Group lobbyist by specific issue

[Daniele Incicco]

Hi!
First of all, I would like to thanks all the people who are involved in Opensecrets for the big work!!
So, as I am an absolute beginner, I would like to know if it's possible to group lobbyist by specific issue. I downloaded the lobby's bulk data table.

Thanks in advance

[Ron Zucker]

Hoo, boy. No, it's not. Believe me, we tried. 

For one thing, the reporting doesn't show lobbyist to issue. There is a range of issues, and a range of bills, and some self identification by the reporter about what issue is in what bill. (That's less clear than you might think. Is lobbying on ethanol tax breaks, for example, an agriculture issue or a tax issue?) 

Within that, there are several issues per page, and several lobbyists per page, so you don't know which lobbyist worked on which issue/bill. It's just not reported by the lobbyist, and is not required.

And even if you narrow your scope well, there's still a flaw because different bills with different bill numbers end up in the list. For example, with the Farm Bill of 2007/2008, there was a Senate version, a House version, and a veto override version, with a veto override version fix for a technical error. You need to find all of them, as well as any amendments in which you're interested. So the analysis is more sketchy than you might think.

Now, having said that, here's something you *can* do that will reveal something, though clearly not what you were asking about. You can find if there are certain lobbyists that work for a given range of companies. Say you're investigating lobbying on health care in 2009/2010. You can find if there's one lobbyist that worked for Aetna, Blue Cross and HCA (I wouldn't be surprised.) You can then see who else paid him/her that year to see if there was anyone that got paid by a bunch of insurance companies to work on the bill. Then you can widen your search with him/her as a locus instead of the companies. It wouldn't find what you were asking for, but it might find something of interest.

The data is flawed because the reporting requirements are deeply flawed. There is a lot there and a lot you can do, but there's just no way around the flaws of the reporting, and the reporting doesn't give you the information you seek.

--
Ron Zucker

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." -- Bill Clinton

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[Dan Keating]

One thing to note is that the data obscures a little bit of the information that is in the actual filing.

On a report, there is a separate portion of the filing for each topic issue, and a listing of which lobbyists within a firm worked on that issue.

The Senate data that opensecrets uses maintains a link of which lobbyists are on which overall report. And it has a breakout of separate topics (with a very helpful CRP addition of parsing the data for specific bill numbers, which are required and often included in the filing).  But the opensecrets data will not tell you which lobbyists is on which section of the report.  It has a link to the pdf of the document, so you can look at the document to be sure whether a particular lobbyist on that report is listed as working on a particular issue.

I'd note that the separate data available from the House clerk actually maintains that link
We used the CRP data as well as the House data to do a couple stories linking lobbysts/lobbying to particular bills and legislative histories last year:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-congress-relatives-lobby-for-bills-before-family-members/2012/12/29/a54adce2-4301-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/members-of-congress-trade-in-companies-while-making-laws-that-affect-those-same-firms/2012/06/23/gJQAlXwVyV_story.html

Dan Keating

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Dan Keating
dtk...@gmail.com
301-603-8162

[Daniele Incicco]

Thanks for the answer Ron!
So, according to this, I can group companies by lobbyist, isn't it?

Daniele Incicco

[Daniele Incicco]

Thanks Dan, I'll read your articles soon!

Daniele Incicco

[Ron Zucker]

Sure you can, but the CRP has already done a significant amount of that. See, for example, this page, with the information for Akin Gump, one of the largest lobbying companies out there: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmlbs.php?id=D000000162&year=2013

--
Ron Zucker

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." -- Bill Clinton

Daniele Incicco

[Daniel Auble]

Thank you Ron and Dan for your responses. We are always excited to see members of the community helping each other understand and build on the data that CRP provides. 

Just to confirm, the answers above do a great job of accurately describing the limitations of the reporting in general as well as the Senate provided data that we use. 

Dan Auble

Lobbying Researcher

Center for Responsive Politics

On Monday, May 20, 2013 12:18:10 PM UTC-4, Ron Zucker wrote:

Sure you can, but the CRP has already done a significant amount of that. See, for example, this page, with the information for Akin Gump, one of the largest lobbying companies out there: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmlbs.php?id=D000000162&year=2013

--
Ron Zucker

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." -- Bill Clinton

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Daniele Incicco <daniele...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for the answer Ron!
So, according to this, I can group companies by lobbyist, isn't it?

Daniele Incicco

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[Daniele Incicco]

Thank you guys!