Campaign Contributions by Corporations and the Federal Support and Business they Incur

      The Sunlight Foundation is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which seeks to bring out into the daylight the creeping fungus of corruption that likes to hide in the shadows of the American political machine. By examining the particulars of campaign contributions and the resulting rewards gained by corporate entities that make those contributions, Sunlight's Influence Explorer presents strong evidence that it is NOT the constituents who vote Congressmen into office that reap the benefits of the efforts of those Congressmen, but instead the corporate interests who help elect and re-elect those Congressmen election after election. 

     The very first paragraph on their Fixed Fortunes page states:

     "Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. A year-long analysis by the Sunlight Foundation suggests, however, that what they gave pales compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support."

     This means that for just under 6 billion dollars in campaign contributions, corporate entities who contributed to the campaigns of various congressmen garnered 4.3 trillion dollars above what they spent on contributions in federal subsidies and business contracts. You can view on the Fixed Fortunes page a table that shows 200 corporate political contributors compared to the federal business and federal support each received. The numbers are staggering. As stated on that page, the $4.4 trillion received by those corporations exceeded the $4.3 trillion paid out by the Federal Government to Social Security recipients for that same time frame.

   A number of inferences may be made from this data, however it seems blatantly obvious that these corporations are literally buying contracts and federal funding by helping to elect Congressmen. Why else would Pfizer, Inc. contribute $94.1 million dollars to various campaigns if not to support those who influenced the $4.1 billion worth of federal business contracts they secured in that time period? Certainly there may be the possibility that those Pfizer contracts with the federal government benefited the constituents of the pols who helped Pfizer to secure those contracts, but would there have been other corporations or institutions that could have provided those same benefits to those constituents with a smaller price tag? Without those Pfizer contributions, would those constituents have had a better representative win that seat in congress who would have gotten a better deal on those benefits, or maybe found a different means of providing those benefits other than to reward Pfizer for campaign funding? The unfortunate reality is that as long as this kind of barter system between corporations providing campaign funding in return for government dollars, we'll never know if there are more responsible means at the public's disposal for reaping the benefits that such corporate interests MIGHT be providing to the public.

     How then, do we go about pulling the claws from the beast of corporate influence in our U.S. Congress?  The immediate response is campaign reform, and it's a good answer.. if it were feasible. Unfortunately, those receiving the benefits of this buyoff type campaign contributing, the Congressmen, are the ones who vote for or against such reform and for the most part, those congressmen are loathe to damage the meat and potatoes which makes up the force behind keeping their own jobs. No other option for reforming such campaign influence exists and we are left with an option that has no teeth in achieving such reform. The other option, is to make such campaign contributions less effective in securing the interests of such corporations by limiting the influence of the congressmen who receive those contributions. How could this be done? By imposing a twelve year limit on the time any one congressmen may serve in the U.S. Congress.

     The standard response to this solution is similar to the first. Congressmen won't vote to amend the U.S. Constitution in order to limit the terms served by Congressmen and by proxy their own power. However, in the case of term limits compared to campaign reform, there is another option aside from having Congressmen vote against their own power. The answer here lies in Article V of the U.S. Constitution which allows for the U.S. States themselves to amend the Constitution WITHOUT the approval of Congress. Our blog post on exactly this issue can be found at:
http://rrcpacblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-we-will-impose-term-limits-without.html
and fully explains the process by which this can be achieved.

     This is the goal of The Responsible Representation Committee. To achieve responsibility by those who are meant to represent our interests in Congress as opposed to the interests of deep pocket corporate contributors. Imposing a 12 year limit on Congress is our main goal at the RRCPAC and it is only through the support of like-minded Americans that this goal can be achieved. Donate to the RRCPAC throught the link at the top of any of our blog pages or visit http://rrcpac.org to see more and contribute there. Without the support of citizens we are unable to achieve these goals, so share all our blog posts, share our website and get involved today!