How We Follow Lobbying and PAC Money

We match official disclosures by exact IDs. Each money measure stays separate, and missing data stays unknown.

Official disclosures onlyExact matches, never guessed namesMoney measures are never added together

01

Current officeholders, first

The official Congress.gov roster lists the current members of the House and Senate, including seated delegates and the resident commissioner. A vacant seat never becomes an invented officeholder.

The CC0 congress-legislators project links identifiers and adds term details. FEC identifiers are chosen for the office the member holds now. A member with no matched FEC identity still appears, with finance shown as unavailable.

02

What the dollar beside a politician means

Net direct and in-kind contributions from conventional PACs in the 2025–2026 election cycle. It is campaign finance, not personal income and not a lifetime total.

Counted

  • FEC PAS2 records, with the committee master, candidate–committee links and candidate summaries
  • Transaction types 24K and 24Z from PAC types N and Q
  • Paid to an authorized campaign committee (designation P or A)
  • Negative amounts, as filed

Left out

  • Payments to leadership PACs and joint fundraising committees, even when they name a candidate
  • Independent spending and communication costs
  • Party committees and candidate committees as donors
  • Memo (X) records

Amendments: for transactions with an electronic ID, the newest filing wins within the same donor, recipient, candidate, report type, election and year. Records without that ID keep their own FEC row, so a changed ID or date can still stop two versions from being joined.

The donor's reported payment can differ from the candidate's receipt summary because of timing, amendments, coverage and accounting. Both are shown, side by side, instead of being forced to agree. The donor list is paged; each donor shows two recent filings and its number of matched records, not its full history.

03

Lobbyists' contribution records

Federal LD-203 reports list a contributor, payee, honoree, date and amount.

  • A record matches a politician only by an exact campaign committee name or an exact named honoree. Names are never matched loosely.
  • Honoree-only records are labeled separately: they can be about another PAC, an event or a related committee.
  • The same contribution can appear in FEC data and in several LD-203 reports, so this list is never added to the PAC total.
  • No private addresses or contact details are published.
04

A bill cannot receive a campaign donation

What the money in a lobbying report covers

A report can name a bill, but its money usually covers the organization's whole quarter of lobbying, or a firm's income from a client. We keep LD-2 expenses and outside firm income separate, because firm income can already be inside a client's expenses. The amount for one bill is unknown unless the report states it.

How a bill is found in a report

The latest report replaces older ones for the same registrant, client, year and period, including amendments and no-activity updates. Bill numbers are read from the issue description. When no Congress is named, the reporting year's Congress is assumed and labeled for checking; a description that names a different Congress is left out unless the bill can be resolved.

Naming a bill does not show support: a lobbyist may oppose it or work on only part of it.

05

Largest lobbying priorities

Topics are ranked by the report-wide expenses of organizations that lobby in-house and mention the topic in their latest reports. Each report counts once per topic. One report can name several topics, so topic totals overlap and must not be added together. Outside firms' income is shown separately.

Quotes come from the filed issue descriptions; they are not generated claims about hidden intentions. The politicians shown sponsor or cosponsor the topic's leading bill, not every position in that topic.

Imports resume where they stopped, and their coverage is shown. Q3 2026 reports are due October 20, 2026. Before that date, even a full sweep has only the reports filed so far; an earlier quarter gives a more complete view.

06

Actions and results

Before a bill passes

Congress.gov supplies sponsors, cosponsors and legislative actions. Only current officials appear in the money ranking. A bill's money page lists its sponsor and every cosponsor, leaves out withdrawn sponsorships and shows source coverage. Sponsoring is not a recorded vote, and an overlap with donors does not show why someone acted.

After a bill becomes law

Only verified official implementation or outcome links appear. A grant, rule or agency action shows activity; a measured result needs an evaluation or evidence of the outcome. No connected evidence means “not established”, not success, failure or zero effect.

Corruption-risk reviews use a separate rubric with quotes from the bill text, and never accuse a politician of a crime.

07

Refresh and sources

  • The roster and FEC data refresh daily when the sources publish new data.
  • The lobbying import resumes from saved checkpoints, respects rate limits and looks for new filings after each full pass.
  • When a source fails, the last good data stays in place.
  • Every money view links its official source, states its period and tells imported rows apart from full coverage.
  • These imports call no paid AI model.