The extent of the money in politics problem, how we got here (from a legal perspective), and what we can do to create a democracy in which the strength of a citizen’s voice does not depend on the size of her wallet.
In 2012, just 61 large donors to Super PACs giving an average of $4.7 million each matched the $285.2 million in grassroots contributions from more than 1,425,500 small donors to the major party presidential candidates.
Tuesday’s race was the first presidential election to take place since Citizens United, and campaign spending this cycle exceeded $6 billion. With fundraising split roughly evenly between the two major parties, it was inevitable that some donors wouldn’t be able to buy the electoral outcomes they were hoping for.
Outside spending organizations reported $1.11 billion in spending to the FEC through the final reporting deadline in the 2012 cycle. That’s already a 200% increase over total 2008 outside spending.
A new fact sheet from Demos, College on a Credit Card, investigates the relationship between educational expenses and credit card debt, and shows that putting college on credit can be a very bad deal.
Demos conducted a nationwide survey of low- and middle-income households in early 2012. The findings in this brief summarize the relationship between college costs and credit card debt, and its impact on students and their parents.
Give states additional Child Care and Development Block Grant funding to double the number of children served by child care assistance, make the federal Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, and expand Head Start and Early Head Start.
Home ownership is commonly understood as the quintessential marker of having arrived in the middle class: a family’s home is often the single largest asset that they own and has traditionally served as an important vehicle for wealth accumulation and economic security.
A new report from the New York Fed suggests that even while the rest of household debt improved since March, driven by decreasing credit card and housing debt, student loans have worsened.
Candidate campaigns and outside spending groups have nearly a third more influence over narratives around presidential candidates' characters than they did just 12 years ago. Journalist influence has shrunk by nearly half.