Money in lobbying is almost entirely paying lobbyists to make PowerPoint presentations to staffers: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_lobb....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-strike...
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=...
OpenSecrets very misleadingly attributes all contributions from a company’s employees to the company itself. It’s propaganda.
I’m not even a big believer in the idea that our elections are bought and sold. We get roughly the government we idiots vote for. And an underlooked fact is that we elect inexperienced people to office, give them inexperienced staff, have them vote on topics they often barely understand (think of anything tech related). One big part of what lobbyists do is just show up with fancy talking points designed to appeal to the particular legislator. But denying that there’s a lot of money sloshing around doesn’t make sense.