The authors of a recent Roosevelt Institute paper identified a series of high-profile cases in which political contributions influenced members of Congress on key floor votes involving financial reform.
To examine the influence of big money, the authors of the study focused on five votes in the U.S. House of Representatives relating to the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill. They isolated specific representatives who initially voted in favor of the bill and subsequently voted to dismantle some of its key provisions. What they found was a direct link between voting behavior and campaign contributions from the financial sector.
According to the paper, “for every $100,000 that Democratic representatives received from finance, the odds they would break with their party’s majority support for the Dodd-Frank legislation increased by 13.9 percent. Democratic representatives who voted in favor of finance often received $200,000–$300,000 from that sector, which raised the odds of switching by 25–40 percent.
The authors found similar results with telecommunications legislation. In a 2006 vote on network neutrality, every $1,000 in contributions from an anti-net-neutrality firm equated to a 2.6 percent greater chance of voting in those interests’ favor.
Thomas Ferguson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston, a Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and a co-author of the paper, says clearly money doesn’t just influence politics—it drives it....Calling it what it is — corruption.
Their “spectrum of political money” highlights eight ways outside cash shapes political decision-making. These include payments to lawyers, political figures and foundations; money spent on lobbying and think tanks; formal campaign spending, the value of stock tips to political figures and public relations spending. Money flowing through these avenues is perfectly legal but often difficult to trace, creating countless opportunities for corruption....Corruption has been institutionalized. This is the most difficult type of corruption to detect, since it is legalized and incorporate into the culture.
In These Times
Want Proof that Corporate Money Influences Politicians? This New Study Has It.
Charles Austin
