Ever wonder who gives politicians all that money?

February 15, 2013:

If you like numbers and if you'd like to know more about money and it's (massive) influence on the U.S. government, this is the site for you.  Run by the Center for Responsive Politics--a non-partisan, non-profit, independent group--OpenSecrets.org has a mind boggling amount of data on who spends what in politics.

Lobbyists are people who haunt Washington, D.C. seeking to influence politicians to support their organizations.  As you can see below, there have been between 12,000 and 14,000 lobbyists in D.C. from 1999 to 2012.  That's 12,000 lobbyists exerting influence (and money) on 535 elected representatives! And from 2007-2012, lobbying organizations been averaging roughly $3 billion dollars a year in spending.  I think I'm going to write a letter to complain about that.

For a sample of one more important "detail," check out the chart below.  It shows large groupings of types of industry groups that lobby in Washington, for the year 2011-2012 only.  Those are some impressive numbers.  The finance and banking industry organizations spent $640 million dollars alone:

To be fair, lobbying groups aren't all bad.  They do represent many different types of groups and interests and have certainly been responsible for helping move forward some important legislative agendas. Full disclosure, one of the biggest labor organization lobby groups is the National Education Association (NEA).

The above is just a small sample of the data available on the Center's site.  If you go to the site and click on the links, you can drill down through and see individual groups and what amounts of money they gave to representatives from which parties, and you can analyze that data to your heart's content.