Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), a co-sponsor and major supporter of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), deleted a retweet of an analysis of contributions to lawmakers from pro-CISPA companies. MapLight looked at the powerful House Intelligence Committee, where Rep. Rogers serves as Chairman, and followed campaign contributions to the members who are currently considering the bill that would allow companies to share more information on Internet traffic and users with the U.S. government.

Rep. Rogers, or possibly a member of his staff, retweeted the story that identified that members of the House Intelligence Committee "have received, on average, 15 times more money in campaign contributions from pro-CISPA organizations than from anti-CISPA organizations." He retweeted MapLight's tweet of this information from his iPhone and after 23 minutes thought better of it and removed it. Fortunately the Sunlight Foundation's Politwoops project caught it and archived this change of message and of heart. According to the MapLight piece, Rep. Rogers received $214,750 from interest groups that support CISPA.

To follow all the action and updates on CISPA, check out our collection of alerts in Scout.

As the pundits debate what the addition of Paul Ryan to the GOP presidential ticket means for the race, one sure thing the presumptive candidate for vice president brings to the campaign is a prodigious fundraising ability. According to today’s Washington Post, as a mere congressional candidate, Ryan has raised more than $8 million for this year’s election. That figure will soon be dwarfed when he starts dialing for dollars as a national candidate. But, it is safe to assume that, like the man at the top of the ticket, he will keep secret the identities of some of the most influential donors to the campaign—the bundlers who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in one fell swoop and get unprecedented access to the candidates in return.

President Obama, like presidential candidates on the right and left before him, voluntarily discloses his bundlers. Sunlight and others have called for the Romney campaign to do the same, but as with his tax returns, Romney seems unwilling to voluntarily disclose more than he is legally required to.

It would be nice to be able to trust our potential leaders to do the right thing, but since we can’t, there oughta be a law. Conveniently enough, language to require disclosure bundler has already been written. Part of the Presidential Funding Act (S. 3312 and H.R. 414) would require presidential candidate committees to report the name, address, and employer of each person who provided 2 or more bundled contributions totaling $50,000 or more to the campaign, as well as the amount of the contributions.

Under current law, campaigns must publicly identify individuals who contribute $200 or more. Disclosure of bundlers who happen to be registered lobbyists is also required. The missing piece is disclosure of the elite individuals who have the ability to hit up their friends, family, neighbors and business associates to amass six figure contributions that make a big impact on candidates. Big enough to warrant weekly phone calls with the campaign, invitations to retreats with the candidates, the possibility of plum assignments like ambassadorships if the candidate is elected, and access to the leaders of the free world to attempt to influence them on policy.

Now that there is precedent, future presidential candidates may, like Romney, decide to keep secret the identity of their major funders. Rather than rely on candidates’ moral compasses to steer them toward transparency, Congress should remove the option of secrecy and enact a law to require that presidential candidates disclose their bundlers.

In 2011, the U.S. federal government awarded $537 billion in private contracts. If U.S. federal contracts were their own national economy, they would be the 21^st largest in the world, just behind Sweden ($538 billion). In other words, this is a lot of money.

Much of this money goes to large corporations, and many of these large corporations are also major campaign contributors. Which begs the obvious question: is there any connection between contract awards and contributions?

According to a recent study by St. Louis University political scientist Christopher Witko, the answer is that indeed there is. The more companies give in campaign contributions, the more they get in contracts, on average.

Looking at campaign contributions and contracts from 1979 to 2006, Witko found “a significant relationship between contributions and the receipt of future contracts,” in a paper entitled “Campaign Contributions, Access, and Government Contracting,” published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

He estimates that for each additional $201,220 in campaign contributions (one standard deviation of the contributions variable), a company can expect to add 107 additional government contracts over what we would otherwise expect them to obtain, given their history and reputation. Since the average government contract in 2006 (the last year Witko looked at the data) was $49,800, 107 contracts would mean an additional $5.3 million in revenue.

Some quick back-of-the-envelope math: if we assume contractors make 10 percent profit on an average contract, $5.3 million in contracts would be worth $530,000 in profits. That would mean campaign contributions pay back more than double their initial investment.

For those who want to better understand the links between campaign contributions and federal contracts, we remind you that data for both are available on our Influence Explorer website.

Witko’s basic theory is that government contracts give campaign contributions to get access to members of Congress who then “can influence the decision making of public managers,” usually through their oversight roles. It’s certainly a plausible theory, and one that Witko illustrates with case studies from the no-bid contract that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root received to develop the Iraq oil infrastructure and the no-bid contracts that Bechtel, Fluor, Shaw Group and CH2M Hill received through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help clean up New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The data cover 367 firms.

As Witko notes in his article, between 2000 and 2007, the number of no-bid contracts tripled, reaching 207 billion, and as of 2005, roughly 40% of contracts did not arise from full competitive bidding processes. More recently, the Obama administration got into some trouble for a $433 million no-bid contract for the maker of an experimental smallpox vaccine.

Yet the Obama administration also deserves some credit for proposing to require federal contractors to disclose their political spending when they submit contract bids. The proposal, however, met with significant opposition in Congress, much to our chagrin. It has not become law.

Witko’s research offers some insight as to why this kind of disclosure matters. It’s also fodder for the cynical hypothesis about why Congress would oppose this kind of disclosure – because members don’t want it to be known just how much these contractors are buying with their political contributions.

Though those of us who study money in politics tend to focus on its effects on legislation and regulation, two recent research papers suggest another way in which money might have an effect: it helps companies and executives who commit fraud evade detection and avoid harsh penalties.

In one paper, “Corporate Lobbying and Fraud Detection,” Frank Yu and Xiaoyun Yu find that firms that lobby evade detection for fraud almost four months longer than non-lobbying firms and are 38% less likely to be detected for fraud as compared to non-lobbying firms.

In another paper, “Political Contributions and the Severity of Government Enforcement,” Sarah Fulmer and April Knill find that executives at firms who made PAC contributions get lighter sentences than those who don’t.

In other words, being politically engaged appears to help firms and individuals get away with fraud for longer and, even when they are detected, reduce the severity of punishment.

The “Corporate Lobbying and Fraud Detection” paper studied lobbying from 1998 to 2004, comparing the 239 firms that had committed financial fraud with those who hadn’t. The researchers found a few very interesting things:

• On average, firms that committed fraud spent $3.48 million lobbying a year between 1998 and 2004, as compared to $1.97 million for firms that did not commit fraud. (So fraudulent firms spent 77% more, on average.)
• Firms that committed fraud increased their lobbying expenses after committing the fraud, by about 29%, on average.
• Overall, 17% of the frauds were detected by regulators (as opposed to analysts, stakeholders, insiders, etc.). But among the firms who lobby, just 12% of the frauds were detected by regulators.

Yu and Yu “conjecture that lobbying has a strong effect on detection by regulators.”

The “Political Contributions and the Severity of Government Enforcement” paper looks at punishment instead of detection: How harshly are perpetrators of financial fraud dealt with?

Fulmer and Knill find that “contribution from a PAC in the first year of the fraud results in the accused individual being banned for 2.90 fewer years, having probation for 4.99 fewer years, being imprisoned for 5.81 fewer years and 75% less likely to receive both prison time and an officer ban.”

If the executive gives directly, the punishment is also going to be lighter, according to the calculations of Fulmer and Knill. The ban from being an officer will be 3.64 years less, probation will be 1.59 years less, prison time will be 4.11 years less, and the probability of both prison and a fine will be 56% less.

CEOs who contribute the largest amounts of money get off even lighter.

Both papers offer striking findings, though it’s hard to pinpoint whether it’s the lobbying and contributions that are affecting regulatory enforcement, or whether companies and executives who are politically active also tend to be companies and executives who are the most sophisticated in dealing with government generally.

There’s certainly more research to be done in looking at how these companies' lobbying and contribution activity changes around the time they commit fraud. For example, do they start lobbying on SEC issues? Do they start giving more to members on committees who have budgetary authority over the SEC?

Still, the correlations are strong enough to be troubling. They highlight yet another reason why we ought be concerned about the role of money in politics.

There are almost 27,000 people—or 1/100th of one percent of the United States population—who spent more than $10,000 to influence elections during the 2010 election cycle.

The top 10 people from this elite class of donors together spent more than $23 million on the last election. The majority of that money went to Super PACs used for independent expenditures. Eight contributed their money exclusively to Republican groups and candidates; two contributed exclusively to Democratic groups and candidates.

In total, this tiny group of relatively unknown individuals was responsible for $774 million of the $3.2 billion that poured into the hotly contested mid-term elections. That money went not only to candidate campaigns and political action committees, but to Super PACs, officially known as “independent expenditure-only committees.” After the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United and the Federal Election Commission’s two advisory opinions that followed, individuals and corporations effectively have unlimited giving potential. By giving to Super PACs, they can bypass traditional giving limits.

The group that benefited most from the top 10 mega-donors largesse: American Crossroads. That Super PAC received millions of dollars from seven of the top donors, and $7 million from just one donor, Bob Perry.

Here’s a look at who’s who among America’s top 10 most influential givers:

1. Bob Perry is the CEO of Perry Homes. Perry has been influential in politics and a prominent donor for a number of years. In 2004, he gave $8 million to a number of nonprofit political groups known as 527 committees. Most notably, $4.4 million of that money went to the political group Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, which opposed Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid. During the 2010 election cycle, Perry donated $7.3 million to political efforts. All but a small portion of his money for the 2010 election went to American Crossroads, a group cofounded by former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

2. Wayne Hughes, owner and chairman of Public Storage, Inc. According to disclosures, Hughes gave a total of $3.28 million to conservative candidates and committees, with $3.25 million going to American Crossroads. Hughes also gave $4,800 to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

3. Fred Eshelman is the CEO of Pharmaceutical Product Development. Eshelman spent $3 million in 2010 funding his own group, RightChange. RightChange registered with the FEC as a Super PAC and spent those millions of dollars to defeat Democratic candidates including Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington.

4. Robert Rowling, CEO and Chairman of TRT Holdings, a holding company that owns Golds Gyms and Omni Hotels as well as oil and gas interests. Rowling spent $2.59 million during the last election on conservative efforts. He gave $2.5 million of that money to American Crossroads.

5. Donald Sussman is the Chairman of the holding company Paloma Partners. Sussman, who earlier this year married Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, gave $1.26 million in 2010 to Democratic candidates. He has also funded a group called the Democracy Fund, a separate but predecessor organization to the United Republic Action Fund. Both of these groups have been affiliated with United Republic, and both have been dissolved.* Sussman gave a little more than $750,000 to the Super PAC Women Vote! and its parent organization Emily’s List. Those two organizations support pro-choice female political candidates.

6. John Ricketts is the founder of TD Ameritrade and still a board member there. In 2010, his total political contributions were $1.25 million. He gave to a variety of Republican candidates, including House Speaker John Boehner.

7. Jerry Perenchio is the CEO of the investment firm Chartwell Partners and former owner of the Spanish-speaking television network Univision. In 2010, he gave $1.12 million to conservative candidates and groups, including $1 million to American Crossroads.

8. Trevor Rees-Jones is the president of Chief Oil & Gas. In 2010, he gave $1.1 million to Republican efforts. $1,000,000 of that was given to American Crossroads.

9. Rachel Hunter is the Treasurer for the organization Media Matters and an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune. She’s related to Penny Pritzker who was the national finance chairwoman of the Obama campaign in 2008. In 2010, Hunter gave more than $1 million to democratic groups and candidates. The bulk of that money went to the 527 organization, Bring Ohio Back.

10. John Childs is on the Board of Directors for Club for Growth and is the founder of JW Childs Assoc., a private equity firm. In 2010, he gave a total $923,000 to Super PACs supporting Republicans and to Republican candidates directly. He gave $100,000 of that money to American Crossroads and $650,000 to his own group, Club for Growth.

For a full list of the top donors for 2010, see the embedded spreadsheet below.

Also, as a disclaimer, we think it is important to note that there are funders of the Sunlight Foundation on this list. For example, David Bonderman and Marjorie Roswell are numbers 9 and 103 on the list and have donated to the Sunlight Foundation. Additionally, the founder of the Open Society Foundations, George Soros, is 134th on the list. Open Society Foundations has provided grant support to Sunlight.

*Based on inaccurate information received from a source at United Republic, we originally reported incorrectly that Donald Sussman is a funder of that organization.

Last Friday, the House passed a measure that aims to block any executive order regarding disclosure of political donations.

Eighteen House Democrats joined almost every Republican to support the amendment, while another eight Democrats did not vote at all. All other Democrats opposed it. The measure was attached to an energy and water appropriations bill and would prohibit the use of any funding to implement an Obama administration effort to require more information on campaign spending.

On average, the 18 Democrats House members received about 63 percent of their campaign contributions from corporate sources for the 2010 election, according to an analysis of Center for Responsive Politics data. This was calculated by totaling each members’ donations from 14 13 sectors (such as defense and finance) identified by CRP but excluding donations from the following sectors: lawyers and lobbyists, Labor, ideological or single-issue groups and groups labeled ‘other.’

Of the 18 congressmen, Reps. Mike Ross, Jim Matheson, and Colin Peterson relied most on corporate PACs and employees during the last election, taking in nearly 85 percent from those sources. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Dan Boren received nearly 80 percent of their campaign cash from corporate sources.

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The amendment they voted for sought to preempt an Obama administration effort, first disclosed in April, to issue an executive order that would require all government contractors to disclose their political contributions, including those to organizations that don't disclose their donors. It was meant as a response to Citizens United v. FEC, where the Supreme Court ruled to remove restrictions on corporations’ expenditures in elections.

That ruling opened the floodgates for some undisclosed election spending. Nonprofit organizations can now receive corporate donations and make independent expenditures on elections without reporting their donors to the Federal Election Commission. Crossroads GPS spent $15 million opposing Democratic candidates last election; because it's organized as a section 501(c)4 committee, it's not required to disclose its donors. Similarly, because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a 501(c)6 organization, it doesn't have to disclose its donors, despite spending more than $32 million in the 2010 cycle to influence elections.

Democrats have gotten into the act as well, recently launching Priorities USA Action, a 501(c)4 organization that was co-founded by former White House spokesman Bill Burton.

Obama's executive order would bring some unknown corporate donations to nonprofits into the public realm. It would also make the donations of the nation’s largest union, AFL-CIO, known, because it has small contracts with the Department of Labor.

by Eric Dunn, Policy Intern

The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure recently held a hearing on the Competition for Intercity Passenger Rail in America Act, proposed by Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) and Bill Shuster (R-Pa.). The goal of the legislation is to let private companies do what Reps. Mica and Shuster feel the federally subsidized rail company Amtrak hasn't: make commuter rail quick, easy, and cheap. The bill would strip Amtrak of its most profitable routes and allow the Department of Transportation to auction them off to private railroad companies.

A look at Sunlight's Influence Explorer reveals that both Mica and Shuster have received significant campaign contributions from the railroad industry.

The railroad industry was Rep. Shuster's second largest campaign contributor in the 2010 election cycle, contributing $49,000 to his campaign. Four of his top five top contributors have ties to the railroad industry and could benefit if Amtrak's assets are privatized.

Rep. Mica received contributions from the railroad industry totalling $50,000 in the 2010 cycle.

Amtrak has voiced opposition to the plan offered by Congress.