Bribe, Vote, Repeat

By Marie Cocco Truthdig

I don’t have a sex scandal for you. The foibles of politicians and celebrities titillate. But ultimately, they have little to do with the most enduring and corrosive scandal of our civic life. It unfolds out in the open, day after day.

Millions of dollars slosh from the pockets of powerful corporate interests into the campaign accounts of lawmakers who then write the laws that determine the rules for how these businesses make money—or more money. Then millions more flood in through direct lobbying activity that ensures these same lawmakers are reminded, again and again, that the interests financing their campaigns have a favor to ask.

The nexus of campaign contributions, lobbying and the policy outcomes that do so much to help the powerful and so little to boost millions of average American taxpayers is well known. It used to be considered a worthy story just to point this out from time to time. Now it usually takes a scandal within a scandal—that is, a lawmaker or lobbyist who transgresses even the wide boundaries of the campaign finance and lobbying laws—to generate coverage.

Much of the important and little-heralded work now being done to document this national disgrace is undertaken by nonprofit organizations that have long endeavored to rouse the public and the media to this legal graft.

Most recently, the Sunlight Foundation teamed with the Center for Responsive Politics on a groundbreaking study related to health care overhaul. It shows outside lobbyists (lawyers, consultants and others who do not directly work for a company or trade group) donating to the same lawmakers as clients who have an interest in health care reform. The contributions by the lobbyists enhance the political power of the business organizations—which already are contributing through political action committees, or through executives who organize campaign fundraisers.

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