Lobbying as Business and Business as Lobbying

Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the "nonprofit civic enterprise" the New America Foundation, is the author of The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate. This chart shows the rise in political spending by corporations, money, as Drutman notes, that is now not being spent on developing new products or improving corporate efficiency. In an interview, Drutman explained the self-perpetuating forces behind the rise corporate political spending (lobbying and campaign contributions, often undisclosed or hard to find) and what he recommends for finding better balance between the information and access available to those who have corporate treasuries to spend and those who do not.