I just got back from a long weekend of marathon meetings in Montana – the unlikely home of an outfit I’ve been working informally with since the early 1990s, the Institute on Money in State Politics.
Here at Sunlight we’re focusing on Congress, but out there in Helena, Montana IMSP tracks campaign money at the state level. Their website at www.followthemoney.org is the gateway to all this information. Essentially it’s a state-level counterpart to the DC-based Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzes federal contributions.
Continue readingBush Taps Goldman Sachs for Treasury Secretary
The word is out. The nation’s premier investment banking house, Goldman Sachs, is about to make another major contribution to American government – this time in the person of CEO Henry Paulson, nominated today by President Bush to be the next Treasury Secretary.
The firm that gave us Senator (now Governor) Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin -- and whose executives have given nearly $23 million in campaign contributions since the 1990 election cycle -- shows itself once again to be the ultimate political insider, spreading enough Wall Street money to both parties to be an enduring political powerhouse no matter who’s in office.
Continue readingFannie Mae Didn’t Just Pay Its Execs
There’s another side to the stories today about accounting fraud at Fannie Mae, the quasi-government corporation that insures mortgages – and that is that during the period when the fraud was alleged to take place, the company was one of the biggest soft money donors in the nation.
Beginning in 1997, and continuing through late 2002, Fannie Mae contributed some $3.5 million to national political party committees, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The money was split almost equally between the Democratic (47%) and Republican (53%) parties.
Continue readingMeet the Cash Constituents
Campaigns for Congress aren't cheap, but incumbent members find plenty of financial supporters so they don't have to pay the bills themselves. Here's how to find out who your own congressman's cash constituents are, and how to interpret what you see.
Continue readingAbout That Oil Vote…
It’s not every day that members of Congress have to vote on issues that directly pit the interests of their constituents against those of their cash constituents, but such a vote did take place last Thursday and a further examination of the results suggests strongly that money moved the vote.
At issue was a bill that would rescind incentives that went to the oil companies in the late 1990s – a period of relatively low oil prices – for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Given the current price of oil, those incentives make little sense any more, critics charged, amounting to a government windfall to oil companies when their profits are already sky high.
Continue readingOops! How Did THAT Get in the Freezer?
For someone who’s tracked money in congressional politics for nearly 20 years, the prospect of witnessing bribery proceedings against two members of Congress within a six-month period – one Republican and one Democrat – is nothing short of breathtaking.
True, I didn’t come on the scene until after the Abscam scandal had come and gone, producing bribery convictions in 1980 for one senator and five congressman. But out-and-out bribery cases really don’t happen that often on Capitol Hill – which is why this past weekend’s revelations about New Orleans Democratic Congressman William Jefferson wound up on page one of newspapers across the country.
Continue readingGee, Another Record-Breaking Fundraiser…
In case you missed the brief AP story yesterday, President Bush hosted the season’s biggest GOP fundraiser on Wednesday, raising $17 million for the Republican Party. It was a record for a non-presidential election year, but the reporting of such figures has become positively ho-hum in Washington. Seems like just another part of the background noise.
The perfunctory nature of the news story – and the fact that unless you were really looking for it, you probably missed it – underlies the reality that raising money is one of most common things people do these days in Washington. Parties do it. Presidents do it. Members of Congress do it. And every time they blast-fax those invitations around town (my colleague Bill Allison has been collecting them lately), the armies of the night emerge. Lobbyists, PAC directors, party loyalists and a host of others seeking to stay on the good side of the nation’s most powerful politicians dutifully turn out in their tuxes, dark suits and evening gowns, checks in hand.
Continue readingTea Leaves in the Primary Results
Amid the continuing buzz of opinion polls that show great dissatisfaction with the president and Congress, there are some real elections taking place around the country. The 2006 primary election season is off and running and yesterday saw primaries in three more states – Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and my own state of Oregon.
Continue readingAn Enriching Experience?
A page one story by Jeffrey Birnbaum in Monday’s Washington Post recounts the growing ethical cloud surrounding West Virginia Democratic congressman Alan Mollohan, now under investigation by federal authorities looking into federal money he funneled to agencies – and some business partners – in his congressional district.
To boost jobs in his district, Mollohan established a network of nonprofit organizations and helped deliver federal funds to them, often through earmarked appropriations. At the same time, he invested as a partner in real estate deals with the head of one of those agencies and with the owner of a company that’s received “substantial federal aid.” Those investments have proved lucrative indeed.
Continue readingBuddy, Can You Spare a Tax Break?
Whenever I hear stories like the ones today about the deal reached to preserve a tax break for investors, I think back to a statistic that I once compiled at the Center for Responsive Politics, when it was my full-time job to track money in American politics.
When you stare, day in and day out, at databases that document the names and occupations of Americans who’ve given $1,000 or more to political candidates, PACs and parties, you tend to slip into the mindset that everybody gives, that you’re looking at a cross-section of the general population.
Continue reading
59063
