For Every $1 They Lobby, They Get $49,536 Back: The Exposed ROI of Government Contractors

The $49,536 Return

TriWest Healthcare Alliance spent $270,000 lobbying Congress between 2018 and 2025. During the same period, they received $13.4 billion in federal contracts — primarily through the VA's Community Care Network. That's a return of $49,536 for every dollar lobbied.

To put that in perspective: if you invested $1 in the S&P 500 in 2018, you'd have about $2.10 today. TriWest's lobbying returned 24,000 times more than the stock market.

And TriWest isn't an outlier. It's just the most extreme example in a pattern that repeats across the entire federal contracting ecosystem.

The Full Picture: 21 Contractors, $183.8 Billion

We matched the top federal contractors (by total contract value on USASpending.gov) against lobbying disclosure filings from the Senate LDA database. Here's what we found:

The Visual: Lobbying Is a Rounding Error

The lobbying spend is so small relative to contract value that it barely registers on a chart. Consider the top 5 by ROI:

Why This Happens: Rent-Seeking 101

Economists have a term for this: rent-seeking. When the government controls trillions of dollars in contracts, grants, and spending, rational actors will invest in influence rather than innovation. Why build a better product when you can hire a better lobbyist?

This isn't a left-or-right issue. It's a structural incentive problem. When the federal government spends $6.7 trillion a year, the ROI on political influence will always dwarf the ROI on productive investment. The bigger the government budget, the bigger the lobbying industry.

Consider: Lockheed Martin spent $141.6 million lobbying over this period — by far the most of any contractor. They received $58.8 billion in contracts. Their ROI "only" 415:1 — but in absolute terms, they got more than any other company. The math works whether you spend $270K or $141M.

Defense Dominates — But It's Not Alone

Defense contractors are heavily represented — Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Huntington Ingalls. The Pentagon budget is the single largest discretionary spending category, so it naturally attracts the most lobbying.

But the highest ROIs don't come from defense. They come from healthcare (TriWest, McKesson, QTC Medical) and niche contractors (Amentum, Atlantic Diving Supply) that fly under the radar. These companies lobby quietly, spend modestly, and receive enormous contract values — often through sole-source or limited-competition procurements.

What This Means

We're not alleging corruption. Lobbying is legal. Federal contracts go through procurement processes. Many of these companies provide genuine value to the government.

But the scale of the return should make every taxpayer uncomfortable. When a company can turn $270,000 in lobbying into $13.4 billion in contracts, the incentive structure is clear:lobbying is the highest-return investment in the American economy.

That's not a market outcome. It's a political one. And as long as the federal government remains the largest purchaser of goods and services on Earth, this dynamic will persist.

The only antidote is transparency. Know who's lobbying. Know what they're getting. Connect the dots.