According to my unofficial Bomberger poll, the approval rating for Congress is hovering right around 0 percent. In October of 2012, as our nation headed towards election day, Congress enjoyed a dismal Gallup approval rating of 21 percent. Surprisingly, this statistic was graciously up from months prior. After millions of patriotic Americans across the nation dutifully cast their vote, today we find ourselves stuck with a nearly identical Congress whose Gallup approval rating is an abysmal 15 percent. Why are Americans so disenfranchised with their representatives? Wait! I have a few ideas!
Maybe it’s because our representatives have failed to hold anyone in the financial sector accountable for driving our country into an economic depression. Perhaps it is the likes of the anonymously penned provision in what has come to be known as the “Monsanto Protection Act”, which makes Americans question if Congress is dependent on public or private interests. What about the fact that polls consistently indicate about 90 percent of the American public supports universal background checks on gun purchases, yet this simple piece of legislation failed to pass? More recently the Senate protected our Fourth Amendment rights by voting down the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), but somehow the bill magically garnered enough support to be pushed through the House.
I’m no lawyer or fancy politician, but it seems to me Congress isn’t doing much to protect the interests of the American public. If this is our brightest political mind’s best efforts at serving the public, then we may want to consider revamping more than just our elections system. Being able to blame our representative’s inadequacies on bonafide human incompetence would be a much simpler problem to solve. To find the answer as to why Congress can’t seem to do anything constructive for our republic, you must look no further than the price tag that comes with winning a seat in Congress.
The nonpartisan campaign finance research organization MapLight estimates that on average, a candidate fundraises $6.4 million dollars for a Senate seat and around a cool $1.2 million for a House seat. How on Earth do such busy public servants manage to fundraise these massive amounts of cash? According to the Sunlight Foundation, members of Congress spend anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of their time fundraising. For fun, let us say an average work day for a representative is 10 hours. That would mean they are spending anywhere from 3 to 7 hours schmoozing fundraisers to pay off the debt from their last campaign or gear up for the next one. If you ask me, that’s a lot of valuable time spent chasing money and not solving our country’s problems.
You could say they are on the phone reaching out to local constituents and raising money that way. Therefore, our reps are technically hearing concerns of the public and turning those conversations into campaign funding. Sadly, small donations from your average citizen is not where our representatives are raising the majority of his or her money. As findings from the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics report – less than .1 percent of Americans contributed over 60 percent of the money raised for elections in 2008. Remember why I thought Americans were unhappy with Congress?
The Center for Responsive Politics reports the following: Over $390 million dollars were spent on lobbying and election spending by the securities and investment industry between 2009-2012. Senator Roy Blunt, who eventually admitted to writing the “Monsanto Protection Act” provision has received $524,500 from Monsanto and Agricultural PACs between 2008-2012. From 2011-2012, the NRA spent $23 million in lobbying and election spending. Lastly, the spectacular gust of momentum that passed CISPA in the House could be linked to the $67 million in funding House members received from interests in support of CISPA, as opposed to the measly $4 million in funding they received from interests opposing it.
I’d hate to be overly cynical and say our public officials are clearly representing special interests, but the research supporting that claim is compelling. If nothing else, the financial corruption in our elections and legislative process erodes the public’s trust that representatives go to work each day to be the voice of the people. That is why I am proud to be a part of the Represent Us and Rootstrikers movement to reform financial corruption in our politics and return the power of the republic back to the American people.
-JMB
