The lobbying sector is now facing impending obstacles due to the decrease in reported spending for their respective services. According to the Huffington Post, “325 fewer lobbyists registered in the second quarter of 2016 than in the first.” This decrease is showcased as the biggest drop in the past four years, and marks the number of registered lobbyists at its west point record wise. In the past, records have indicated that the total account of registered lobbyists have never dipped below 10,000 since 1988. The Huffington Post displays a graphic overview of how these numbers have changed from 2007 to 2016. This year’s average of registered lobbyists have decreased to a shocking 9,726, a major contrast to 2007’s account of 15,000 registered lobbyists.
According to the Huffington Post, a contributing factor for this decease could point to a “set of policies designed to curb lobbying put in place by President Obama, or gridlock Congress”. Apart from this speculation, another contributing factor may be that there are fewer people registering as recognized lobbyists. That’s not to say that fewer people are enacting in lobbying efforts. There is just a decrease in the trend of accurate lobbyist’s registration, feeding into the “shadow lobbying” concept.
The amount of lobbying spending has ultimately decreased in relative to the decreasing accounts of registered lobbyists. According to Huffington Post, “from April through June, lobbying outlays decreased to just more than $779 million, compared to almost $824 million spent in the first quarter of this year”. In conclusion, if lobbying accounts for this year follows past recent quarterly trends, speculations and experiments dictate that 2016’s total lobbying spending and relations will mark at about 3.1 billion, also about 3 percent less than 2015.
