Misc

Saturday, February 7, 2009 10:41 - 0 Comments

Lobbying pays: Bankers made a 258,449% Return on Their Investment!!!!!!!

The Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group, did an analysis which contrasted the amount spent by banking institutions on lobbying and political campaign contributions with the bailout monies they received. After they crunched the numbers they found that the financial sectors investment met with a staggering gain of 258,449 percent!!!

[From TARP Recipients Paid Out $114 Million for Politicking Last Year ]  link to original article at bottom.

Images and commentary Inserted by Rohaan. I have also highlighted certain telling segments in blue.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS
The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. For 25 years the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center has aimed to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government.

CRP’s award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, is the most comprehensive resource for campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. For other organizations and news media, CRP’s exclusive data powers their online features tracking money in politics. CRP relies on support from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.

The companies that have been awarded taxpayers’ money from Congress’s bailout bill spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions, Center finds. The return on investment: 258,449 percent.

WASHINGTON– The struggling companies whose freewheeling business practices have contributed to the country’s economic woes are getting a lucrative return on at least one of their investments. Beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout package in the finance and automotive industries have spent a total of $114.2 million on lobbying in the past year and contributions toward the 2008 election, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found.

The companies giving the most to fund lawmakers’ campaigns and spending the most on lobbying efforts were also those that received the most TARP money to help them stay afloat.

The companies’ political activities have, in part, yielded them $295.2 billion from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an extraordinary return of 258,449 percent.

“Even in the best economic times, you won’t find an investment with a greater payoff than what these companies have been getting,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s executive director. “Some of the companies and industries that have received payments may now consider their contributions and lobbying to be the smartest investments they’ve made in years.”

While the Treasury Department, not Congress, doles out TARP funds to specific institutions, congressional lawmakers had to authorize that money in the first place, and lawmakers will determine in the future whether to release more funds to prop up the U.S. economy.

During the bill-writing process, members of Congress were able to specify to some extent where the money should go, and they have lobbied regulators to urge them to inject funds into specific banks and financial institutions, including those in lawmakers’ own districts.

“Taxpayers hope their money is being allocated entirely on the merits, but with Congress controlling how much money the Treasury gets to hand out, it will be impossible to completely exclude politics from this process,” Krumholz said.

Some of the top recipients of contributions from companies receiving TARP money are the same members of Congress who chair committees charged with regulating the financial sector and overseeing the effectiveness of this unprecedented government program.

They include Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (he received $854,200 from the companies in the 2008 election cycle, including money to his presidential campaign) and Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chair of the Senate Finance Committee (he received $279,000).

In total, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Senate Finance Committee and House Financial Services Committee received $5.2 million from TARP recipients in the 2007-2008 election cycle. President Obama collected at least $4.3 million from employees at these companies for his presidential campaign.

Some, Not All, TARP Recipients Hired Lobbyists

Of the more than 300 companies that have been aided by TARP, 25 paid lobbyists a total of $76.7 million to represent them on Capitol Hill in 2008. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said recently that institutions collecting these funds won’t be allowed to lobby the federal government going forward. In the 4th Quarter of 2008, when Congress was crafting bailout legislation, these companies spent $17.8 million on lobbying–less than what they spent in the prior three quarters, probably because they were strapped for cash.

In total, 161 companies approved for TARP money gave $37.5 million to federal candidates, parties and committees in the 2007-2008 election cycle, with 57 percent of that going to Democrats (post-election data is not yet available). The employees of these companies, rather than their political action committees, gave the bulk of that, at $26.1 million, or 70 percent.

These two groups of donors seem to have differed in their partisan allegiance–individual employees gave 61 percent of their donations to Democrats, while PACs were more evenly divided, giving 51 percent to Republicans. Some of the companies to give the most in contributions, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, are also among the biggest donors of all time to U.S. politics.

Numbers tell the story and as you can see from the graph below those who design and run the capitalist infrastructure do best. The graph date is old but relevant and telling.  This article can confirm that matters have only gotten worse for us, the People

Please remember the first law of Legislative Physics. Money flows uphill, from sea level to Capitol Hill

source: SunlightFoundation.com

This includes General Motors, which spent $15 million between campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures and got $10.4 billion (more than all other companies), Bank of America (and the investment company it bought last year, Merrill Lynch), which spent $14.5 million to play politics and received $45 billion from the bailout bill; and American International Group (AIG), which spent $10.6 million and was paid out $40 billion.

Citigroup was also one of the largest spenders to see a big result: between lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions, the company spent $12.5 million and got $50 billion. For a complete list of TARP recipients that spent money on campaign contributions and lobbying, see the chart below.

“TARP needs to be far more transparent,” Krumholz of CRP said. “Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been handed out with little more than a one-line announcement.

What qualified these companies for the money they’re getting? What disqualified other companies? What contact has there been between members of Congress and the Treasury? What contact have lobbyists had with Congress and Treasury? These are reasonable questions, and taxpayers deserve answers.”

The finance, insurance and real estate sector, including all companies and trade groups (not just those that qualified for TARP funds), spent $453.5 million on lobbying in 2008, an 8.7 percent increase from the year before. In the last quarter of ’08, the sector spent $106.9 million on its influence-peddling efforts.

The securities and investment industry spent $20.5 million in the 4th Quarter, insurance companies spent $36.7 million and real estate companies spent $16.5 million. And although this was a decrease from the 3rd Quarter for each of these industries, they had plenty of additional support. Trade associations in the finance, insurance and real estate sector spent $123 million on lobbying last year, more than they spent in each of the three years prior.

On its award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, the Center for Responsive Politics tracks both campaign contributions to federal lawmakers and lobbying expenditures by organization, industry and sector. CRP calculated the numbers in this report by mashing up these databases with a list of TARP recipients accessed Feb. 2, 2009, from Treasury.gov. Post-election contribution data is not yet available but should be incorporated into OpenSecrets.org in the coming weeks.

Return on Investment
Total campaign contributions and lobbying by TARP recipients* For a complete listing.Please visit original article to detailed chart

[From TARP Recipients Paid Out $114 Million for Politicking Last Year]

You can also download this data here: TARP Recipients.xls

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Rohaan