Graphic: Lobbyists' Honorary Gifts to Federal Officials
By Keenan Steiner Jul 12 2011 3:14 a.m. 1 commentCompanies and organizations can donate an unlimited amount of money to honor officials, sponsor their conferences, and donate to their pet charities, so long as these donations are reported to the Senate. The Sunlight Foundation analyzed these filings from 2009 and 2010 and found about $50 million in honorary gifts and meeting costs. These donations can all be viewed in the interactive display below by company making the donation or by official being honored.
Viewers can filter the data by the type of honoree (executive branch officials and members of Congress, for example) and can further narrow the display to view lawmakers by name or state.
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Important Notes:
In cases where lobbying entities honored multiple honorees for one contribution, we divided the contribution amount equally among all honorees. This way, under the "honoree" view of the graphic, viewers can see a total amount donated in honor of each official.
When filtering the graphic, the "other" category represents cases that appear to be erroneous reports. The honorees in this section do not appear to be either executive or legislative officials (the only ones the law intends to cover). Some of these honorees are state officials, candidates, or people and entities that are difficult to identify.
This graphic aggregates all the honorary and meeting expenses from both the lobbying entities and the employees registered to lobby for them during 2009 and 2010. To see which of these donations came from individual lobbyists, and to explore all the data further, you can download the data here. Additionally, a data dictionary is available here. To read about which gifts require disclosure, see Section 7 of the Lobbying Disclosure Act guidance written by the Senate secretary and House clerk.
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This is nothing short of bribery, and until this practice is illegal, the corruption in this country will continue. It's been reported fewer and fewer Americans vote because of this practice and is common knowledge that the elected are bought and sold.