The numbers are not in for 2017 yet, but in 2016, the top 50 companies spent more than $716 million to lobby the federal government and Congress, according to data provided to The Hill from the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2015, that number was $715 million and one can reasonably expect that those numbers will be close to $800 million for the past year thanks to a frantic lobbying campaign over tax reform and the effort to repeal Obamacare.
According to The Hill, Amazon spent a whopping $11.4 million and the Chamber of Commerce spent a shade under $104 million. Many of these companies and trade associations were lobbying to make sure that government policies did not harm them and to set the table for the massive tax reform bill that recently was signed into law. These big companies are not the only ones working to move government to
