Dear Reader,

Political spending goes far beyond campaign mailers and television ads. In fact, lobbying is a multibillion-dollar industry where companies, labor unions, trade associations and other influential organizations spend massive amounts of money in an attempt to influence Congress and federal agencies.

When you want to know who’s spending and how much, OpenSecrets’ federal lobbying resources are available for you to research Top Spenders and Top Issues, and our reporting team regularly publishes articles on who’s spending big to influence government policies, like this one about the money spent by tax-prep companies lobbying against the free tax-filing system owned by the IRS.

The increasingly powerful role of money in politics is one that affects us all. It’s why we provide detailed resources on our website making governmental actions more transparent to the public.

We plan to continue exposing the billions spent on lobbying, but we need your help. Today we are asking you to make a gift of any size to support our work. Your donation will allow us to continue to keep our resources free and available to the general public.