Former congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham had a bribe menu for lobbyists who wanted government contracts. Amazingly, it wasn’t just an understanding between friends, or a general concept. He actually wrote it down on his congressional stationery. As Brian Ross reported for ABC News:

The card shows an escalating scale for bribes, starting at $140,000 and a luxury yacht for a $16 million Defense Department contract. Each additional $1 million in contract value required a $50,000 bribe.

The rate dropped to $25,000 per additional million once the contract went above $20 million.

I love the volume discount. And I especially love the fact that Cunningham didn’t think his customers could handle the math involved in “it’s $50,000 for each million.” Instead, he wrote down each increment with “50” next to it. (See the card here.)

Now a Washington Post story ties lobbying fees to specific earmarks. Lobbying fees and earmarks are legal, of course, so this is not an illegal bribe menu. But I was struck by the cost-benefit ratio:

For example, the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, affiliated with the Florida University system, received an earmark valued at $2.3 million to conduct research for the Navy after paying Copeland Lowery $60,000 last year, according to House records and a spokeswoman for the institute.

The Rochester Institute of Technology received six earmarks valued at $8.9 million after paying Copeland Lowery $440,000 from 2002 to 2005.

The lobbying prices seem higher than Cunningham’s, but of course there was more overhead involved. And I’m no businessman, but I’m betting that it’s pretty hard to turn $440,000 into $8.9 million in manufacturing or other normal economic activity.

So you can see why, as long as Washington has far too much money to hand out, people will spend money to get a piece of it.