Inside the Hidden World of Earmarks

Admin Posts : 75 Join date : 2007-09-18

Quote :: One of Washington's great mysteries is exactly how much money companies rake in from their lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. Sure, companies have to disclose how much they spend on the hired guns or in-house government affairs staffers who press their interests before regulators and Congress. And the population of lobbyists has clearly exploded--which suggests that their clients, at least, think they're getting a good deal. But no one outside the lobbying firms and corporate boardrooms has ever known just how much all those lobbyists bring in.

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Take a look at just who got the most out of the earmarking process. In sheer dollar value, the defense industry is the uncontested winner. Of the top 50 earmark recipients in 2005, the vast majority were military contractors such as Raytheon Co. (RTN ) and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT ). The few nondefense companies among the top 50, such as Cummins Inc. (CMI ) and Caterpillar Inc. (CAT ), won their earmarks selling trucks or other equipment to the military. A rare exception to the military rule: the Alaska Railroad Corp., which got $43 million to finance everything from the development of a transportation facility in downtown Anchorage to routine rail maintenance, thanks to five earmarks sponsored by Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and the two others in the state's congressional delegation.

In many cases, companies won a dozen or more earmarks from different spending bills. Boeing Co. (BA ), by far the biggest earmark recipient in 2005, got a total of $456 million through 29 separate earmarks to purchase everything from missile technology to helicopters. The prior year, the aerospace giant spent just $8.5 million on lobbying. That works out to $54 in earmark revenues alone for every lobbying dollar spent.

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