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lobbying
Senate Dems Demand Explanation After Big Oil Lobbied for 'Giveaways at the Expense of American Families'
The fossil fuel industry spent big to push through a $1 billion provision in the GOP budget bill, which the senators said would allow some oil companies to "pay no federal income taxes whatsoever."
Jun 27, 2025
Four Democratic U.S. senators are demanding an explanation from Big Oil after a $1.1 billion tax loophole was added to the Senate version of the GOP's budget reconciliation megabill.
Letters sent Thursday by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called out the CEOs of two oil giants, ConocoPhillips and Ovintiv, which they say "lobbied furiously" for the handout.
The companies, the senators said, "[stand] to benefit tremendously from this provision and ha[ve] spent big to support it—while preserving the many government subsidies for the oil and gas industry already in the tax code."
They asked for the companies to disclose how much they have spent lobbying Republicans for the tax break and how much of a windfall they expect in return.
The provision in question, approved by the Senate Finance Committee last week, would shield many large oil companies from the Inflation Reduction Act's corporate alternative minimum tax, or CAMT. Introduced in 2022, the CAMT requires that companies making more than $1 billion pay 15% of the profits they report to shareholders.
"The rationale for CAMT was simple," the senators said. "For far too long, massive corporations had taken advantage of loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying their fair share, sometimes paying zero federal taxes despite earning billions in profits."
The GOP bill modifies how oil companies are required to report earnings, allowing them to exempt "intangible drilling and development costs," which in turn allows more companies to fall below the $1 billion earnings threshold.
The senators highlighted a 2023 earnings call by Marathon Oil, recently acquired by ConocoPhillips, in which executives said the CAMT was the only income tax they were required to pay.
"If enacted," the senators said, "this provision would reduce or even eliminate tax liabilities for oil and gas companies under CAMT, allowing some to pay no federal income taxes whatsoever."
The letter highlighted lobbying filings by ConocoPhillips and Ovintiv in which they "explicitly prioritize" securing this handout.
Referenced throughout is the aggressive effort to court Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who wrote the loophole into the Senate bill. According to OpenSecrets, Lankford received more than $546,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry—his top source of industry donations—between 2019 and 2024.
The senators described the industry's lobbying as "especially insulting" because "Senate Republicans are trying to pay for this handout with cuts to other programs that would end up raising energy prices for everyday Americans."
The GOP bill would eliminate tax breaks for clean energy that incentivize consumers to purchase electric vehicles and make their homes more energy-efficient, including the home energy-efficiency and residential clean energy credits.
Citing data from Rewiring America, the senators estimated that ditching the two credits would cost the average household up to $2,200 per year in savings on utility bills.
The Center for American Progress projects that eliminating electric vehicle credits would increase demand for gasoline, raising prices by 27 to 35 cents per gallon by 2035. Americans will pay the oil and gas industry "an additional $339 billion for gasoline and $75 billion for electricity by 2035," the May report says.
"Congress should not raise energy prices for working families to deliver handouts to Big Oil," the senators said.
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Report Exposes Big Pharma Front Groups Posing as Patient Advocates
"When your board is stacked with industry insiders, your primary funding comes from pharma, and your talking points mirror those of drug lobbyists, you're not a patient advocacy organization—you're a PR operation."
May 19, 2025
A report published Monday reveals that a number of organizations claiming to represent the interests of patients are actually pharmaceutical industry front groups working against efforts to bring down drug costs in the United States, including by lobbying the Trump administration to scale back Medicare price negotiations.
The new analysis by Patients for Affordable Drugs Now (P4AD), which stressed that it doesn't take money from organizations that profit from the production or distribution of prescription medications, spotlights six groups: the Alliance for Aging Research, the American Action Forum, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, the Council for Affordable Health Coverage, the Pacific Research Institute, and Seniors 4 Better Care.
The featured organizations, according to P4AD, "are posing as independent patient or policy groups while acting as mouthpieces for the drug industry's agenda—all while raking in pharma cash, fighting Medicare negotiation, and pushing misleading claims to block reforms."
Seniors 4 Better Care, for instance, is a shell group of the American Prosperity Alliance, the president of which "has a history of lobbying for the healthcare industry, including for organizations at the Healthcare Association of New York and insurance providers such as MVP Healthcare," P4AD's report observes.
"The group's treasurer, Parker Hamilton Poling, is a former lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies like Roche and Cencora," the report notes. "Brian Berry, the organization's secretary, also has a history of lobbying for Chinese biotech companies like Complete Genomics."
Earlier this year, Seniors 4 Better Care bankrolled an ad that directly urged President Donald Trump to end the "pill penalty," a label the pharmaceutical industry has used to describe the treatment of small-molecule prescription drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act's Medicare price negotiation provisions.
Last month, in a major gift to Big Pharma and industry lobbyists, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying Medicare negotiations for small-molecule drugs, which represent 90% of prescription medicines currently in circulation.
Another group highlighted in P4AD's report is the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), which describes itself as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational organization that seeks to advance the discussion and development of patient-centered healthcare."
P4AD notes that "every single member" of the organization's board has ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Peter Pitts, CMPI's president and co-founder, "primarily worked at firms hired by the pharmaceutical industry following an 18-month stint at the Food and Drug Administration," P4AD's report states.
"While working at major firms, such as Porter Novelli, Pitts retained his role at CMPI and insisted it was not a conflict of interest," the report continues. "He also currently teaches at the University of Paris, Descartes School of Medicine, a department that is funded by AstraZeneca."
Merith Basey, P4AD's executive director, said that "when your board is stacked with industry insiders, your primary funding comes from pharma, and your talking points mirror those of drug lobbyists, you're not a patient advocacy organization—you're a PR operation."
"Polling shows that Americans are aware that pharmaceutical corporations are the primary drivers of high drug prices, which is why the industry funds front groups to mislead the public and protect its bottom line," said Basey. "Patients and policymakers deserve to know whose interests these groups truly represent."
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Under Trump 2.0, Business Is Booming for Corporate Lobbying Firms
"Lobbying firms like Ballard Partners know they can trust the Trump administration to fight on behalf of their corporate clients."
Apr 23, 2025
Disclosures filed this week show that lobbying firms with close ties to U.S. President Donald Trump's White House have seen business surge at the start of 2025, with one group that used to employ Trump's chief of staff and attorney general more than doubling its first-quarter revenue compared to last year.
Ballard Partners, a firm led by a Trump donor, reported $14 million in lobbying revenue in the first three months of this year, up from $6.2 million during the same time in 2024.
Politico reported earlier this week that Ballard "has disclosed more than 130 new lobbying clients just since Election Day, including JPMorgan Chase, Chevron, Palantir, Netflix, Ripple Labs, and the Business Roundtable."
Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles both previously lobbied for Ballard, as did Trump's deputy director of personnel, Trent Morse.
"Lobbying firms like Ballard Partners know they can trust the Trump administration to fight on behalf of their corporate clients," the anti-corruption group End Citizens United said in response to the new disclosures.
Mother Jones noted that Ballard "wasn't the only lobbying firm to see a Trump bump."
"Mercury Public Affairs, where Wiles briefly worked repping a tobacco company, reported earning $5.1 million from lobbying in the first quarter of 2025—nearly half the $11.4 million it earned in all of 2024," the outlet observed. "Miller Strategies, run by super-lobbyist Jeff Miller (the firm's website includes a link to a Wall Street Journal article proclaiming Miller 'Trump's K Street rainmaker' for his prominent role in campaign fundraising), reported earning $8.6 million in the first three months of this year. In all of 2024, it only reported $12.6 million."
Despite claiming on the campaign trail that he was "not a big person for lobbyists" and that politicians "have to stop listening" to them, Trump has shown a willingness to do their bidding at the start of his second term in the White House.
Earlier this month, as Common Dreams reported, Trump signed an executive order aimed at delaying Medicare negotiations for a major category of prescription drugs after pharmaceutical industry lobbyists pushed aggressively for the change.
On Monday, The Lever reported that Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "hid data that mapped out the locations of thousands of dangerous chemical facilities, after chemical industry lobbyists demanded that the Trump administration take down the public records."
"After President Donald Trump's victory in November, chemical companies donated generously to his inauguration fund," the outlet observed. "Oil giant ExxonMobil, which is a member of the American Chemistry Council, the industry's main lobbying arm, donated $1 million. The multinational chemical company DuPont donated $250,000."
Trump has placed Lynn Dekleva, a former lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council and DuPont, at the head of an EPA office with "the authority to approve new chemicals for use," The New York Times reported in February.
During her time with the American Chemistry Council, Dekleva led the group's lobbying campaign to limit EPA regulations on formaldehyde, which the U.S. National Toxicology Program labels as a known carcinogen.
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