That looks like a big number, but it is $8.6M ? Is that a lot?

No it's not. Lobbying in that reported sense is also a very small slice of persuading politicians and regulators and bureaucrats.

PHRMA plays big in politics, 501c4 space etc.

They also are known for the revolving door which is hard to quantify, but surely it makes a big difference on regs. Look at the Purdue, they got the regulator responsible for approving the label to actually sit in a hotel room and help write their oxy label together...

Here's an article shows "in the US from 1999 to 2018, found that the pharmaceutical and health product industry spent $4.7 billion, an average of $233 million per year, on lobbying the US federal government; $414 million on contributions to presidential and congressional electoral candidates, national party committees, and outside spending groups; and $877 million on contributions to state candidates and committees."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7054854/

I double checked -- another source[0] mentions amounts that are a bit higher:

"The Chamber [of Commerce] spent nearly $82 million on lobbying in 2020"

But generally in line with the list posted by the GP:

"Facebook and Amazon were the only companies in the top 10 spending list and spent nearly $19.7 million and more than $18.7 million on lobbying in 2020, respectively"

I too, am surprised as how little this is for these gigantic companies ($20M for FB? 1/1000th of their quarterly revenue?) and more generally, how little money this is... in comparison with the entire US government budget?

Sorry, this is probably all obvious? Just a bit.. sad?

[0] https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/536082-us-chamber-nu...

How much do you think lobbyists should earn instead?

Really. Who doesn't get how cheap our politicians come? Old joke about Spiro Agnew (Nixon's VP who had to resign because he took around $30,000 in bribes while Governor of Maryland years before): When Armstrong set foot on the Moon he would have been set for life if his first words had just been "Coca Cola!" Of course if it had been Agnew he probably would have said something like, "Fred's Tailor Shop, Baltimore!" Point is, US politicians really do come cheap. Political favors are a wholesale business, they make out on volume.

It was purposefully written to mislead, hence the lack of commas or the M suffix. So yeah, it is definitely not a lot. For comparison, Facebook alone spent $17M on lobbying in 2019.

Its certainly more than I paid in taxes

Do you think this is a big number? $8mm across a huge industry is barely enough to get a legal team out of bed. This is really pocket change.

What about $8664000.00? I made it slightly longer. I can add some more zeroes.

So much evil in 1 list.