The Olympics has seen its share of sketchy financial maneuvering in the recent past, from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic bribery scandal to the alleged corruption surrounding this year’s games in Sochi.

But with the curtain about to go up on the opening ceremonies and some team and qualifying events in the 22nd edition of the winter games, it naturally occurred to us to wonder how the U.S. Olympic Committee invests its money — perfectly legally — in Washington. Politics and sports, after all, aren’t mutually exclusive.

Traditionally, the U.S. Olympic Committee didn’t spend much on lobbying, only once breaking $250,000 before 2007. But that year, it crept up to $280,000, and by 2009 it had spiked to $475,000. It has dropped back a bit, as has the lobbying spending of most entities, but in 2013 the committee still spent $360,000.

Many of the committee’s most-lobbied issues have to do with sports, athletics, travel and tourism, which appeared on a combined 23 of the committee’s disclosure reports over the past two years. But surprisingly, the No. 1 issue the committee lobbied on over the past two years was veterans’ affairs, which appeared on its disclosure reports 23 times.



The reason? The USOC uses much of its lobbying power to push for increased funding for the Paralympic Games, the separate, Olympics-style competition for athletes with disabilities. The USOC and the Department of Veterans Affairs have frequently worked together to train vets for the Paralympics through a variety of programs, most notably the Veteran Athlete Training Allowance, which gives out $2 million annually to help condition disabled veterans for a spot in the games. Other training programs, like the U.S. Paralympic and Military Veterans Program, have been funded through defense bills like the National Defense Authorization Act. The committee lobbied hard on that bill in 2012, listing it four times in its disclosure reports.



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