More U.S. cities are paying to lobby Congress and they have astrategy to maximize their influence

The influence of lobbyists and lobbying by corporations and interest groups has become a fact of life in Washington D.C. In new research, Matt W. Loftis and Jaclyn J. Kettler find that U.S. cities have now also started to lobby Congress in a significant way, spending $150 million on the practice between 1998 and 2008. They argue that cities choose when and how to lobby based on their individual needs and their strategic opportunities; for example, cities with high unemployment rates were almost twice as likely lobby as cities with relatively low unemployment rates.