With the government budgeted to spend nearly $3 trillion in its current 2008 fiscal year, it should not be surprising that special interest groups of all types flock to Washington, D.C., to lobby for pieces of the budget pie at taxpayers’ expense.

In 2007, over 15,600 registered lobbyists spent more than $2.8 billion to influence federal legislation and tax policy. During the last ten years the number of D.C. lobbyists has increased by one-third, while their spending has almost doubled.

Lobbyists span the political spectrum and represent virtually every sector of the economy and social group. Special interest groups lobby for offensive and defensive reasons. Some pressure groups aggressively lobby to acquire benefits, favors, and government handouts to the detriment of their competitors’ and the taxpayers. Others lobby reactively to prevent the implementation of government regulations and redistributions that might harm them.

But either way, billions are are being spent each year to persuade politicians to use their governmental power in one way or another that otherwise could have been spent more productively in private sector activities.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2007, organized labor spent over $44.3 million on lobbying members of Congress. Public sector unions shelled out almost $18.5 million last year to influence federal legislation; transportation unions spent nearly $10.6 million, industrial unions spent $6.1 million, and other unions spent in total another $6 million.

On the other hand, business associations of all types spent more than $87.2 million last year on lobbying activities (the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, alone, expended over $52.7 million of this total).

As can be seen in the Table A, below, by industry,  pharmaceutical and health product companies spent the most on lobbying in 2007, almost $227 million , followed by insurance ($135.9 million), computers/internet ($110.7 million), electric utilities ($110.6 million), hospital/nursing homes ($91.5 million), and education ($88 million).

In Table B, below, the specific largest individual associations and companies are listed that expended the largest sums on hiring Washington lobbyists in 2007.

In addition to the $13.8 million in lobbying expenditures by the National Association of Realtors in 2007, last year Freddie Mac spent $8.5 million and Fannie Mae $5.6 million “persuading” the congressmen who have now assured them a government-guaranteed bailout.

Not surprisingly, the general heading of federal budget and appropriation issues had the largest number of interested parties hiring lobbying firms. After all, this covers a huge number of policy areas for which government can expend monies, impose regulations, or distribute any number of other favors and privileges that can affect the economic well-being of virtually any citizen in the United States.

The specific spending areas that drew the biggest number of clients in 2007, outside of general budget and appropriation decisions, were, respectively, defense, health care issues, taxes, transportation, and energy.

Billions of dollars a year in lobbying activities will continue to be spent in Washington as long as the government has favors and privileges to bestow, and other people’s money to redistribute for the benefit of some at the general taxpayers’ and citizens’ expense.

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