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> Both Obama and Romney raised more direct contributions than the amount of money spent on their behalf by PAC's and non-profit organizations. True for Obama,

• rayiner 14y ago
  You're comparing the money raised by the Presidential candidates to all money spent by PAC's for all the elections, not just the Presidential one. Also, WSJ has different numbers: http://projects.wsj.com/super-pacs/ http://projects.wsj.com/super-pacs/ Also see NYT's breakdown: http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance Looking at the NYT data, the candidates together raised $1.2 billion on direct contributions (which are capped at $2,500). Even going by the Open Secrets number, the fact is that Obama and Romney raised more money directly (with a relatively small contribution cap), than PAC's spent on the entire election for all candidates. Now, there is something troubling about the information in the NYT article: $1 billion raised by PAC's, the vast majority of it coming from donations of more than $100k. Is it going to spiral out of control from there? Or is the dismal failure of PAC-backed campaigns going to cause 2012 to be the high watermark? Who knows. But what we do know is that 2012 was unprecedented, and Citizens United only happened a few years ago. Was Washington broken 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago? It's hard to argue that the government is appreciably more corrupt or pro-corporation than it was in they heyday of Ronald Reagan. But all of that was before Citizens United and before the rise of Super PACs. I would assert this: if the government is broken, it has been that way for awhile. But total outside spending was $50m or less through 2000: http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/cycle_tots.php http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/cycle_tots.php