The Lobbying Arms Race: When Industries Go to War Over the Same Issues

The Permanent Battlegrounds

American lobbying isn't a set of isolated campaigns. It's an interconnected web of overlapping conflicts where industries, sectors, and interest groups collide on the same issues from opposite sides. When hospitals lobby on healthcare, insurers lobby back. When defense contractors push for bigger budgets, deficit hawks push against. When energy companies fight environmental rules, green groups fight for them.

We mapped this warfare by analyzing which issues appear together in the same lobbying filings — what we call "issue co-occurrence." The results reveal the permanent battlegrounds of American policy.

Healthcare + Medicare: The Eternal War (31,240 Filings)

The most tightly coupled issue pair in all of lobbying is Healthcare (HCR) and Medicare/Medicaid (MMM). With 31,240 co-occurrences and a Jaccard similarity of 0.434, these two issues appear together in nearly half of all filings that mention either one. No other pair comes close to this level of co-occurrence.

This isn't surprising. Medicare and Medicaid represent over $1.5 trillion in annual federal spending — the single largest pot of money in the federal budget after Social Security. Every hospital, pharmaceutical company, medical device maker, insurance company, and physician group has a stake in how that money flows. When CMS proposes new reimbursement rates, the entire healthcare ecosystem mobilizes simultaneously.

The arms race dynamic is clear: when pharmaceutical companies lobby to maintain drug prices under Medicare Part D, patient advocacy groups lobby to lower them. When hospitals lobby for higher reimbursement rates, insurers lobby for cost controls. When device manufacturers seek faster FDA approval pathways, safety advocates push back. Every action provokes a reaction, and the filings pile up on both sides.

Budget + Everything: The $6.75 Trillion Magnet

Budget/Appropriations (BUD) appears in four of the top five co-occurrence pairs:

• Budget + Healthcare: 27,272 filings
• Budget + Defense: 23,981 filings
• Budget + Transportation: 23,909 filings
• Budget + Tax: 23,490 filings

This makes Budget the "universal solvent" of lobbying — it dissolves into every other issue because every other issue ultimately involves federal money. Healthcare lobbying is budget lobbying. Defense lobbying is budget lobbying. Transportation lobbying is budget lobbying. The annual appropriations process is the Super Bowl of K Street, and everyone has a team in the game.

The Budget + Defense pairing (23,981 filings, Jaccard 0.178) reflects the perennial battle over the $886 billion defense budget. Every weapons system, every base, every procurement contract is an appropriations line item — and every one has lobbyists on every side. (See our investigation into defense contractor lobbying.)

Tax + Trade: The Tariff Battleground (19,506 Filings)

The Tax + Trade pairing (19,506 filings, Jaccard 0.203) is one of the most intensely contested arenas in current lobbying. Tariffs are simultaneously a tax issue (they're literally taxes on imports) and a trade issue (they reshape international commerce). When the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, steel, and aluminum, every affected industry had to lobby onboth codes simultaneously.

The 2025 tariff resurgence has supercharged this pairing. Companies that import goods lobby for exemptions. Domestic manufacturers lobby to keep tariffs in place. Agricultural exporters lobby against retaliatory tariffs. The arms race on Tax + Trade is intensifying with every new tariff announcement. (Read more in our tariff lobbying surge analysis.)

Energy + Environment: The Climate Proxy War (11,232 Filings)

Energy (ENG) and Environment (ENV) co-occur in 11,232 filings with a Jaccard similarity of 0.201 — the highest among non-Budget pairings after Healthcare + Medicare and Tax + Trade. This is the lobbying proxy war over climate policy.

On one side: fossil fuel companies, utilities, and manufacturers lobbying on Energy issues to preserve their business models. On the other: renewable energy companies, environmental groups, and clean-tech firms lobbying on Environment issues to accelerate the transition. Both sides lobby on both codes because every energy regulation has environmental implications and every environmental regulation has energy implications.

Energy + Tax (17,417 filings) is the other dimension of this war — fought over tax credits for renewables, deductions for fossil fuel exploration, carbon pricing proposals, and the Inflation Reduction Act's massive clean energy subsidies.

What's Surging Now

Our quarterly momentum analysis reveals which issues are seeing the fastest growth in lobbying activity. The surging issues tell you where the next policy battles will be fought:

Constitution Lobbying: +500%

The most dramatic surge is in Constitution (CON) lobbying — up 500% quarter-over-quarter, from $971K to $5.8 million. This reflects the constitutional battles raging over executive power, DOGE's authority to cut agencies, and fundamental questions about the separation of powers. When the government's structure itself is contested, lobbyists don't just fight over policy — they fight over the rules of the game.

Money/Inflation: +79%

Lobbying on monetary policy (MON) surged 79%, reflecting battles over Federal Reserve independence, cryptocurrency regulation, and inflation's ongoing impact on industry. The crypto industry's push for stablecoin legislation and SEC oversight reform is a major driver.

Economics: +49%

Economic policy lobbying (ECN) is up 49% as trade wars, tariff uncertainty, and competing visions for industrial policy drive more organizations to Washington. The DOGE initiative — which aims to fundamentally reshape federal economic intervention — has made "economics" a live lobbying issue in a way it hasn't been since the 2008 financial crisis.

What's Declining

Civil Rights lobbying is down 71% — a dramatic cooling from the post-2020 surge when corporate America scrambled to demonstrate social responsibility. Banking (BNK) is down 52%, likely reflecting the calming after the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank crisis. Media/Information lobbying (MIA) dropped 48%, but this is partially misleading — much of that lobbying has shifted to technology and AI codes as the definition of "media" blurs.

The AI and Crypto Frontiers

The newest arms races are forming around AI regulation and cryptocurrency. These issues don't yet have the filing volumes of healthcare or defense, but their growth trajectories are steep.

AI lobbying cuts across multiple issue codes — Technology, Science, Commerce, and increasingly Defense (for military AI applications) and Healthcare (for AI in diagnostics). The same fragmentation across codes makes it harder to track but reflects AI's cross-cutting impact on every industry. (See our AI regulation investigation.)

Crypto lobbying primarily shows up under Financial Services (FIN), Banking (BNK), and Money (MON). The 79% surge in monetary policy lobbying is largely crypto-driven, as the industry pushes for stablecoin legislation and clearer SEC jurisdiction. (More in our crypto lobbying investigation.)

The Arms Race Logic

Lobbying arms races follow a predictable pattern. An industry perceives a regulatory threat or opportunity. It hires lobbyists. Opposing interests, seeing the lobbying, hire their own lobbyists in response. Neither side can afford to unilaterally disarm, because doing so would cede the policy battlefield. The result is an escalating equilibrium where both sides spend more and more to maintain the status quo.

This is the classic prisoner's dilemma applied to politics. Both sides would be better off if neither lobbied, but neither can afford to stop because the other side might not. The only entities that reliably benefit are the lobbying firms themselves — which collect fees from both sides of every fight.

The 287,262 multi-issue filings in our database — averaging 1.94 issues per filing — represent the paper trail of these perpetual conflicts. They are, in a very real sense, the sound of American industries fighting each other through the medium of government.

The Libertarian Insight

The arms race metaphor is revealing because it highlights the waste. In a genuine arms race, both sides spend resources on weapons that, if they're lucky, are never used. In a lobbying arms race, both sides spend resources trying to influence government decisions that, in many cases, wouldn't need to be made if government weren't involved.

Healthcare + Medicare wouldn't be a 31,240-filing battleground if the government didn't control $1.5 trillion in healthcare spending. Energy + Environment wouldn't generate an arms race if energy policy were left to market forces rather than regulatory mandates. Tax + Trade wouldn't be a perpetual conflict if the government didn't impose tariffs and complex tax preferences.

Every lobbying arms race is, at its core, evidence that the government is making a decision that the market could make more efficiently. The filings are the receipts for that inefficiency.

Track the Arms Race

Explore our arms race visualization to see which issues are most tightly linked. Use the issue explorer to drill into any specific issue area. And visit the trends dashboard to watch surging and declining issues in real time.

The arms race never ends. But at least now you can see the battlefield.