Citigroup Lobbyists Write 70 of 85 Lines in House Banking Deregulation Bill

Investigation revealed that Citigroup lobbyists drafted a House bill aimed at rolling back Dodd-Frank financial regulations, with 70 of the 85 lines in the final House legislation directly reflecting Citigroup’s recommendations. Two complete paragraphs were copied almost word-for-word from Citigroup’s draft, with House lawmakers only changing two words to make them plural. The bill, introduced by multiple House members including Financial Services Committee members, sought to allow banks to continue trading certain derivatives—precisely the complex financial instruments that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis and that Dodd-Frank sought to regulate.

Systematic Copy-Paste Legislation

The Citigroup case represented one of thousands of similar examples documented by a two-year investigation by USA Today, The Arizona Republic, and the Center for Public Integrity. The investigation found over 10,000 “copycat bills” between 2011 and 2019 that lifted entire passages directly from well-funded lobbyists and corporations, with 2,100 of these becoming law. The practice extended beyond financial services to oil and gas drilling, healthcare, telecommunications, and other industries where corporations provided complete legislative packages—bill language, talking points, and co-sponsor recruitment—to understaffed congressional offices willing to introduce industry-written legislation.

Financial Services Committee Industry Capture

The Citigroup bill demonstrated complete Financial Services Committee capture by the banking industry. Committee members introduced legislation written by the very banks they supposedly regulated, without disclosing corporate authorship to colleagues or constituents. This represented the logical endpoint of regulatory capture—not just influencing legislation, but literally writing it and finding lawmakers willing to introduce it under their own names. The practice proved particularly brazen in financial services, where the 2008 crisis should have prompted stricter oversight but instead led to industry efforts to weaken the resulting regulations through compliant committee members.

Congressional Staff Understaffing and Lobbyist Exploitation

Experts explained that congressional staff members, stretched incredibly thin while managing numerous bills across different policy areas, often welcomed lobbyist-drafted legislation as resource relief. Lobbyists offered lawmakers “all-in-one packages”—drafting specific bill language, writing talking points, and helping round up co-sponsors. This created a system where resource-constrained congressional offices essentially outsourced legislative drafting to industry lobbyists, who naturally wrote bills advancing corporate interests. The practice crossed party lines, with both Republicans and Democrats introducing lobbyist-drafted legislation, demonstrating how institutional capacity problems created opportunities for corporate capture.

Significance

The Citigroup case exposed the fiction that congressional representatives author legislation reflecting constituent interests. When 70 of 85 lines came directly from corporate drafts, with entire paragraphs copied word-for-word, lawmakers functioned as mere introducers of industry-written bills rather than legislators exercising independent judgment. The widespread nature of copy-paste legislation—10,000 bills over eight years, with 2,100 becoming law—revealed that this wasn’t isolated corruption but standard practice across multiple industries and both parties. The Financial Services Committee’s willingness to introduce Citigroup-drafted banking deregulation demonstrated that even post-crisis reforms couldn’t prevent industry from using compliant lawmakers to weaken regulations. The episode illustrated how regulatory capture operates at the most fundamental level—not just influencing votes or shaping debate, but literally writing the laws that govern corporate behavior. The lack of disclosure requirements meant voters remained unaware their representatives were introducing corporate-authored legislation, creating systematic deception about whose interests Congress actually served. The practice revealed that inadequate congressional staffing budgets—itself a policy choice—created structural conditions enabling corporate capture by making offices dependent on lobbyist resources for basic legislative functions.