Corporate Influence
Corporate lobbying is the invisible hand that shapes American policy far more than any election. Every year, corporations and trade associations spend billions on lobbying, campaign contributions, and the revolving door between industry and government — and most of it happens outside the spotlight of mainstream media coverage.
Gen Us covers corporate influence because it is the connective tissue between nearly every other issue we track: healthcare costs are driven by pharma lobbying, climate inaction by fossil fuel money, surveillance expansion by defense contractor interests, and housing policy by real estate industry influence.
We trace specific lobbying expenditures to specific policy outcomes, document the revolving door between regulatory agencies and the industries they oversee, and analyze how no-bid government contracts channel taxpayer money to politically connected firms.
Key Questions We're Asking
- •Which corporations and trade associations are the top spenders on federal lobbying, and what specific policies are they targeting?
- •How frequently do former regulators take positions at the companies they previously oversaw?
- •What is the relationship between campaign contributions and legislative voting patterns?
- •How do no-bid government contracts get awarded, and which firms benefit most?
- •What role do corporate-funded think tanks play in shaping policy narratives?
What Mainstream Media Misses
- •Lobbying is reported as background noise rather than as a systematic mechanism of policy capture.
- •The revolving door between agencies like the SEC, FDA, EPA, and the industries they regulate is rarely tracked as a pattern.
- •Corporate-funded think tanks are cited as neutral 'experts' without disclosure of their funding sources.
- •The aggregate scale of corporate influence — billions per year — is never compared against the budgets of public interest groups.
Follow the Money
- •U.S. corporations and trade associations spend over $4 billion annually on federal lobbying.
- •The pharmaceutical industry alone spends more on lobbying than any other sector — over $350 million per year.
- •The top 10 lobbying firms in Washington represent clients across defense, tech, energy, and finance.
- •Dark money groups channel hundreds of millions into elections without disclosing donors.