More than half of the lobbyists crawling around Capitol Hill this year had a shared goal: tax reform. Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, found that 6,243 of the nearly 11,000 lobbyists listed in 2016 disclosure forms pushed members of Congress on tax issues, The Hill reported Friday. This would mean that for every member of Congress, there were approximately 11 lobbyists in Washington, D.C., working on taxes. The Public Citizen's report was released on Friday, just ahead of the expected passage of Senate Republicans' tax bill, which would give massive tax cuts to corporations and wealthy Americans.
The report notes that 31 lobbyists who worked to rally support for tax reform were members of the Trump campaign or his presidential transition team. It also found deep ties between lawmakers, donors, and lobbyists. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which had 100 registered lobbyists working on tax reform alone, gave nearly $200,000 to congressional Republicans during the 2016 campaign. Amongst those Republicans was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who threatened to block the Senate tax bill in committee before announcing his support for the bill on Friday.
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