Ahhh, the holidays are upon us. It’s such a wonderful time of year – the season for giving. Washington, DC is no different than any other place this time of year. Generosity fills the air around the Capitol and K Street (where most lobbyists have their offices). In honor of the season of giving, Unity08 has put together the top 10 recipients of lobbyist cash* in 2024. You’ll notice that half of them were voted out of office in the midterm elections. Clearly, voters thought they did a better job representing special interests than their constituents’ interests.
- Rick Santorum (R-PA)
- George Allen (R-VA)
- Conrad Burns (R-MT)
- Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)
- Bill Nelson (D-FL)
- Tom DeLay (R-TX)
- Mike DeWine (R-OH)
- John Murtha (D-PA)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
What are your thoughts on the role lobbyist money plays in politics today?
*Source: Center for Responsive Politics, “Top Recepients of Lobbyist Donations,” accessed 12.13.06.
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So many of the 10 above didn't get reelected. There is a populist movement afoot. So take the ones who didn't get reelected off the list and lets see the real list.
Oops, guess who is target #1.....
GEA: I agree, take the top ten politicians who will be in the next congress and list them, the has beens we can forget for now. To make it fair, list five from each party and also it would be nice to see who gave the most to each. Just an idea because I have only so much time to research each one.
U08 Web Team: I'll answer your question with this question, What role does money play in the pursuit of power?
A Sooner Independent
I'm curious. Why is LOBBYIST money so important to this group? There are so many other sources of money manipulation. There are corporate-backed 527 organizations, for instance. There's bundling of small contributions by fundraisers into big sets of contributions that are used to buy influence. Then there's the sort of cash that goes to buying well-connected media people with useful rolodexes.
Why is Unity08 only interested in combatting the influence of LOBBYIST money? Will Unity08 commit to oppose these other forms of undue elitist influence?
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Jim Cook
Irregular Times
http://irregulartimes.com
I think there is far too much emphasis on the lobbyists and their "gifts." It is well known that they are proscribed from giving "gifts" valued at more than $50 each - whoopie?! Their power is in their rolodex, bundling, etc. - very hard to get a noose around.
I will fall back to my worn out mantra: PUBLICY FUNDED CAMPAIGNS!!! So long as private money is allowed into the game it will find its way in. Organized interests do want to buy influence, pure and simple - have always and will always. We are a capitalist nation and this is a capitalist enterprise. We need to create legislative barriers to the corrupting influence of this big money.
Let me explain to those who don't know how the lobbying game works relative to campaign funding:
1) Lobbyist A convinces canidate A to back some favorted client legislation. Moneies exchanging hands = $0.00.
2) Lobbyist A infoms client (industry group B) that candidate A is favorably disposed toward their pet bill. Monies that exchange hands = $0.00.
3) Client pays lobbyist (or utilizes internal resources) to advise co-interested parties that they are to support Candidate A to the maximum. Monies that exchange hands (other than legitimate communication/lobbying expenses) = $0.00.
4) Monies that pour into Candidate A's campaign fund as a result of the foregoing legal and non-regulatable free speech activities = Tens of thousands of dollars. (PACs = $5k/primary, $5k per general - may have been upped to $10k/ea. From individuals $2k/primary, $2k per individual + $8k per household plus any legal age children that can be brought into the mix.) Employers also regularly strongarm top-compensated employees to do similar max contributions to favored candidates, often times compensating participants with raises, bonuses, options, etc.
This is an ugly business any way you cut it, and private money makes it that much uglier. Private money in campaigns = corruption, eventually if not immediately of the office-holder, and always of the democratic process.
Mark Greene
Texas Democrat in the Middle
I agree, do all sources of campaign funding not just lobbying. I see these other things like PACs and corporations as lobbying too. If you are going to do a useful list, make it complete and only those still in office.
Let us talk about what it is about the money that is wrong. Clearly, this is not a new problem -- Theodore Roosevelt made it a key part of his "New Nationalism" in 1910 to condemn the idea that private corporations could buy seats in Congress and decisionmaking roles in the Executive Branch.
While pubicly financed elections are in my opinion a necessary first "step, there is much more that needs to be done.
We need mechanisms through law that will prevent interested parties from corrupting the legislative and regulatory process.
"Every special interest is entitled to justice ... but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation."
TR went on to say:
"We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs."
We have been here before and we have done better at times.
I'd like to see Senator Clinton, among others, come out strongly in favor of what TR had to say. She won't, because she is a captive creature of large corporate interests. They simply are not the same corporate interests as the present Administration represents.
It is time again to insist on a political agenda that draws on the principles -- if not the exact content -- of TR's New Nationalism:
"The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise."
How do you start to do this? You begin by enacting Federal laws regulating the incorporation of companies such that their immunity from personal liability is much more easily waived.
Begin to hold individual malefactors of great wealth and influence personally liable for their wrong doing and we'll make much more rapid progress toward a more just and law adbiding society.
A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.