What if I told you that for every $1 you invested, your business would get $28 back?

A Business Week analysis of earmark and lobbying data shows just how lucrative hiring a lobbyist can be for a company looking for federal money:

The results suggest a startling conclusion: On average, companies generated roughly $28 in earmark revenue for every dollar they spent lobbying. And those at the very top did far better than the average: More than 20 companies pulled in $100 or more for every dollar spent. By any standard, that's a hefty ratio: The companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index brought in just $17.52 in revenues for every dollar of capital expenditure in 2006.