Look Who Got the Most Money

[balantz]

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/money-and-votes-aligned-in-con.html

Money and Votes Aligned in Congress's Last Debate Over Bank Regulation


The last time Congress seriously debated how to regulate the financial industry, the result was legislation that allowed the nation's largest banks to get even larger and take risks that had been prohibited since the Great Depression. A look back at that debate, which was over the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, reveals that campaign contributions may have influenced the votes of politicians who, a decade later, are now grappling with the implosion of the giant banks they helped to foster.

Looking back at the vote on the 1999 act, and the campaign contributions that led up to it, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found that those members of Congress who supported lifting Depression-era restrictions on commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies received more than twice as much money from those interests than did those lawmakers who opposed the measure.

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Nine years later, Congress is debating a proposal from the Treasury Secretary to assume the bad investments that are weighing down the nation's financial institutions, at taxpayer expense. And lobbyists representing the financial services industry are trying to once again shape fast-moving legislation to their clients' benefit. Whether campaign contributions will again correlate to congressional votes remains to be seen.

The following chart summarizes the votes and money around Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999. Below it is a table of all current members of Congress, how much money their campaign committees have received from the financial sector in their congressional careers and how they voted on the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act. An "A" indicates they were absent for the 1999 vote, as McCain was. An empty vote column, as with Obama, indicate the lawmaker was not in office at the time.


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Financial sector contributions to Congress, 1989-2008



Office FirstLastPState GrandTotal Vote
S Hillary Clinton (D-NY) $31,040,714
S Barack Obama (D) $27,942,613
S John McCain (R) $26,593,411 A
S John Kerry (D-Mass) $19,094,828 Y
S Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn) $13,204,556 Y
S Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) $12,795,946 Y
S Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) $9,972,924 Y
S Arlen Specter (R-Pa) $5,652,910 Y
S Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) $4,678,993
S Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) $4,669,788 Y
S Max Baucus (D-Mont) $4,491,183 Y
S Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) $4,437,474 Y
S Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala) $4,360,242 N
H Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) $4,117,402 Y
S Evan Bayh (D-Ind) $3,974,396 Y
S John Cornyn (R-Texas) $3,957,686
S Robert Menendez (D-NJ) $3,898,822 Y
S Norm Coleman (R-Minn) $3,864,281
S Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del) $3,714,310 Y
S Jon L. Kyl (R-Ariz) $3,700,309 Y
H Spencer Bachus (R-Ala) $3,699,199 Y
S Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) $3,570,557 Y
S Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass) $3,537,897 Y
S Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)

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(the list continues at link)