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In response to
"Over 6,000 DC lobbyists worked on GOP tax bill: report (that can't right, right?) -- (link)"
by
ty97
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Also, citizen.org's report section on Methodology fails to mention that lobbyists have to report even if they perform as little as 1 hr of work/qtr -- (edited)
Posted by
Max
Dec 1 '17, 22:03
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The registration threshold is if you earn >20% of your income from a client for lobbying work, and after you register, you have to continue reporting any income, no matter how small, until you stop lobbying for the client completely. Six thousand lobbyists registered doesn't mean six thousand full time workers. The function of the lobbying law is simply to report names, subjects, and amount of income earned, and it's skewed toward percentage of work per client.
So a firm could earn $1 million for lobbying on a subject and not have to report if they also earn 5x that much on other work for the same client. (This is how Gingrich avoided registering). Meanwhile another firm would have to report if they earn $20k per year if all the work they do for a client is lobbying. Between those two, which firm has more influence? That question is still impossible to answer because money earned for work does not directly translate to success rate.
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