Maybe others see it differently than I do, but the actual spending isn't so much the issue. It's the fact that these people with so much money exist at all. That much money translates to a tremendous amount of power which allows them to bend the law to their will.

Is there any large-scale economic or political system which does not contain a group of elites possessing "a tremendous amount of power which allows them to bend the law to their will"? Not a theoretical one, but one existing in real life.