to the presidential candidates this year with their clients, the Center found that these individuals are instead largely advocating for big industries such as pharmaceutical, automotive and computer companies.
Bryan Jones, director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy at the University of Washington, said Clinton’s claim that lobbyists represent the everyman is misleading at best. “It’s not honest at all,” he said.
“The first thing I’d want to know is how much is from lobbyists representing traditional industry groups and how much comes from [those representing] unions,” Jones said.
In total, 353 federally registered lobbyists (including those working at lobbying firms or in-house for corporations, unions and associations) contributed at least $787,300 to Clinton’s presidential campaign in the first nine months of this year, more than they gave to any other candidate, in either party. Lobbyists who represent health professionals, including the nurses Clinton singled out, account for $82,805 in contributions to her, while those representing the pharmaceutical industry paid out $562,900.
Only 14 lobbyists who gave to Clinton reported representing health professionals, compared to 76 who represented the pharmaceutical industry. Nine lobbyists who gave to the New York senator represent clients from both groups. Of contributions listed on campaign finance reports, Clinton has not received a single donation from lobbyists working for the two largest trade groups representing the working-class Americans she cited in August, the American Nurses Association and the National Association of Social Workers.
Lobbyist-contributors bill big
Clinton’s lobbyist-contributors represent a $225 million slice of the Washington influence industry, for that is how much they billed their clients, either individually or as members of lobbying teams, during the first half of 2007, according to the most recent disclosure reports available. Clinton contributors who lobby for pharmaceutical companies and interests billed more than any other industry, $30.7 million, or 14 percent of the total. They represent such drugmakers as Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb and the influential trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
Clinton contributors who represent assorted manufacturing and distributing interests, such as the American Iron & Steel Institute, logged 6 percent of the total billings for her lobbyist-contributors, as did lobbyists representing the computer and Internet industry. Advocates for doctors, nurses and other health professionals billed $2.1 million, or just 1 percent of the total paid out to Clinton’s donors and their colleagues from January through June.
Clinton’s point is not entirely lost, however, said Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University who researches interest groups and lobbying. Even if the lobbyists giving to her represent more corporate interests, “it doesn’t necessarily invalidate her point that deciding to exclude contributions from all lobbyists would exclude some people who argue on behalf of constituencies she supports,” he said. Clinton’s campaign did not return phone calls before this was posted.
For Edwards and Obama, however, pointing out that Clinton accepts contributions from lobbyists while they have vowed not to is “an opening they can use to differentiate themselves,” Grossmann said. “It fits within the story they’re trying to tell of a Washington insider versus someone who will bring change.”
Compared to other types of campaign contributors, lobbyists aren’t among the most generous. In the first nine months of this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, employees of lobbying firms contributed a total of $2.1 million to the presidential candidates, 64 percent of which went to Democrats. By comparison, lawyers gave nearly $39 million, employees at securities and investment companies gave nearly $24 million and retired individuals have given $25.1 million.
But while lobbyists may not be the biggest givers, their contributions are scrutinized more carefully. Lobbyists are hired by their clients explicitly to influence legislation and policy through direct contact with members of Congress and other government officials. And campaign contributions often facilitate that contact.
“[Contributions from lobbyists] suggest to people that access is part of the game,” Jones from the University of Washington said. “Giving money to politicians this way suggests they will be an easy ear. Even if you can’t buy politicians, they’re certainly going to listen.”
Edwards and Obama have said they will not accept contributions from K Street for this very reason—lobbyists’ money is often intended to persuade politicians to support a private interest rather than the public’s. Obama has argued that the money that insurance and drug companies spent on lobbying helped defeat Clinton’s health care proposal in the early ’90’s. “You can’t tell me that that money didn’t have a difference,” he said to Clinton in August. “They aren’t spending all that just because they are contributing to the public interest. They have an agenda.”
Interests that lobby bankroll Obama and Edwards, too
Not everyone believes that a contribution from a lobbyist is any different from a contribution from someone else. Ed Rothschild, a Washington lobbyist, tried to contribute $500 to John Edwards without success. “It’s the companies that hire the lobbyists that seek to influence government policy. The lobbyists are just like accountants or lawyers or whoever else is hired for a certain job,” Rothschild said. “At the end of the day, the people that help support your campaign are interested in influencing public policy whoever they are, wherever they come from.”
Rothschild, whose lobbying clients this year have included Wal-Mart, Google and Sunoco, said that his primary job at the Podesta Group is in public affairs, a type of public relations that doesn’t always qualify as lobbying. He noted that the term “registered lobbyist” doesn’t differentiate between someone who works for a single client a couple of hours per month or lots of clients full time. Although his donation to Edwards was returned to him, Rothschild said the candidate still has his support.
Vowing not to accept contributions from lobbyists isn’t a foolproof plan for Edwards or Obama. Both still accept money from state and local lobbyists, employees at law firms that offer lobbying services, family members of lobbyists and former lobbyists. Contributions from Washington lobbyists have still managed to seep into both Democrats’ coffers.
At the end of the 3rd Quarter, the Edwards campaign listed $4,500 in contributions from seven registered lobbyists, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The campaign returned one of these contributions in early November, a spokeswoman said, and the refund will be reflected in year-end filings. When Capital Eye alerted the campaign to the other donations that would appear to violate Edwards’s policy, the representative said the campaign had missed those contributions and would return them promptly.
The Obama campaign had collected nearly $34,500 from 29 registered lobbyists by the end of the campaign’s first nine months of fundraising, according to FEC reports. The Obama campaign did not respond to several requests to review those records.
Obama and Edwards also refuse money from political action committees controlled by corporations and other interests, but they and every other presidential candidate accept money from employees of corporations and other interests that employ lobbyists. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 14 of Obama’s top 20 contributors employed lobbyists this year, spending a total of $16.2 million to influence the federal government in the first six months of 2007. Of Edwards’s top 20 contributors, only seven have employed lobbyists this year, spending a total of $6.3 million. But the plaintiff attorneys who dominate the list of Edwards’s top donors are well represented in Washington by the influential American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America), which has spent at least $3 million on lobbying this year alone. As for Clinton, all but four of her top 20 contributors have employed lobbyists this year.
Republicans haven’t made lobbyists’ money an issue
In total, registered lobbyists who have made campaign contributions to any 2008 presidential candidate billed nearly $563 million to their clients in the first half of 2007. Lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical industry billed the most at nearly 10 percent, and those representing business associations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, billed 5.5 percent. The drug-manufacturing industry also happens to be the top spender among all industries on federal lobbying, and the Chamber of Commerce is the top spender by organization.
While the Democratic presidential candidates have been arguing over who is more aligned with Washington lobbyists and corporate interests, the Republican candidates haven’t had a similar debate within their party. Republicans running for president have received $753,200 in campaign contributions from lobbyists—Clinton alone has raised more—and those lobbyists have billed their clients at least $335.3 million this year. Of that total, lobbyists representing business associations billed the most at 8.4 percent, and lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical industry billed 7.1 percent.
The top three Republican fundraisers—Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain—received money from lobbyists representing those same two industries, in addition to insurance companies, public sector unions and the entertainment industry. Among Republicans, McCain has received the most from lobbyists at $300,000.
-CRP Research Director Jihan Andoni and Researchers Greg Gasiewski and Adam Crowther contributed to this report.
