Sometimes, it pays to be paranoid. That's apparently the belief of the trade group that represents the makers of sugary beverages like soft drinks, sports and energy drinks.

It spent more than $7 million in just three months this summer and early fall lobbying Congress as it fought a proposed tax on its products to help pay for health care.

It's a lot to spend to fight off an idea that was, by all accounts, already dead. But it's also a prime example of "defensive lobbying" _ when trade associations and high-priced lobbyists gear up to protect their members and clients from costly action by Congress, even if there's little chance it will ever happen.

The practice is a lucrative, no-lose proposition for lobbyists and industry groups, who prove their worth by keeping the companies that depend on them out of lawmakers' crosshairs. They can always argue convincingly that one can never be certain when Congress, scraping for cash at a time of soaring deficits, might come looking to levy a new industry tax.

Cosmetic surgeons and makers of breast implants and wrinkle-smoothing Botox learned the hard way last month that you can never be too vigilant, after Senate Democrats unveiled health legislation that would slap a 5 percent tax on all elective cosmetic procedures performed after Jan. 1, 2010. Their lobbyists had been told there was little chance that the levy, nicknamed the "Botax," would end up in the overhaul. But with analysts projecting it could raise as much as $6 billion over a decade, it ultimately proved too attractive to pass up for negotiators scrounging for ways to pay for the bill.

Prudent lobbying interests in the capital see it as their mission to be on alert for threats, no matter how remote. Recent examples include the hedge fund industry's fight against a new tax, and efforts of a national farmers' association to forestall regulation of cow methane emissions.

So it is that the American Beverage Association and a broad industry coalition it organized called Americans Against Food Taxes are splashing advertisements across the pages of Capitol Hill newspapers and their Web sites exhorting people to "Help stop the tax." That would be the soda tax that few, if any, believe will end up in the health measure.

The group has spent more than $8.7 million this year lobbying Congress, about 13 times what it spent last year. The sums include roughly $5 million for a television, newspaper and Internet advertising campaign, the cost of an economic study by a professor that found a soda tax could cost the industry as much as $10 billion, and four in-house lobbyists and 15 from outside who reported helping fight the proposal.