Halliburton Lobby Costs See Big Drop
Halliburton Lobby Costs See Big Drop
By Maud S. Beelman
The Boston Globe
James Thurber, an American University professor who studies interest groups and lobbying, said of Halliburton… “They’re already in; they don’t need to lobby any more.”
Halliburton, the oil and construction conglomerate formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, dramatically reduced what it spent on lobbying Congress and the federal government after the Bush-Cheney administration took office in January 2001.
During the last two years of the Clinton administration, Halliburton reported spending $1.2 million lobbying the Senate, House of Representatives, and various executive branch departments, according to records reviewed by the Globe. In comparison, during the first two years of the Bush administration, Halliburton reported spending just $600,000.
Despite the dropoff in lobbying, the value of Halliburton’s work began to increase in the run-up to the Iraq War, and eventually came to be worth more than $8 billion for overseeing aspects of the Iraqi reconstruction. Its federal contracts never exceeded $1 billion per year under the Clinton administration.
