Below is a list of the most frequently asked questions and misconceptions about federal lobbying.

What is lobbying?

Federal statute defines lobbying as any communication made on behalf of a client to members of Congress, congressional staffers, the president, White House staff and high-level employees of nearly 200 agencies, regarding the formulation, modification, or adoption of legislation.

Who is a lobbyist?

A lobbyist is a person hired directly by an organization or through a firm for services that include making more than one "lobbying contact" on behalf of a client, and who spends at least 20 percent of his or her time during a six-month period engaged in lobbying activity.

• According to the Center for Public Integrity more than 22,000 companies and organizations have employed 3,500 lobbying firms and more than 27,000 lobbyists since 1998.

Who lobbies?

Corporations, organizations, much of the Fortune 500, universities, environmental and non-profit groups, and even churches lobby the federal government.

• According to the Center for Public Integrity, the most commonly lobbied issue is budget and appropriations.

Who regulates lobbying?

The Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives oversee federal lobbying. According to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, those offices are charged with providing guidance on lobbying disclosure, ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of required reports, and making those reports available to the public.

The three candidates running to replace Rep. Tom DeLay as Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives have their own multiple "revolving door" connections to lobbying firms, each sending former staff members, and staff members of the committees they chair, to work for major K Street operations.

Rep. Roy Blunt, (R-Mo.), Rep. John Boehner, (R-Ohio), and Rep. John Shadegg, (R-Ariz.), are linked to more than a dozen lobbying firms and other organizations that lobby through employees who worked in their Capitol Hill offices, making the major differences between their operations and Delay's not immediately perceptible.

In the shadow of Jack Abramoff's guilty pleas to three lobby-related felony charges, the public, the press, and state and federal prosecutors are scrutinizing members of Congress and their relationships with lobbyists and the K Street firms.

Rep. Boehner, the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, who once handed out lobbyists' re-election campaign contributions on the floor of the House, has connections to at least 14 lobbyists:

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty plea to charges of mail fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, could potentially open a Pandora's Box on both K Street and Capitol Hill, industry experts said.

"This thing is going to get a lot worse before it gets a lot better," said Paul Miller, President of the American League of Lobbyists. "And as busy as it's been, this is the calm before the storm."

The storm will be sparked by Abramoff's plea agreement, which stipulates that the lobbyist must provide information and testimony to prosecutors "concerning any matter," presumably including his dealings with members of Congress and their staff as investigators continue to scrutinize the relationship between politicians and K Street.

Throughout the past decade, the Center for Public Integrity has scrutinized and monitored the lobbying industry. The Center's LobbyWatch project provides access to data from 2.2 million public documents and details who the lobbyists and lobbying firms are, how much they spend and on whom.

For example, the Center found that Abramoff was one of 52 registered lobbyists who were major fundraisers for George W. Bush's presidential campaigns. Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for Bush's 2004 campaign and lobbied on issues brought before the White House for 19 clients.

In addition, federally registered lobbyists have served as the treasurers of at least 868 political committees since 1998. These committees have spent more than $525 million to influence the political process.

Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff have been unilaterally exempting themselves from long-standing travel disclosure rules followed by the rest of the executive branch, including the Office of the President, the Center for Public Integrity has discovered.

Cheney's office also appears to have stuck taxpayers with untold millions in travel costs rather than accepting trip sponsors' funds that the rules would require to be disclosed.

It's not as if those in Cheney's office don't indulge in the type of junkets that are routinely funded by private sources. Instead of accepting reimbursement for such trips like other government travelers, it appears that his office labels them "official travel." As a result, however, the public is kept largely unaware of where he and his staff are traveling, with whom they are meeting with and how much it costs, even though tax dollars are covering the bill.

It's also not as if Cheney hasn't faced questions about secrecy and his travel in the past. In January 2003, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was reportedly Cheney's guest aboard Air Force Two on a flight south for a winter duck hunting trip at a property owned by an oil executive in southern Louisiana.

The trip took place shortly after the Supreme Court had agreed to hear Cheney's appeal of a lawsuit that sought to force him to disclose the details about the national energy policy task force he chaired behind closed doors in 2001. Cheney had refused to disclose the substance of the discussions or to list those who met with the task force; that list was believed to include major players in the energy industry.

Not many companies change their names to accommodate a recent hire, but not every new employee has the standing of Kirk Blalock. In a town where influence is predicated on who you know, Blalock's connections are a conspicuously valuable commodity. As special assistant to the president, he often counseled George W. Bush and crafted political strategies with now-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove. And as deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, he coordinated the Bush administration's outreach to the business community—a role that gave him unique stature along Washington, D.C.'s K Street corridor.

Perhaps that's why in October 2003, just 11 months after Blalock left public service for Fierce & Isakowitz, the 25-year-old lobbying shop made him a name partner. It proved to be a profitable decision: Since Blalock's arrival, the firm has nearly doubled its annual revenue to more than $6 million, with its new marquee partner involved in much of the business. In fact, during Blalock's freshman year at what is now Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, he personally registered to lobby on behalf of 33 clients. Of those, more than 20* listed the White House as a lobbying target.

WASHINGTON, October 3, 2005 — When lobbyist William Oldaker sits down to negotiate with a member of Congress, he brings years of experience working for the federal government to the table, as well as the legislative resources of his own firm. He also brings quite a bit of money.

As the treasurer of 23 political committees, groups that raise funds to elect or defeat politicians, Oldaker has signed off on more than $2 million in donations since 1998 to the parties and candidates he is paid to influence, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity. At the same time that these committees doled out millions to politicians, some 100 companies paid Oldaker's lobbying firms $14 million to influence some of the same lawmakers.

For example, in 2004 four committees that he managed donated a combined $30,000 to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking member of the transportation appropriations subcommittee. In that same year, Oldaker lobbied Congress on transportation appropriations issues for at least five of his clients. Odaker did not return repeated calls from the Center.

Oldaker is just one of hundreds of Washington, D.C., lobbyists who play this dual role, influencing members of Congress while also controlling donations that finance their campaigns. Lobbyists have served as treasurers for at least 800 political action committees and 68 campaign committees in the past six years, according the Center's study. In that time these committees have spent more than $525 million to influence the political process. In other words, these lobbyist-led committees spent more money than President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry raised in combined contributions during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Top lobbying and law firms—including Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, Patton Boggs, and McDermott Will and Emery LLP—have helped mainland China and Hong Kong with outreach to key U.S. textile negotiators and policymakers, as well as with obtaining strategic advice on trade matters.

The analysis is part of a comprehensive Center investigation into Chinese lobbying activities in the United States released last week. The report found that since July 1997, the Chinese and Hong Kong governments and their government-controlled companies and organizations have spent at least a combined $19 million lobbying the U.S. government and trying to sway public opinion.

Although China and Hong Kong have lobbied the U.S. government separately, many of the issues they've lobbied on have been the same—including textile imports.

In a letter to the Center for Public Integrity, Stephen Wong, regional director of the government-backed Hong Kong Trade Development Council, emphasized that his organization is focused "purely on protecting Hong Kong's interest," but explained how that interest overlaps with China's. "On textile matters, Hong Kong, as a major textile manufacturing and exporting economy, is concerned about safeguarding its legitimate rights and trade interests as provided for under the WTO," Wong wrote. "With a significant number of Hong Kong businesses having investments in textile manufacturing operations in Mainland China and with Mainland China being subject to certain China-specific trade measures, we are naturally concerned about how such measures impact our trade interests."

In an eight-day span in June, lobbyists from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld contacted federal and state officials nearly 250 times in an unsuccessful effort to build support for an $18.5 billion bid for Unocal by China National Offshore Oil Co. And Akin Gump was just one of six top-flight lobbying firms hired by CNOOC to push its bid.

At Akin Gump, a strike team made up of more than a dozen of the firm's most influential lobbyists descended on Capitol Hill with newspaper excerpts, Wall Street Journal editorials and talking points that highlighted the Western qualities of CNOOC, 70 percent of which is owned by the Chinese government. The team drafted "Dear Colleague" letters for members of Congress to pass on to their fellow legislators. Rep. James Moran, a Virginia Democrat, even stopped by Akin Gump's swanky offices for a personal briefing on CNOOC's bid.

"The lobbying on CNOOC was particularly intense on both sides," said Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., one of the founders of the U.S.-China Working Group, a new congressional panel that focuses on trade and diplomacy issues. "It was really symbolic of the problems that we are having defining what our relationship with China will be in the future."

While CNOOC's lobbying onslaught might seem an unusual strategy to be used by a state-owned company from the world's largest communist country, it is really just the latest and most visible example of China's long-running and rapidly escalating efforts to influence U.S. policy and public opinion.

It is a detailed database that could be shining a constant light on the shadowy and complicated world of Washington lobbyists working for foreign governments and overseas companies, a potentially invaluable tool for promoting government transparency, honesty and accountability.

Instead, the Foreign Agent Registration Act database housed at the Justice Department— which is a public record by law—is a shadowy, complicated beast. And that seems to be just fine with the government officials in charge of it.

For example, many of the most damning records in the Washington, D.C., scandal involving indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff lay buried in the FARA database until they were finally dug up by congressional investigators. The database is rich in such records, everything from meetings between government officials and high-powered lobbyists to public relations campaigns.

The Justice Department defended its stewardship of the FARA database when contacted by the Center for this report.

"It is the mission of the FARA office to provide public information in a timely, effective and fair manner," said Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra in an email response to questions from the Center. "The FARA staff is committed to providing publicly available information as quickly and efficiently as possible." (See the Center's response to Justice and the Department's reply.)