Four Big Tech companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google — spent $124 million on lobbying and campaign contributions during the 2020 election cycle, supplanting Big Oil and Big Tobacco as dominant lobbying and influence forces in D.C., according to a new report from a liberal consumer rights advocacy group,
“In just the past ten years, Big Tech companies swiftly constructed their lobbying operation to become among the largest in the country,” Jane Chung wrote in Public Citizen’s report. “While not even in the top eight spenders in 2017, Facebook and Amazon are now the two largest individual lobbying spenders in Washington.”
The spending in the report focuses on federal lobbying and campaign contributions from employees, lobbyists and PACs, and the companies’ local political spending and leveraging of nonprofits that do not disclose donors is not fully known.
The beneficiaries of the tech companies’ spending in Washington include those with oversight of their industry. Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — which held a hearing on Thursday with the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter — collected more than $1 million in campaign contributions from Big Tech companies in the 2020 cycle, according to Public Citizen’s report.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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