NEW YORK, NY – As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral argument in the McCutcheon v. FEC case, national public policy center Demos has partnered with U.S. PIRG to release new data quantifying the potential dollar impact of striking down federal aggregate contribution limits.
Demos and U.S. PIRG project that striking aggregate contribution limits would bring more than $1 billion in additional campaign contributions from a small segment of elite donors through the 2020 election cycle.
WHAT: Press call about upcoming SCOTUS Case McCutcheon v. FEC featuring NAACP, Sierra Club, Communications Workers of America, People For The American Way Foundation, Greenpeace, Main Street Alliance, OurTime.org, Rock The Vote, American Federation of Teachers, Working Families Organization, U.S. PIRG and Demos.
Why isn't anyone talking about the role of wealthy campaign donors in gridlocking Washington and precipitating a likely government shutdown?
In the standard telling, it's extreme base voters, whipped up by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, who have turned the GOP into what Paul Krugman called the "Crazy Party" on Friday. But there is another reason why hardline members of the House are pushing demands that even John Boehner won't embrace: they fear the big money on the right that is available to finance primary challenges.
Fiscal hawks love to remind us that interest payments on the national debt will be a major driver of future U.S. budget deficits. Just last week, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) published a doom-and-gloom paper that noted that interest payments were the single fastest growing part of the U.S. budget and the most volatile area of future spending.
Have you heard of the Freedom Partners? According to a Politico investigation, the group raised and spent $250 million in 2012 to shape political and policy debates. According to IRS filings, the group has 200 donors, each of whom paid at least $100,000 in annual dues. And while its head, Marc Short, claims that, “our members are proud to be part of [the organization],” they refuse to be publicly identified. So, proud to be a part of it, as long as you don’t know who I am?
Last week, we highlighted how the outside money group, Jobs for New York, was dominating the New York City Council races. So, how did they do? Not too shabby—of the 20 candidates they supported, 16 won, two are still too close to call, and two candidates were unsuccessful.
There are a bunch of good, practical arguments for giving low-wage workers a pay hike -- like the fact that putting more money in the pockets of these workers would spur consumer demand and economic growth.
But here's another strong point that you don't hear much about: Reducing wage inequality is crucial to meeting America's long-term fiscal challenges.
Here’s another example of how money corrupts the electoral system: a pro-business special interest group has spent almost $7 million on New York City Council races.
If there’s one thing you can say about Art Pope, North Carolina’s mega-donor, it’s that he is a man on a mission. Unfortunately, his mission is to use his wealth to make voting more difficult and restrictive and continue the outsized role money plays in politics.
Beth Simone Noveck and Carl Malamud are pushing the IRS to publicly disclose more data on tax-exempt groups, make it more accessible in electronic form, and to do so more promptly. Count me among the effort’s biggest cheerleaders. If this push succeeds, we'll have a better handle on a key sector in U.S. society—although we'll still be in the dark about crucial details of how nonprofits are funded.
It's no secret that sales taxes are a regressive way to raise revenues. And the heavy reliance on such taxes across the country explains why state tax systems tend to clobber the poor while asking little of the rich.
Jeffrey Toobin is up with a piece today, “Another Citizens United – But Worse,” about the Supreme Court’s next money in politics case. In McCutcheon v. FEC, slated for oral argument in October, appellants challenge contribution limits on the total amount of money one individual can transfer in direct contributions.
The Senate Finance Committee wrote an open letter last month to the rest of the Senate calling for tax code reform suggestions. The due date for proposals was this past week. Among other parts of the code, the charitable tax deduction faces potential overhaul.
Over the past decade or two, top transnational corporations -- including Apple, GE, and Google -- have figured out how to sidestep national tax collection systems, depriving governments of billions of dollars in revenues.
Despite a year filled with corruption scandals, the New York State legislature failed to adopt a public financing program—a necessary step in removing the outsized influence of money in politics. Senate Democrats proposed a last minute amendment to another bill before the end of the legislative session, but it failed because it did not receive support from every member of the Democratic conference.
When people talk about corporations spending money in politics, it’s commonly assumed that the corporation is a single thing with a clear position on any given issue. This masks the fact that corporations are complex, state-created entities with their own governance structures and a multitude of conflicting interests.