What You Don't Know About Lobbying Does Hurt You.

• Author: Moran, Gene
• Position: VIEWPOINT

There are three categories of lobbying in the defense industry: those who lobby; those who lobby but don't think they lobby; and those who have no real awareness of how lobbying could help them.

The best-performing federal contractors--as identified by Bloomberg Government--all lobby. Academic research confirms that lobbying in the executive branch and Congress can influence more favorable contract outcomes.

I sought to understand why so few defense companies lobby Congress when it can be advantageous.

It is no secret that several factors shape the consolidation of winners of defense contracts over time, including a shrinking industrial base, off shoring of critical manufacturing capacity, the introduction of other transaction authorities, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts and the relative increase in lobbying activity since the post-World War II era.

Over the past 30 years, registered federal lobbyists grew to more than 12,000, yet fewer than 1,000 registered lobbyists represent defense interests. Defense lobbying does not rank even among the top 10 industries that lobby Congress. How does that number of registered defense lobbyists align with the number of companies within the defense industry?

There are hundreds of thousands of companies competing within the defense industrial base. A Defense Department report on the defense industry in 2019 acknowledged it doesn't know the exact size of the defense industrial base, but that it could be one million companies.

For the sake of discussion, let's say that the number is only 250,000. That artificially small depiction of the industrial base still reveals a dramatic imbalance of registered representation. A fraction of one percent of defense companies is registered to lobby.

Prior research confirms half of defense acquisition dollars go to 50 companies and their subcontractors. Annually, the congressionally mandated small business set aside goals strive to assure that 25 percent of contract awards go to specific socioeconomic categories of small businesses. In defense, that 25 percent equates to roughly 50,000 companies annually.

While acknowledging the mix of dollars versus contracts in these statistics, the odds appear indeed long for the remaining companies vying for the last percentages of opportunity. If the competitive opportunity is so fierce, why would more companies not use every tool in their toolkit to gain better leverage?

The cynic might accept this as a question of a company's ability to allocate corporate resources of money, people and time to the lobbying process. Sadly, more powerful but addressable reasons help explain the lack of...