Lobbying is mostly lawful and often useful: lobbyists supply information and expertise that busy lawmakers lack. This level looks at how it actually works day to day, and at the point where influence tips over into crime.

The scale of the business

Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, people paid to lobby the US federal government must register and report their spending. Reported totals have run above 4 billion dollars a year in recent years, and that excludes much activity that falls outside the law's definitions. Business interests spend the most, but hospitals, universities, unions, cities and advocacy groups of every stripe are on the list too.

Helping friends, not converting foes

Popular images show lobbyists persuading wavering lawmakers to switch votes. Richard Hall and Alan Deardorff argued in 2006 that most lobbying works differently. Lobbyists spend most of their time with lawmakers who already agree with them, offering what the two scholars called a legislative subsidy: free staff work for allies, such as drafting amendments, gathering data and writing speeches. The influence lies in effort and attention. A busy legislator who agrees with ten causes can push only two or three hard; the subsidy helps decide which ones.

Buying a meeting

Money can also buy the chance to be heard. In a 2016 field experiment, Joshua Kalla and David Broockman had a political organization request meetings with 191 congressional offices so its members could discuss a bill. Some offices were told the attendees were constituents; others were told they were donors. When attendees were identified as donors, senior officials made themselves available three to four times as often. No vote was traded. But access shapes whose concerns lawmakers hear first and most often.

Fake grass and ready-made bills

Some campaigns hide who is speaking. Astroturfing means campaigns made to look like spontaneous citizen movements while organized interests secretly fund them. The name, borrowed from a brand of artificial turf, is usually credited to Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas in 1985, who said he could tell real grassroots mail from the manufactured kind. Online, the method now includes paid networks of fake accounts and reviews.

Another quiet tool is the model bill: ready-made legislation that interest groups offer to busy state lawmakers. A 2019 investigation by USA Today, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity found that thousands of bills over eight years had been copied largely from interest group models, drafted by groups on the right, on the left and in industry alike. Copying is not illegal, and some model bills are sensible. The problem is that voters rarely know who wrote the laws they live under.

When influence becomes crime

Jack Abramoff was among Washington's best connected lobbyists until his schemes collapsed. With a partner, he charged Native American tribes that ran casinos tens of millions of dollars in fees while secretly splitting the profits and, in some cases, working against his clients' interests. He courted officials with luxury golf trips, meals, sports tickets and job offers. In 2006 he pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, and a congressman and several aides were later convicted. Writing after prison, Abramoff said his most powerful tool had been hinting to a congressional staffer that a well-paid job awaited: from that moment, he said, the staffer was effectively working for him. Congress responded with the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, which banned gifts from lobbyists to members and staff and required disclosure of bundled contributions.

Sometimes the exchange is crude. In 2005 Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California pleaded guilty to taking about 2.4 million dollars in bribes from defense contractors. Prosecutors produced a price list on his congressional notepaper pairing contract amounts with bribe amounts, soon nicknamed the bribe menu. He was sentenced to more than eight years in prison.

Where the line falls

Between the legislative subsidy and the bribe menu lies a long gray zone. Defenders of lobbying point out that most of what lobbyists do, explaining a bill's effects, organizing testimony, rallying members, is the ordinary work of petitioning government. Critics answer that when access is rationed by money, the ordinary work itself becomes unequal. Both observations can be true at once.

Worked example

A state senator introduces a bill limiting lawsuits against nursing homes. The text matches, nearly word for word, a model bill from an industry association. The senator's office received a detailed briefing book from the association, and her chief of staff met its lobbyists four times. Letters of support arrive from a group called Families for Fair Care, whose website lists no members. Which mechanisms are at work? The briefing book is a legislative subsidy to an ally; the copied text is a model bill; the faceless group may be astroturf. None is necessarily illegal. Each is a reason to ask who wrote the bill, who funds the group, and whether residents' families were heard as often as the industry.