Please do the following as you read and annotate this article.
You must demonstrate that you have read and interacted with the text. By INTERACTING WITH the text I mean that you have personalized it by marking your questions and reactions in the margin next to the text. Some people think of this as having a dialogue or a conversation with the actual words on the page. Things you should consider doing include:
v circling and then looking up any vocabulary words/concepts that you do not know
v underlining key phrases
v keeping track of the text’s main ideas as they unfold
v noting anything that strikes you as confusing or important
v writing down questions that you would like to ask your classmates
Retrieved 10/13/11 from http://www.opensecrets.org/resources/dollarocracy/10.php
The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money-in-Politics
As surely as water flows downhill, money in politics flows to where the power is. Individuals and interest groups who want to influence lawmakers will spend their campaign contributions where they count the most: with the politicians in the best position to deliver what they're looking for. That means incumbents get vastly more than challengers, committee chairmen and legislative leaders get more than rank-and-file members, and parties in power get more than parties in the minority.
Incumbents vs. Challengers
Interest groups like safe bets, and in the political world nothing is so safe as giving money to a politician who's already in office. Re-election rates are so high that nearly all interest groups give an overwhelming majority of their campaign dollars to incumbents. They typically reserve a small amount of their budget for promising candidates in open seat races where no incumbent is running -- and very little, if anything, to challengers seeking to oust the current office-holder. Labor unions are more likely to take a chance on a new candidate than business groups, but even they put the great majority of their dollars into the reelection campaigns of incumbents.
Congressional Committees
In the halls of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., most of the nitty-gritty work of crafting new laws gets done not on the floor of the House or Senate, but at the committee level. No important bill is considered without first winning approval from at least one committee, and often several. Those committees are thus enormously important to the industries they oversee. Because of that, expect members of the Agriculture committee to get the biggest contributions from agribusiness interests; Banking Committee members to get the most from banks, etc. And expect the chairmen of the committees -- and ranking minority members -- to be at the head of the donation list. This pattern is so strong that when a member of Congress changes committees, his or her profile of financial support typically changes with it.
Majority vs. Minority Party
When the balance of power changes on Capitol Hill, the contributions from interest groups shift almost immediately to the party in control. It's so predictable you can actually see the shift in a graph. Even interest groups that predominately give to one party or the other -- such as labor unions giving to Democrats -- shift at least some of their money to newly-powerful members of the other party. For interest groups that have always been generous to both sides, a shift in party control on Capitol Hill usually means the majority of their dollars will now go to the side in power.
The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money-in-Politics
Polls show that voters, in general, don't like Congress. But even in the tumultuous 2010 elections, most incumbents who sought reelection were successful. It may not surprise you, then, that major donors give the great majority of their campaign dollars to incumbents. It's usually a very safe bet to make.
More true in House than in Senate
The 2010 elections saw one of the lowest reelection rates for the US House of Representatives in the past 40 years - but even so, nearly 9 out of every 10 incumbents seeking reelection won their races. Normally, the House reelection rate is in the mid-to-high 90s. US Senate races have tended to fluctuate more widely; over the past 20 years they've ranged from a high of 96 percent to a low of 79 percent.
Millionaire candidates
Millionaire candidates present one of the more credible threats to an incumbent, but they don't have a very good track record. During the 2010 election cycle, only 11 of 58 millionaire candidates who challenged House and Senate incumbents using their own money to finance their campaign actually won.
The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money-in-Politics
Campaigns with money can reach voters with commercials, flyers, mailings -- more often and often more effectively. Candidates with minimal cash have a hard time just getting voters to recognize their name.
More than half the House races have a 10:1 or more spending imbalance
The 2010 elections saw one of the lowest reelection In the 2010 Congressional elections, only 20 percent of the 435 contests featured candidates where spending was roughly equal - with neither candidate spending more than twice as much as the other.
The rising price of admission
Does the rising cost of elections discourage those without monied connections, or money themselves, from running for elected office? Consider this: The average winner of a U.S. House race in 2008 spent about $1.4 million. The Senate? About six times more. Hiring staff, running ads and otherwise operating a robust campaign is evermore expensive. And each mid-term election or presidential election cycle costs more than the previous one -- by a lot. Once all the data is in, OpenSecrets.org predicts the 2010 midterm election will cost $4 billion ñ 40% more than the 2006 midterm election. The recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission could precipitate tens of millions more in spending by special interest groups attempting to advance their agendas.
The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money-in-Politics
Every politician loves to talk about all the "small" donations they've received, But the money that really pays for elections comes from big donors, not little ones.
If you've never given money to a politician in your life, join the club. Polls have shown that less than 10% of Americans have ever given a contribution to candidates for any office, at any level. And if you look at contributions big enough to be reported to the Federal Election Commission -- $200 or more -- the number of Americans contributing in a typical election year is infinitesimal. Even in the presidential election year of 2008, which saw more people giving than ever before, barely more than one-half of one percent gave more than $200 to a federal candidate, political action committee or party.
So where does a candidate turn when they're trying to raise the money to run? Four main sources: political action committees (PACs), large individual donors, small donors, and the candidate's personal fortune. The mix between these sources varies with the office. The chart below show the breakdown for congressional candidates from the 2008 elections.
Large contributions from individuals
Individual donors account for about two-thirds of the money going to Senate candidates and about half the money going to House candidates. Contribution limits are indexed to inflation. The limit for 2010 is $2,400 per person for each election (or $4,800 for the entire election cycle, covering both the primary and general elections).
Under federal law, all contributions of more than $200 to federal candidates, PACs, or parties must be itemized and disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. Donors must report their name, address, employer and occupation and these records are publicly available from the FEC and several other website
PACs
Political action committees, or PACs, account for roughly one-third of the campaign cash collected by candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, and about 16% of the money raised by Senate candidates. There are today about 4,000 PACs giving actively in federal elections. Most are sponsored by corporations, trade associations and other business and professional groups like the American Medical Association. The money comes not from the sponsoring organization, but from its employees or members. (That's how they get around the 100-year-old ban on corporate and union contributions to federal candidates.)
They're also the primary means that labor unions use to raise money for their political allies, which is why Democrats rely more heavily on PAC money than Republicans. (Historically, over 90% of labor PAC contributions have gone to Democrats.)
To politicians trying to raise funds for their next elections, PACs have one big advantage over individual donors -- their contribution limits are higher. PACs can contribute up to $5,000 per election to federal candidates. (And since the primary election and general election each count separately under federal rules, a PAC can actually give a maximum of $10,000 to one candidate in a typical election year.)
Ideological PACs, including "leadership PACs" operated by members of Congress, are the ones most likely to give to political newcomers, as opposed to incumbents. But even they give slightly more than half their dollars to politicians already in office. Labor PACs give about two-thirds of their money to incumbents. Business PACs give current office-holders more than 90% of their dollars.
Small individual donors
Donations from individuals giving $200 or less make up a fairly small wedge in the fund-raising pie: a little over 10 percent of the money collected by House members and about 15 percent for Senators. These donations need not be itemized, but only reported in lump sum to the FEC.
Candidate cash
Because of the ever-rising cost of political campaigns, many newcomers are forced to dig deeply into their own pockets for money to run their first campaign for Congress. There are no limits to what a candidate can give to his or her own race, as long as it's his or her own money. Once in office, however, most candidates never have to spend another dime of their personal fortune. In fact, many who've loaned money to their first campaign pay themselves back with contributions collected after they've won office.
Rules of the game: Contribution limits
2010 Contribution Limits
The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money-in-Politics
There are literally hundreds of different special interest groups seeking to promote their agenda by way of the wallet -- from Big Oil to pharmaceuticals, to liberal and conservative ideological groups. Though these groups unload tens of millions of dollars annually through political action committees, big-spending individual donors make up the bulk of political contributions in the United States.
There are dozens and dozens of interest groups
There are literally hundreds of different special interest groups seeking to promote their agenda by way of the wallet -- from Big Oil to Big Labor, pharmaceutical companies to cable TV operators, and a full spectrum of ideological groups from the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association. The money they deliver to politicians, year after year, is what pays the biggest part of the bill for American elections.
The "Investigate the Interests" section of this app will give you plenty of details on which groups have given how much to whom, and the graphic above shows the big picture.
The most generous contributions each year have always come from the financial sector, which includes such powerhouses as the insurance industry, banks, investment firms and real estate. If anyone understands the power of long-term investments, this group does. Whether the issue is health care reform, banking regulation (and bailouts), or oversight of Wall Street, the financial sector speaks with the loudest voice in Washington -- both in campaign contributions and in lobbying.
Over the years their money has been split fairly evenly between Democrats and Republicans, with the biggest share generally tipping to the party that's currently in control of Congress.
Of the nine other business sectors, the only ones giving a majority of their dollars to Democrats have been Lawyers & Lobbyists (71% to Democrats) and Communications & Electronics (59% to Democrats). All the others give more to Republicans, but different patterns prevail in different industries. Some, like timber companies, mining firms and the oil & gas industry, have always been heavily Republican, no matter who's in power. Others shift their dollars with the prevailing winds in Washington, giving very generously to Republicans when they're in control of Congress and somewhat less generously to Democrats when they're in power.
Even within sectors, there is sometimes wide variance. Hollywood money has always been very Democratic, but cable operators and TV stations that air Hollywood's movies have generally preferred Republicans. The point here is that "business" giving is not monolithic, even if business groups in general prefer Republicans.
Labor unions do tend to be much more partisan, sticking with Democrats through thick and thin. But even among unions there are variations -- with transportation unions like the Teamsters and sea transport unions giving much more generously to Republicans than their counterparts in other unions.
How do we know all this?
Since 1990, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington has sifted through the records of millions of federal campaign contributions, classifying each of them by the industry or interest group of the donor. Political action committee contributions are classified according to the organization sponsoring the PAC. Individual donations are classified based on the occupation and employer of the donor.
All contributions are sorted into one of 13 main sectors -- 10 of them business sectors, from agribusiness to transportation, and one each for labor, ideological, and "other". Those sectors are broken down further into about 100 "industries" and over 400 detailed categories within them.