There are lots of great Internet resources tracking U.S. campaign contributions from individuals, corporations and industry and lobby groups. How ever you may have to do further research to show how these contributions have influenced policy decisions (as they almost always do.)

Campaign Contributions

• Federal Elections Commission

• FECInfo Created by a former FEC employee, this site uses the Federal Election Commission's campaign contribution data, but presents it in a easy-to-use, searchable format.

• Center for Responsive Politics

• The Coin-Operated Congress are recent articles from the Mother Jones magazine, and searchable index of the 400 largest political donors. Searchable by name, industry, state and city. Profiles of the top contributors are also available.

Public Policy and the Corporate Agenda

• Environmental Working Group-Chronology of Corporate/Institutional Accountability 

• Corporate Europe Observatory: European-based research and campaign group

If you haven't yet, search CorpWatch for articles that expose corporate influence over governmental institutions. Also check out our Money and Politics section in the Issue Library.

Check out trade association websites:

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce

• National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

• American Petroleum Institute

Learn about conservative policy think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation.

Monitor corporate influence in the U.S. legislature by searching THOMAS, which includes full text access to bills under consideration in the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as the Congressional Record. The THOMAS Frequently Asked Questions list is a good "how-to" on searching legislation and other congressional information.