With scores of revolving door connections, more than $1 million in campaign contributions and clients that receive most of their contracts from the Pentagon without competition, only one defense lobbying firm can claim to give its clients "an inside track to business opportunities with the federal government."
The PMA Group, a lobbying firm that specializes in defense contracting, has reported receiving $21.7 million in lobbying fees since 1998 from large defense companies—the most paid to any defense lobbying firm, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.
A PMA spokesman said he would not comment on the Center's report.
The fees paid to PMA appear to have paid off for these 41 defense contractors and their parent companies, who collectively won $266 billion in contracts from the Pentagon during the last six years. That amounts to almost 30 percent of the dollar value of all contracts awarded by the Department of Defense.
Though these companies spent another $121 million employing in-house lobbyists and occasionally other lobbying firms, PMA clients' total lobbying versus contracts works out to a ratio of almost $1,859 in contracts for every dollar spent on lobbying.
Of the $266 billion that PMA clients and their parents received in defense contracts, $167 billion—nearly two out of three dollars—were received from contracts that were awarded without "full and open" competition. In fact, PMA clients account for 47 percent of all such non-competitive contracts handed out by the Pentagon since 1998.
Lobby firms like PMA have become a staple of political influence. In all, defense contractors have reported spending $537 million on outside lobbying firms like PMA during the last six years, while they have spent $1.4 billion on in-house lobbying.