9 ms·

It is not so much that money leads to influence, but that politicians spend most of their time fundraising. They spend so much time on it that they do not have

by rpedela 11y ago

It is not so much that money leads to influence, but that politicians spend most of their time fundraising. They spend so much time on it that they do not have time to govern effectively. That is his primary argument. He wants to create a system where politicians only have to worry about fundraising during the election rather than their entire term. There is also this side benefit that whatever influence the money buys evaporates to some extent.

aetherson 11y ago
The snide answer is that the biggest benefit of money in politics is that it diverts the attention of politicians from "governing." But seriously, the idea that the poor politicians are just TOO EXHAUSTED FROM FUNDRAISING to give us the good government that they desperately want to provide us seems, at best, under-argued to me. What evidence is there that this is the case?
- rpedela 11y ago
  Common sense? If someone spends 80% of their time on something, that is the thing that will get the most attention. That is where the 80/20 rule comes from.
  - aetherson 11y ago
    That's not what the 80/20 rule is. Do you have any evidence that politicians spend 80% of their time fundraising? What is the big list of bills that just couldn't get drafted because the politicians were too busy fundraising?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - drumdance 11y ago
      Not 80% but it looks like as much time is spent fundraising as doing legislative work: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressi... And my worry isn't about not being able to draft bills. It's about being able to review already-drafted bills. Isn't the TPP several thousand pages?
      - aetherson 11y ago
        The idea that congresspeople would just dive into the thousand and ten-thousand page bills of dense legalese if only it weren't for these inconvenient fundraisers is just not based in any version of reality.
        steego 11y ago
        You're missing the point. The biggest issue with all this fundraising isn't that it's just taking away from time to legislate. The biggest issue that amount of time fundraising can makes it difficult for an honest politician (spare me the jokes) to not be influenced by the people he's asking for money. As a legislator, you only have enough time and attention to research and care about a handful of issues. The remainder of those issues, you have to trust the expertise of fellow legislators and lobbyists. Lobbyists are experts in their fields and apart from being able to write checks, they know how to explain policy to a legislator so the legislator believes they're doing the right thing. I realize asking people to have pity on congressmen is a tall order, but don't delude yourself into believing they have free-will that translates into power or influence without sucking on the fundraising teet.
      - afarrell 11y ago
        According to Rep. Capuano of Cambridge/Somerville MA, the reason he can't effectively evaluate the TPP is that he isn't allowed to write any notes or consult people who are actually trade experts. http://capuano.house.gov/e-updates/eu2015-05-15.shtml http://capuano.house.gov/e-updates/eu2015-05-15.shtml
- epanastasi 11y ago
  NPR did a great series of pieces on this. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/30/149648666/senator-by-day-telemarketer-by-night http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/30/149648666/senat... http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t... Here's a quote illustrating how much time fundrasing takes away from their normal job... Andrea Seabrook How many fundraisers do you typically go to in a given week, do you think? Nancy Pelosi A lot. Yeah. Either on the phone or attending events. But I think they've said this year I attended almost 400 fundraisers in nearly 40 cities. Andrea Seabrook That's 400 for the year 2011. That's more than one a day, every day of the year, Saturdays and Sundays included.
  - aetherson 11y ago
    Nancy Pelosi has an incredibly safe seat in a district that would literally sooner die than elect a Republican, and enough power within the Democratic party to turn any challenger from the left into a greasy oil stain. Let me suggest that if she's going to 400 fundraisers per year, it's not because she's forced to at the expense of what she'd rather be doing. EDIT: And here's in fact the bit right before the part you quoted: "This is Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House. She's also the Democratic Party's number one fundraiser. Pelosi has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Close to $40 million in this election alone." To wit: she's not representative, she's in fact the very extreme.
    - pquerna 11y ago
      Nacy Pelosi isn't attending 400 fundraisers for herself -- she is doing it for the Democratic party and other candidates. Holding a single 'safe' seat in the House is not that important, but electing a few dozen more party members can make a difference, hence the crazy fundraising schedule.
      - paulydavis 11y ago
        She fund raises for the others to stay in the leadership not to stay in office. Poor questions from NPR.
- jellicle 11y ago
  Congressmen are expected by their parties to spend 4 or so hours per day, every single day, calling people and asking them for money. 28+ hours per week calling people and asking them for money, every single week, during their entire career. Plus attending fundraisers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressi...
- d23 11y ago
  A friend of mine was an intern for a candidate that was on the national stage for the presidential election in 2012. This was a couple years before the election. He said all of the candidate's time was fundraising. The person was almost never in the office. Money is simply everything when it comes to being re-elected. In case it's not clear, he was a supporter of this person (their families were long-time friends), so he wasn't saying it as a derogatory thing or speaking from a negatively-biased place.
BurningFrog 11y ago
The simple way to fix that is - counterintuitively - to abolish all campaign finance restrictions. With vastly more money available, politicians would have to spend far less, both in time and favors, to finance their campaigns.
- rhino369 11y ago
  I always wondered what would happen if instead of making donations a public disclosure, that we did the opposite. We make it illegal to tell people you donated to politicians. Totally secret. You can't quid pro quo if you don't know about the quid.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    If you remove the incentive for a behavior, you'll usually end the behavior. AKA you'll see a precipitous decline in campaign donations.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    If I ever ran for office, that's the approach I'd take: "Feel free to give me as much or as little funding as you like if you agree with my views, but the only way to change my views is to talk to me and convince me."
    - twoodfin 11y ago
      Shockingly (or not), I expect the vast majority of U.S. politicians would say that's exactly how they behave. How much you believe them is probably a good proxy for how important you think campaign finance issues are.
      - JoshTriplett 11y ago
        > Shockingly (or not), I expect the vast majority of U.S. politicians would say that's exactly how they behave. Except I've never once seen such a claim actually made by any politician. So at the very least it seems likely to stand out. And as for how to believe them: "I intentionally have no access to the donor list, I have never seen the donor list, and if you tell me you've donated to my campaign I will have no particular reason to believe you, so don't bother".
larrys 11y ago
"They spend so much time on it that they do not have time to govern effectively." Not really. A bit like saying "if I don't let my kid watch football they will have more time to study!". If they didn't spend time fundraising they would spend time on some equally worthless (for the public) activity. Like marching in parades and kissing babies, or giving out stupid medals, or attending events so that they can get more votes in the next election or attending events that will get others elected that will then owe them a favor. Obama after he was elected made a point of visiting his kids school (iirc the week after he was in office or close to that) in order to show that a father should be interested in his kid's education presumably or something like that. What is ironic is that with a father like the former President (not to mention a mother in attendance who went to Harvard as well and is quite educated) Obama's kids are the least likely to have to ever worry about their education and school studies. I would imagine that half the things that Obama or any President does in White House events involves some favor or another for a politician that helped them in the past in some way. (In addition to donors of course) Otherwise hard to justify why such an important guy should take the time from his important work for so many photo ops. Question for anyone running a business startup or otherwise. Do you spend your time doing silly stuff like that w/o a clear business purpose? Of course not.

by rpedela 11y ago

aetherson 11y ago

The snide answer is that the biggest benefit of money in politics is that it diverts the attention of politicians from "governing." But seriously, the idea that the poor politicians are just TOO EXHAUSTED FROM FUNDRAISING to give us the good government that they desperately want to provide us seems, at best, under-argued to me. What evidence is there that this is the case?

rpedela 11y ago
Common sense? If someone spends 80% of their time on something, that is the thing that will get the most attention. That is where the 80/20 rule comes from.
- aetherson 11y ago
  That's not what the 80/20 rule is. Do you have any evidence that politicians spend 80% of their time fundraising? What is the big list of bills that just couldn't get drafted because the politicians were too busy fundraising?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - drumdance 11y ago
    Not 80% but it looks like as much time is spent fundraising as doing legislative work: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressi... And my worry isn't about not being able to draft bills. It's about being able to review already-drafted bills. Isn't the TPP several thousand pages?
    - aetherson 11y ago
      The idea that congresspeople would just dive into the thousand and ten-thousand page bills of dense legalese if only it weren't for these inconvenient fundraisers is just not based in any version of reality.
      - steego 11y ago
        You're missing the point. The biggest issue with all this fundraising isn't that it's just taking away from time to legislate. The biggest issue that amount of time fundraising can makes it difficult for an honest politician (spare me the jokes) to not be influenced by the people he's asking for money. As a legislator, you only have enough time and attention to research and care about a handful of issues. The remainder of those issues, you have to trust the expertise of fellow legislators and lobbyists. Lobbyists are experts in their fields and apart from being able to write checks, they know how to explain policy to a legislator so the legislator believes they're doing the right thing. I realize asking people to have pity on congressmen is a tall order, but don't delude yourself into believing they have free-will that translates into power or influence without sucking on the fundraising teet.
    - afarrell 11y ago
      According to Rep. Capuano of Cambridge/Somerville MA, the reason he can't effectively evaluate the TPP is that he isn't allowed to write any notes or consult people who are actually trade experts. http://capuano.house.gov/e-updates/eu2015-05-15.shtml http://capuano.house.gov/e-updates/eu2015-05-15.shtml
epanastasi 11y ago
NPR did a great series of pieces on this. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/30/149648666/senator-by-day-telemarketer-by-night http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/30/149648666/senat... http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t... Here's a quote illustrating how much time fundrasing takes away from their normal job... Andrea Seabrook How many fundraisers do you typically go to in a given week, do you think? Nancy Pelosi A lot. Yeah. Either on the phone or attending events. But I think they've said this year I attended almost 400 fundraisers in nearly 40 cities. Andrea Seabrook That's 400 for the year 2011. That's more than one a day, every day of the year, Saturdays and Sundays included.
- aetherson 11y ago
  Nancy Pelosi has an incredibly safe seat in a district that would literally sooner die than elect a Republican, and enough power within the Democratic party to turn any challenger from the left into a greasy oil stain. Let me suggest that if she's going to 400 fundraisers per year, it's not because she's forced to at the expense of what she'd rather be doing. EDIT: And here's in fact the bit right before the part you quoted: "This is Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House. She's also the Democratic Party's number one fundraiser. Pelosi has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Close to $40 million in this election alone." To wit: she's not representative, she's in fact the very extreme.
  - pquerna 11y ago
    Nacy Pelosi isn't attending 400 fundraisers for herself -- she is doing it for the Democratic party and other candidates. Holding a single 'safe' seat in the House is not that important, but electing a few dozen more party members can make a difference, hence the crazy fundraising schedule.
    - paulydavis 11y ago
      She fund raises for the others to stay in the leadership not to stay in office. Poor questions from NPR.
jellicle 11y ago
Congressmen are expected by their parties to spend 4 or so hours per day, every single day, calling people and asking them for money. 28+ hours per week calling people and asking them for money, every single week, during their entire career. Plus attending fundraisers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressi...
d23 11y ago
A friend of mine was an intern for a candidate that was on the national stage for the presidential election in 2012. This was a couple years before the election. He said all of the candidate's time was fundraising. The person was almost never in the office. Money is simply everything when it comes to being re-elected. In case it's not clear, he was a supporter of this person (their families were long-time friends), so he wasn't saying it as a derogatory thing or speaking from a negatively-biased place.

BurningFrog 11y ago

The simple way to fix that is - counterintuitively - to abolish all campaign finance restrictions. With vastly more money available, politicians would have to spend far less, both in time and favors, to finance their campaigns.

rhino369 11y ago
I always wondered what would happen if instead of making donations a public disclosure, that we did the opposite. We make it illegal to tell people you donated to politicians. Totally secret. You can't quid pro quo if you don't know about the quid.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  If you remove the incentive for a behavior, you'll usually end the behavior. AKA you'll see a precipitous decline in campaign donations.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  If I ever ran for office, that's the approach I'd take: "Feel free to give me as much or as little funding as you like if you agree with my views, but the only way to change my views is to talk to me and convince me."
  - twoodfin 11y ago
    Shockingly (or not), I expect the vast majority of U.S. politicians would say that's exactly how they behave. How much you believe them is probably a good proxy for how important you think campaign finance issues are.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      > Shockingly (or not), I expect the vast majority of U.S. politicians would say that's exactly how they behave. Except I've never once seen such a claim actually made by any politician. So at the very least it seems likely to stand out. And as for how to believe them: "I intentionally have no access to the donor list, I have never seen the donor list, and if you tell me you've donated to my campaign I will have no particular reason to believe you, so don't bother".

larrys 11y ago

"They spend so much time on it that they do not have time to govern effectively." Not really. A bit like saying "if I don't let my kid watch football they will have more time to study!". If they didn't spend time fundraising they would spend time on some equally worthless (for the public) activity. Like marching in parades and kissing babies, or giving out stupid medals, or attending events so that they can get more votes in the next election or attending events that will get others elected that will then owe them a favor. Obama after he was elected made a point of visiting his kids school (iirc the week after he was in office or close to that) in order to show that a father should be interested in his kid's education presumably or something like that. What is ironic is that with a father like the former President (not to mention a mother in attendance who went to Harvard as well and is quite educated) Obama's kids are the least likely to have to ever worry about their education and school studies. I would imagine that half the things that Obama or any President does in White House events involves some favor or another for a politician that helped them in the past in some way. (In addition to donors of course) Otherwise hard to justify why such an important guy should take the time from his important work for so many photo ops. Question for anyone running a business startup or otherwise. Do you spend your time doing silly stuff like that w/o a clear business purpose? Of course not.