Drug makers have been getting their $2.3 billion worth in Washington. That is how much they have spent lobbying Congress over the last decade. It may help explain why no legislative proposal to rein in rising prescription prices has gone anywhere. The latest outcry involving Mylan will put that hefty investment in influence to its biggest test.

American lawmakers are prodding the company about its decision to raise the list price on its EpiPen allergy medicine. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, are among the many elected officials to send letters to Mylan this week. It follows similar scrutiny of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Turing Pharmaceuticals. J. Michael Pearson, the former chief executive at Valeant, and Martin Shkreli, his former counterpart at Turing, were grilled by legislators this year.

The tough talk has led nowhere, though. Some 15 bills to curb drug prices, including one that would allow Americans to import from approved Canadian pharmacies where the same treatments are often cheaper, have been introduced in this Congress. Not one has made it out of lower committees. Another 119 similar proposals dating to 2005 suffered similar fates. Since 2009, lawmakers have been at loggerheads about pretty much everything, but tension over drug prices has been on the rise while the number of formal plans to address the problem has decreased.

All the while, the pharmaceutical industry has been spreading dollars around the nation’s capital. Drug makers doled out $240 million for lobbying purposes last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, making it the biggest spender. The insurance industry was second, at $157 million.