Examining the Lobbying Effort of Booz Allen Hamilton (or Lack Thereof).

So, as everyone now knows thanks to whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the US Government via the NSA via a number of private companies has been at best gathering massive amounts of private communications data for later scrutiny if deemed necessary and at worst (though who knows how bad it could get) has been directly spying on unwitting, innocent American citizens.

The immediate question that came to mind when Mr. Snowden stepped forward and revealed that he had worked in an intelligence capacity for Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) under the direction of the US Government, was how much money had the company spent on lobbying the government for contracts? How much had they spent convincing the US government that they should get the colossal intelligence contracts that created $1.3 billion of their revenue last year alone (and just landed a contract worth an additional five billion over the next five years)? Truth be told, the numbers I pulled up immediately following the question’s formation were perplexingly small.  The Fortune 500 company, which boasts of over 5 billion in annual revenue, has only spent $40,000 in lobbying efforts in the US, and that was more than ten years ago.

This relatively miniscule amount of lobbying cash doesn’t necessarily have to be suspicious, I suppose. There isn’t anything that says that a company is obligated to spend massive amounts on lobbying to acquire large contracts from the Federal Government. Maybe BAH is just stellar at what they do and it’s an easy sell, who can say? Still, to be sitting in the rather comfy position as the 14^th largest US Government Contractor (as of last year), they certainly aren’t behaving like their peers when it comes to lobby expenditures. Let’s break it down:

* Lockheed Martin, the largest Federal Government Contractor (with over 36 billion dollars awarded in contracts) spent at least $15,347,350 on lobbying in 2012.

* Boeing Co, the second largest contractor (with over 29 billion dollars awarded in contracts) spent at least $15,440,000 on lobbying in the same year.

* Raytheon (you guessed it, number three contractor with over 15 billion dollars in contracts) spent at least $7,450,000.

(Side Note: It’s mildly interesting that the ratios of money spent to contracts awarded seem roughly commensurate in these first three examples, although the trend doesn’t seem to extrapolate to the rest of the list.)

Of course, these are the three big boys in the Federal Contracts game. Admittedly, BAH isn’t quite that big. They’re fourteenth, so maybe that would account for the lack of lobbying expenditures. Let’s look at its more comparable competitors.

* Computer Sciences Corporation which comes in one under BAH at number fifteen on the list of Federal Contractors (with over $3.8 Billion in contracts) spent at least $1,532,000 on lobbying efforts in 2012.

* Bechtel Group, the thirteenth largest Federal Contractor ($4.1 billion in contracts) spent a smaller amount, but at $360,000, it still spent considerably more last year than BAH has in ten.

To satisfy my curiosity, I decided to head further down the list and look at a couple more. Textron (#29 on the list) spent nearly $5 million last year on lobbying.  Then I picked Deloitte LLP (#62 on the list), because it was a name that I happened to recognize. Turns out, they spent at least $3.4 million last year.

So, in terms of lobbying efforts, it would seem BAH is certainly the exception to the rule here. How they have directed billions of dollars into their coffers without significant lobbying is beyond me. It doesn’t seem to make much sense.

The military industrial complex is a reality; a behemoth awash in volleyed tax money and quid pro quo deals. The newly minted intelligence industrial complex is also a reality, and would seemingly operate within the same basic model: Lobbying begets contracts which results in more lobbying to get even more contracts and so forth. Right?

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias attempted to connect the dots in a quick post from 6/10, in which he points out:

… the… interesting issue is how it alters the lobbying dynamic. An established government bureaucracy has, of course, considerable capacity to lobby on behalf of its own interests. That's particularly true when the bureacracy's leadership can claim possession of secret information. But it's also constrained in certain respects. The National Security Agency can't bundle campaign contributions, give money to independent expenditure campaigns, or offer nice paydays to former congressional staffers.

But if you take a few billion dollars worth of intelligence spending and transfer it onto the Booz Allen balance sheet, then political organizing around the cause of higher intelligence spending can avail itself of the tools of private enterprise along with the tools of bureaucratic politics.

This would be a valid point and may be applicable to other contractors, but it doesn’t appear to be the case with BAH, who apparently doesn’t have to lobby at all to get the political machine to organize “around the cause of higher intelligence spending” and land the resulting enormous contracts.

So now, after sifting through these numbers, I suppose we come to the payoff—our Double Rainbow moment, if you will—and ask, “What does it mean?” I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe there is no point in this exercise at all except to, in comparison, examine the lobbying practices of most major US government contractors. There is certainly more to look at, but for now the examination and the unanswered question will have to do.