Source: Data compiled from OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics), Public Citizen’s “Under the Influence” report, Senate and House financial disclosures, IRS Form 990 filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) filings. Covers 297 members of Congress who left office between 2014 and 2026. Compensation data was only publicly available for 30 of 297 members ($107M total documented). The remaining 267 have no publicly accessible post-Congress compensation records.
Tool: Python (Plotly) for the Sankey diagram, rendered at 2x scale.
Old_Key_0 on
Can you drill into it to see which firms they’re working for like Deloitte, Lockheed, etc. ?
e_lizbit on
Why are private business and retired combined? Seems like it would be valuable to separate them
Replevin4ACow on
I don’t love that this is the way things are. But I am not sure what the alternative is — ban former congresspeople from getting certain jobs or making a certain amount of money? Things like that would just discourage folks that aren’t already wealthy from running for congress and just exacerbate the plutocracy we already have. Not to mention being constitutionally questionable.
trojan-813 on
The academia is curious. I would’ve never thought they would’ve ended up there.
5 Comments
Source: Data compiled from OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics), Public Citizen’s “Under the Influence” report, Senate and House financial disclosures, IRS Form 990 filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) filings. Covers 297 members of Congress who left office between 2014 and 2026. Compensation data was only publicly available for 30 of 297 members ($107M total documented). The remaining 267 have no publicly accessible post-Congress compensation records.
Tool: Python (Plotly) for the Sankey diagram, rendered at 2x scale.
Can you drill into it to see which firms they’re working for like Deloitte, Lockheed, etc. ?
Why are private business and retired combined? Seems like it would be valuable to separate them
I don’t love that this is the way things are. But I am not sure what the alternative is — ban former congresspeople from getting certain jobs or making a certain amount of money? Things like that would just discourage folks that aren’t already wealthy from running for congress and just exacerbate the plutocracy we already have. Not to mention being constitutionally questionable.
The academia is curious. I would’ve never thought they would’ve ended up there.