Brian Kirwin has an interesting article up about the effect of campaign finance laws. He argues that they have created a millionaires club in Congress.
Currently, 44% of all of Congress and specifically 48% of the Senate are millionaires. That compares with the general public, of whom millionaires are only a whopping 1%.
There are a lot of reasons why Congress has an over-representation of the wealthy in its ranks, and restrictions on contributions may very well be one of them. I’d love to see how this number has changed over time, particularly prior to the implementation of latest restrictions.
I don’t have an answer to the question of the cost of campaigns. But I remain concerned that increasingly, the only people who run for office are those with money or with access to money. Neither of those things bodes well for them actually representing the bulk of us.
Great post, Ms. Paige. We badly need campaign reform but no one ever tackles it–can it be this is the way we like it? Not me. Many years ago Molly Ivins (now deceased) said this was the number one issue in America, because it’s a democracy-killer.
Posted by Mimi Stratton | Friday, July 23, 2010, 10:31 amMimi: Agreed. And you can already see the beginnings of that effect. There are uprising both on the right wing of the Republican Party (Tea Party) and the left wing of the Democratic Party, largely because there is a suspision among those groups, not without cause, that their pary leadership has sold out their interests for money.
Posted by steve vaughan | Friday, July 23, 2010, 12:17 pm