Key Findings:

Almost 1,800 special interest groups of all kinds are trying to influence Congress, as it races against time to enact a giant new transportation bill. Notorious for earmarks like Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere,” Congress’s funding of transportation has become a broken process influenced by special interests. Interest groups employed 2,100 lobbyists and spent an estimated $45 million to lobby lawmakers on transportation in the first half of 2009 — a spending pace on par with the amount spent lobbying on climate change.