While I don't know the answer to your question, I have always had a similar reaction to seeing actual numbers involved in lobbying. It usually went like this: someone would seem outraged at how much money a representative had received from "the oil and gas industry". Then I'd look at the numbers and think to myself, "There's no way that amount of money could buy what people are claiming that it bought."
I only recently discovered this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox which I found very interesting.