Interact with the 'US Senate Lobbying Disclosure API'

Download and read data on lobbying in the United States Congress. Data is queried from the Senate's Application Programming Interface (< https://lda.senate.gov/api/>). This supports filings since 2008. Functions exist for all primary data endpoints, including queries by filings, contributions, registrations, clients, and lobbyists.

lobby

lobby provides access to the US Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act API.

Installation

You can install the development version of lobby like so:

pak::pak('christopherkenny/lobby')

Example

To get filings, simply use the lob_list_filings() function to list all filings that match your criteria. For example, to get all filings for Harvard University in 2025:

library(lobby)
lob_list_filings(client_name = 'Harvard University', filing_year = 2025)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 30
#>   url      filing_uuid filing_type filing_type_display filing_year filing_period
#>   <chr>    <chr>       <chr>       <chr>                     <int> <chr>        
#> 1 https:/… 0463abad-8… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 2 https:/… fbe714ff-3… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 3 https:/… 785c0620-7… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 4 https:/… 761c6e5a-f… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 5 https:/… 937d9dc1-c… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> 6 https:/… b9247859-4… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> # ℹ 24 more variables: filing_period_display <chr>, filing_document_url <chr>,
#> #   filing_document_content_type <chr>, income <chr>, expenses <chr>,
#> #   expenses_method <chr>, expenses_method_display <chr>, posted_by_name <chr>,
#> #   dt_posted <chr>, termination_date <lgl>, registrant_country <chr>,
#> #   registrant_ppb_country <lgl>, registrant_address_1 <chr>,
#> #   registrant_address_2 <lgl>, registrant_different_address <lgl>,
#> #   registrant_city <chr>, registrant_state <chr>, registrant_zip <chr>, …

You can also request the next set using the lob_request_next() function. Here, we also artificially shorten the results to 3 per page.

lob_list_filings(
  client_name = 'Harvard University',
  filing_year = 2025,
  page_size = 3
) |>
  lob_request_next()
#> # A tibble: 6 × 30
#>   url      filing_uuid filing_type filing_type_display filing_year filing_period
#>   <chr>    <chr>       <chr>       <chr>                     <int> <chr>        
#> 1 https:/… 0463abad-8… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 2 https:/… fbe714ff-3… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 3 https:/… 785c0620-7… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 4 https:/… 761c6e5a-f… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 5 https:/… 937d9dc1-c… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> 6 https:/… b9247859-4… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> # ℹ 24 more variables: filing_period_display <chr>, filing_document_url <chr>,
#> #   filing_document_content_type <chr>, income <chr>, expenses <chr>,
#> #   expenses_method <chr>, expenses_method_display <chr>, posted_by_name <chr>,
#> #   dt_posted <chr>, termination_date <lgl>, registrant_country <chr>,
#> #   registrant_ppb_country <lgl>, registrant_address_1 <chr>,
#> #   registrant_address_2 <lgl>, registrant_different_address <lgl>,
#> #   registrant_city <chr>, registrant_state <chr>, registrant_zip <chr>, …

To get more details, you can retrieve a specific filing by its UUID using lob_retrieve_filing():

lob_retrieve_filing(filing_uuid = '0463abad-89e8-4d9d-b72c-a0b8aa66c6b0')
#> # A tibble: 1 × 30
#>   url      filing_uuid filing_type filing_type_display filing_year filing_period
#>   <chr>    <chr>       <chr>       <chr>                     <int> <chr>        
#> 1 https:/… 0463abad-8… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> # ℹ 24 more variables: filing_period_display <chr>, filing_document_url <chr>,
#> #   filing_document_content_type <chr>, income <lgl>, expenses <chr>,
#> #   expenses_method <chr>, expenses_method_display <chr>, posted_by_name <chr>,
#> #   dt_posted <chr>, termination_date <lgl>, registrant_country <chr>,
#> #   registrant_ppb_country <lgl>, registrant_address_1 <chr>,
#> #   registrant_address_2 <lgl>, registrant_different_address <lgl>,
#> #   registrant_city <chr>, registrant_state <chr>, registrant_zip <chr>, …

Similar endpoints exist for clients, lobbyists, registrants, and contributions. You can look up constants that can used for filtering using the lob_constants_*() functions.

Authentication

To sign up for an API key, visit the US Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act API sign-up website.

Once you have your key, you can set it in your environment as USSLDA_KEY. You can:

1. Add this directly to your .Renviron file with a line like so

USSLDA_KEY='yourkey'

If doing this, I recommend using usethis::edit_r_environ() to ensure that you open the correct .Renviron file.

1. Set this in you current R session with Sys.setenv(USSLDA_KEY='yourkey').

2. Set this using the lobby::set_lobby_key() function. To save this for future sessions, run with install = TRUE.