An investment of $25.1 million in lobbying returned $14.5 billion in tax credits for the wind industry, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Government. The analysis (below) looks at a handful of provisions in the omniibus spending bill passed late last month and finds: “The huge returns on investment show that effective lobbying is one of the most attractive capital investments a company can make.”
I’m not totally convinced the methodology is sound. For instance, they count only 2015’s lobbying for the wind tax credit, although the industry has been working consistently on the subsidy for years; they also count the 10-year size of the subsidy even though the omnibus renewed the credit for only five years. I’m also not sure how they break out how much lobbying was done on these specific issues as opposed to other issues the same firms and companies.
But I’m sympathetic to the implication here: Lobbying is a depressingly effective way to make a profit. Here it is, below:
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
