NYTimes | WE have long assumed that the infestation of
special interest money in Washington is at the root of so much that ails
our politics. But what if we’ve had it wrong? What if instead of being
bribed by wealthy interests, politicians are engaged in a form of legal
extortion designed to extract campaign contributions?
Consider this: of the thousands of bills introduced in Congress each
year, only roughly 5 percent become law. Why do legislators bother
proposing so many bills? What if many of those bills are written not to
be passed but to pressure people into forking over cash?
This is exactly what is happening. Politicians have developed a dizzying array of legislative tactics to bring in money.
Take the maneuver known inside the Beltway as the “tollbooth.” Here the
speaker of the House or a powerful committee chairperson will create a
procedural obstruction or postponement on the eve of an important vote.
Campaign contributions are then implicitly solicited. If the tribute
offered by those in favor of the bill’s passage is too small (or if the
money from opponents is sufficiently high), the bill is delayed and does
not proceed down the legislative highway.
House Speaker John A. Boehner
appears to be a master of the tollbooth. In 2011, he collected a total
of over $200,000 in donations from executives and companies in the days
before holding votes on just three bills. He delayed scheduling a vote
for months on the widely supported Wireless Tax Fairness Act, and after
he finally announced a vote, 37 checks from wireless-industry executives
totaling nearly $40,000 rolled in. He also delayed votes on the Access
to Capital for Job Creators Act and the Small Company Capital Formation
Act, scoring $91,000 from investment banks and private equity firms,
$32,450 from bank holding companies and $46,500 from self-described
investors — all in the 48 hours between scheduling the vote and the
vote’s actually being held on the House floor.
Another tactic that politicians use is something beltway insiders call
“milker bills.” These are bills designed to “milk” donations from
threatened individuals or businesses. The real trick is to pit two
industries against each other and pump both for donations, thereby
creating a “double milker” bill.
President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
seemed to score big in 2011 using the milker tactic in connection with
two bills: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Preventing Real Online
Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act.
By pitting their supporters in Silicon Valley who opposed the bills
against their allies in Hollywood who supported the measures, Mr. Obama
and Mr. Biden were able to create a sort of fund-raising arms race.
In the first half of 2011, Silicon Valley had chipped in only $1.7
million to Mr. Obama’s political campaign. The president announced that
he would “probably” sign antipiracy legislation — a stance that pleased
Hollywood and incensed Silicon Valley. The tech industry then poured
millions into Mr. Obama’s coffers in the second half of 2011. By January
of 2012, Hollywood had donated $4.1 million to Mr. Obama.
Then, suddenly, on Jan. 14, 2012, the White House announced that it had
problems with the antipiracy bills and neither passed. “He didn’t just
throw us under the bus,” one film executive and longtime supporter of
Mr. Obama anonymously told The Financial Times, “he ran us down,
reversed the bus and ran over us again.”
