http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34528-on-the-corrupting-influence-of-money-in-politics-bernie-sanders-is-dead-right
Sunday, 24 January 2016 00:00 By
Eliza A. Webb
With the Iowa caucus barely a
week away, President Barack Obama is weighing in on the role of
money in politics, a major platform of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders.
Obama is seriously considering
taking executive action to curb the flood of money into politics by requiring
corporations to disclose their political contributions.
This puts him in stark
agreement with Sanders, who, at the January 17 Democratic debate, argued that
money in politics is the major reason Congress cannot enact change desired by
the American people.
During the health-care
discussion, Sanders said:
You know what it all comes
down to? Do you know why we can't do what every other major country on earth is
doing? It's because we have a campaign finance system that is corrupt, we have
super PACs, we have the pharmaceutical industry pouring hundreds of millions of
dollars into campaign contributions and lobbying, and the private insurance
companies as well.
Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders
is absolutely right about this. Congress is inundated with money spent by very large
corporations in return for political action designed to maximize corporate
profits.
Pfizer, one of the largest
pharmaceutical companies in the world, gave $2,217,066 in political campaign donations during the
2014 election cycle (the most recent year for which data is available), and
$9,483,000 more in political lobbying. As of 2014, 40 members of Congress held stock in the
pharmaceutical giant.
Congress also happens to be
doing nothing to stop Pfizer from charging Americans some of the highest drug prices in the world.
Bristol-Myers Squibb is
another pharmaceutical behemoth charging Americans inflated drug prices while
funneling money to Congress. In 2014, the company spent $259,450 in campaign
contributions, and $2,745,000 in lobbying. Twenty-five members of Congress hold stock in
Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Another Big Pharma company,
Johnson & Johnson, gave $757,788 in political campaign contributions in 2014,
and spent $5,980,000 more in lobbying. Forty members of Congress hold stock in Johnson &
Johnson.
While millions of Americans fight to afford their
medications, 11 corporate leviathans (all of which donate to or lobby Congress) have wrested more than $711 billion in profits
for their investors.
As members of Congress
constitute some of those investors, the lax regulation that allows the American
people to be extorted is actually good for the politicians in charge of
representing the best interests of the people.
This throws into light the
reason why, unlike any other body of legislators in the world, US federal
lawmakers do not regulate or restrain massive pharmaceutical companies
from engaging in predatory pricing practices.
You might say the US Congress
is a bit compromised.
The same lucrative financial
ties that exist between politicians and the "health-care" industry
exist between politicians and for-profit prison companies, oil companies, gun companies, sugar companies, other big agribusiness and Wall Street's bankers,
advisers, and hedge fund and private equity managers.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) recently
fought for the protection of a billion-dollar tax loophole pushed by Wall
Street investors, while super PACs with close ties to Reid have received upward
of $1 million from Wall Street CEOs like TPG Capital cofounder David Bonderman.
Throughout their political
careers, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota), Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) and
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have gotten over $3 million combined from the
oil industry. Recently, these three legislators all supported the industry's (successful) fight to lift
the 40-year ban on unlimited exports of US crude oil.
In 2007, then-Sen. Hillary
Clinton, now a Democratic presidential candidate, gave campaign speeches
attacking a tax break for hedge fund and private equity executives, but did not put her name on Senate legislation to close
the loophole. In 2006, Clinton received hundreds of thousands of dollars in
direct campaign and super PAC contributions from individuals working for (and
PACs representing) financial institutions such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs,
Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Lehman Brothers.
As instance after instance
shows, Congress does not, in fact, represent the people of the United States,
but rich CEOs. On both sides of the aisle, campaign donations, super PACs and corporate
lobbying have morphed this country into an oligarchy, controlled by the wealthy
few.
As Sanders says, the issue is
not that "the Republicans and Democrats hate each other. That's a
mythology from the media."
The real problem, which
Sanders has correctly identified, is that "Congress is owned by big money
and refuses to do what the American people want them to do.”
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