US lobby groups filed their second-quarter 2009 records (April, May and June) to the Senate Office of Public Records on Monday night.

The figures are trickling through (AP, or search the database yourself), and it’s no surprise that with landmark healthcare reform legislation working its way through Congress, drug-makers and healthcare trade associations have upped their lobbying efforts.

Compared with the same quarter in 2008, Eli Lilly increased lobbying spending by 26% to $3.6 million; Pfizer by 82% to $5.6 million; while the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the main trade association for the drug industry, increased spending by 24% to $6.2 million (Wall Street Journal). The Washington Post says the health-care lobby has a good chance of breaking records this quarter, and notes that even from January to March, health-care firms and their lobbyists spent money at the rate of $1.4 million a day.

With energy legislation also wending through Senate, that sector’s had even more of a lobbying bonanza, says the Wall Street Journal, which rates the health-care increase as merely “marginal”. The energy sector increased its spending by 21% compared to the same quarter in 2008, it says. The figures are particularly notable, as the financial sector has decreased its lobbying from last year.

As financial journalists squeeze more meaning out of these numbers, the premier place to visit for a wide-angle report will likely be the non-profit Washington, DC-based Center for Responsive Politics

Meanwhile in Europe, the main chemicals industry lobby group, Cefic (the European Chemical Industry Council) has been suspended from the European Commission’s voluntary register for two months, after “failing to declare its lobbying costs in line with Commission rules” (EuropeanVoice.com).

Cefic said it spent less than €50,000 on lobbying in 2007, a figure disputed by conservation group Friends of the Earth Europe. The voluntary register was set up in June 2008 to improve transparency on EU policymaking and interest groups.