Family connections pave inside track to lobbying dollars

An investigation by Matt Kelley and Peter Eisler of USA Today shows that "lobbying groups employed 30 family members last year to influence spending bills that their relatives with ties to the House and Senate appropriations committees oversaw or helped write...combined, they generated millions of dollards in fees for themselves or their firms." USA Today looked at "family ties between lobbyists and the 94 members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, as well as 250 top staffers who serve those members" as well as "thousands of pages of financial disclosures and lobbyist registrations, property records, marriage announcements and other public documents to identify which lawmakers and staffers had relatives in the lobbying business."