Reply #11: But... they're just buying access... [View All]

[warren pease]

All these selfless, public-spirited donors really want is good government, and they're willing to pay top dollar for it.

According to this report -- Campaign Contributions and Congressional Voting: Does the Timing of Contributions Matter? -- there is strong evidence suggesting that campaign bribes do influence the votes of those congress members who pocketed the cash.

Kinda like the largesse AT&T and Verizon bestowed on poor, starving Jay Rockefeller to secure his support for telecom immunity. He didn't really need the money but it's tough to put food on his family on a senator's salary. Plus which, if the telecoms are held legally liable for their actions, the terrorists win.

Also, the closer the money shows up relative to a key vote, the more influence it's going to have. Again, see senator Jay for the grim details.

Shocking, I know, but there you have it. Here's the abstract describing the report and summarizing its conclusions:

Theoretical and empirical studies do not address whether campaign contributions from more than one election cycle are important for congressional voting behavior. Further, they do not address whether campaign contributions from different periods have different effects on legislative voting behavior. This paper analyzes the cumulative effect of campaign contributions over two time periods. Moreover, this paper studies the importance of the timing of contributions for legislative voting behavior. Ten roll call votes on price supports and quotas for various farm commodities in 1981 and 1985 are analyzed. Most of the estimated contribution coefficients are statistically significant. The results show that without campaign contributions farm interests would have lost in five of the seven votes that were won. Moreover, contributions that were given at approximately the same time as the vote have a larger impact on voting behavior than contributions that the legislator received one or two years prior to the vote.

I suppose we could always go to public financing of campaigns, but that wouldn't be a free market solution so it's by definition unAmerican. Whereas bribery is what makes the whole corporate world go round and is the very definition of free market practices.


wp