Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, had a very successful year backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort.
Among the industry's successes were getting two controversial laws extended, and thwarting congressional efforts to restrict media ads for prescription drugs.
The spending represents a 32 percent jump over 2006 numbers, driven in part by a busy legislative calendar dominated by issues critical to the industry. The amount spent by drug interests on federal lobbying in the past decade now exceeds $1 billion.
More than 90 percent of the total was spent by 40 companies and 3 trade groups.