Our friends at the Brennan Center put it succinctly in a piece on The Hill's blog today:
Wall Street routinely doles out large campaign contributions to members of Congress. In the current election cycle, the financial services sector (which includes insurance and real sector), contributed more money to candidates for Congress, the presidency and political parties than did any other sector, totaling $339.6 million from 2007 through today. Both chambers' banking committees also benefit handsomely. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, PACs and employees of the securities and investment industry are the second largest source of cash for members of the Senate Banking committee. During the 2008 election cycle, these contributors raised $11.7 million for the 21 members of that Committee. Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) received about $4.3 million since 2003, or half of all contributions to his campaign coffers.
Does campaign cash influence legislation and regulation? When Congress last debated regulation (or rather, de-regulation) of the financial industry in 1999, a study by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that members of Congress who supported the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act received twice as much money from commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies as those who opposed the measure. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was the product of many years of lobbying by the financial industry and allowed for the loosening of bank regulations that had been in place since the Great Depression.
Gutting regulations that had been in place
since the Great Depression, leading to a financial crisis that has us moving closer to a
repeat of the Great Depression, all because of a pesky little privately-funded campaign system in which Wall Street used its financial might to keep Congress quiet.
When public attention shifts beyond the bailout to the longer term concern of our economy -- and who makes the decisions and regulations going forward -- we need to make sure we fix our political system so it's not a money game that continues to reward the wealthiest interests at the expense of the rest of us. Here's how:
Just last week, the Fair Elections Now Act, which would establish a system of voluntary public financing for Congressional elections, was introduced with bi-partisan support in the House. Last year, Senators Durbin (D-Ill.) and Specter (R-Pa.) introduced the Senate version of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would create a voluntary public financing system for Senate candidates. With the introduction of its House counterpart this week by Representatives Larson (D-Conn.) and Jones (R-N.C.) (both from Clean Elections states), lawmakers are presented with a bipartisan, bicameral effort to undertake serious and lasting structural reform. Public financing would eliminate the perils of special interest cash by establishing strict spending limits, enabling small donors and greatly increasing the power of ordinary voters to hold Congress accountable.
