Interest groups and politics :: essays research papers

Interest Groups and PoliticsAs we approach the 2004 pre berthntial election every unitary is getting in line to despatch their notes into the Proverbial feeding trough that all politicians take from. Campaigns ar made and broke depending on how much money they have to spend. Fundraising is one way for politicians to receive contri moreoverions from your typical everyday blue collar citizen, but where do the four and five figure contributions come from? They come from intrest groups and lobbyists. These are the people, companies, and organizations that control our government whether they admit it or not. Campaign are streamlet by this money and their agendas are the ones that congress on both the give tongue to and national level. The best way to sum up how all this plant life is "Youre one of 435 ants in the House, and unless youre on the right charge a lot of these people dont even harvest your phone calls." Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), on raising money from PAC directors ("Speaking Freely, second Ed." by Larry Makinson (Center for Responsive Politics, 2003)). Interest groups give what is called soft money to candidates in return these candidates push the issues that the interest groups hold important. For instance, recently on 60 MINUTES they ran a special on the prescription drug companies and the government. It is shown that the get together Sates pays double for medication what the rest of the world pays for the same thing. The reason this is occurring is referable to the fact that these drug manufacturers are pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in to these campaigns. Since 1999 certain legislators have standard more then one and a one-half million dollars in campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies. President Bush personally has received half a million dollars. (60Minutes, CBS News). It is quite amazing that if you look at the circus tent 100 overall donators in 2002 that seven of them are the largest drug manufactors in the world, and the are all heavy republican supporters. On the same side to this is the insurance companies. They also give large contributions to politicians. In 2002, companies such as Blue Cross / Blue Shield, AFLAC, and Cigna, were all huge contributors to the Republican Party. Since the slowly 80s republican have always been able to swot more soft money. In 2002 alone democrats raised 217 million dollars, epoch the republicans raised a whopping 442 million in soft money (opensecrets.