Module 7 of 9
What lobbying disclosure is
Lobbying is a separate disclosure regime from campaign finance. The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA, 2 USC §1601 et seq.) requires anyone retained to make lobbying contacts for a client to register with both the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House, and to file periodic reports describing what they lobbied on, who they lobbied, and how much they were paid. The 2007 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) tightened the rules — quarterly electronic filings, public posting, and the LD-203 contribution report.
Who has to register
A registrant is an entity (firm or in-house office) that employs at least one lobbyist: an individual who makes two or more lobbying contacts on behalf of a client and spends 20% or more of their time for that client on lobbying activities over a three-month period (2 USC §1602(10)). Registration is due within 45 days of being employed or retained to make lobbying contacts (2 USC §1603(a)).
The dollar trigger: $3,000+ per quarter in income from an outside client, or $14,000+ per quarter in lobbying expenses for an in-house lobbying office (2 USC §1603(a)(3)). Below those, the contact is exempt from registration. The filing itself is the LD-1 registration; afterward the registrant files an LD-2every quarter describing each client's lobbying activity.
The two periodic reports
LD-2 (quarterly). Due within 20 days of each quarter end. Per client, the registrant reports: lobbying income (or expenses, for in-house), the houses + agencies lobbied, the specific lobbying issues (free-text — this is where bills get named), and the individual lobbyists who worked the file.
LD-203 (semiannual). Due Jan 30 and Jul 30. Each registrant and each individual lobbyist files this one separately. It discloses political contributions of $200+ that the filer made during the six-month period, plus payments to honor or host federal officials.
LDA vs FARA
The Foreign Agents Registration Act(FARA, 1938, 22 USC §611 et seq.) is the parallel regime for anyone acting in the United States as an agent of a foreign principal — a foreign government, foreign political party, or foreign person or entity. FARA registrations go to the Department of Justice National Security Division, not the Senate/House clerks, and they require more detail (informational materials, short-form registrations per agent, six-month supplemental statements). An entity can be required to register under both LDA and FARA depending on what activity it's doing for whom.
What pac.dog mirrors
The Senate Office of Public Records publishes the full LDA corpus as bulk XML; pac.dog has it ingested. Today the corpus carries 16,775+ federal lobbying filings across 2,715+ registrants and 14,022+ clients. Every filing's "specific lobbying issues" free-text is run through a bill-id regex, yielding 12,586+ bill mentions across 4,941+ unique bills — every one of those mentions is a structured row in lobbying_bill_mentions, which surfaces as a "Lobbied by" panel on every bill detail page with matching filings. FARA registrations land on /fara.
Where to click:
- /lobbying — every filing in the corpus, filterable by registrant, client, year, or amount.
- /lobbying/registrants + /lobbying/clients— the firm + client directories. Click any name to see all of that entity's filings.
- /bills/[id] — the "Lobbied by" panel lists every LDA filing that named the bill in its issue text, with registrant, client, period, and income.
- /fara — FARA registrants, foreign principals, and registration documents from the DOJ NSD.
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