Comment by roysting

It always has been. Frankly, sometimes they don't even spend anything at all at lower levels, it's just a conversation, a meeting with an animatronic bureaucrat high on their own self-importance and power, in a mandatory spending jukebox of incompetence and failure. I have seen people squander millions simply because they were too incompetent to properly run an organization, plan, and budget and they needed to spend the money merely so it is not taken from them next budget cycle. I am also witness to corruption and nepotism that wildly enriches people merely because doing so is easy and does not require actual work.

The return on "lobbying" for corporations is immense, actually, it's a bit of a high cost, high return with some risks type of dynamic; but especially in the Beltway bandit den and increasingly in the silicon cartel valley they have worked out a systematic methodology for bamboozling and manipulating utterly inadequately prepared bureaucrats squandering other people's money with approaching zero consequences. No, even they not only don't face consequences, they are promoted faster the better and faster they can squander money and enrich friends and associates.

Forget the lobby, the parlor is where it's at.