Americans For Prosperity Foundation Unveils Report Exposing High Cost of Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying

WASHINGTON DC─ In recent elections, voters overwhelmingly supported a fiscally conservative platform, regardless of party affiliation. And yet taxpayer dollars are being used to lobby directly against taxpayer interests. Americans for Prosperity Foundation today released a policy paper exposing the growing financial hit Americans are taking each year due to taxpayer-funded lobbying.

“Exposing taxpayer-funded lobbying is important to our AFP Foundation’s mission of educating Americans about barriers to prosperity,” said AFP Foundation President Tim Phillips. “This is just one more way out-of-touch Washington bureaucrats ignore the interests of the American people.”

The report, titled “Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying: Runaway Government Growth,” reveals the staggering amount of money spent on taxpayer-funded lobbying in the last 10 years— $1.09 billion. In addition, the report points to an explosion of university earmarking and lists a “taxpayer-funded lobbying hall of shame” to identify the big spenders.

Using our tax dollars to hire lobbyists to go back and lobby for more of our tax dollars only grows government spending,” said AFP-Oklahoma’s Executive Director Stuart Jolly.  ”The state is now lobbying the state, and where is the taxpayer in all of this?”  Phil Kerpen, AFP Foundation’s Director of Policy and author of the paper says, ” Tax dollars should be used to deliver necessary government services, not to lobby for bigger government. While ordinary Americans are busy working, their hard-earned tax dollars are being used to pay for lobbyists who are fight­ing for higher taxes and bigger govern­ment.”

A few key findings:

• Over the entire 1998 through first-half 2008 period, taxpay­er-funded lobbying totaled a staggering $1.09 billion.
• Taxpayer-funded lobbying is a major cause of the dramatic growth in pork-barrel earmarks.
• In 2007 alone, public universities in 46 states em­ployed lobbyists.

View the full report here.