Interest groups and politics :: essays research papers

Interest Groups and PoliticsAs we approach the 2004 presidential election everyvirtuoso is getting in line to throw their capital into the proverbial feeding trough that whole politicians take from. Campaigns are made and broke depending on how much money they have to spend. Fundraising is one way for politicians to stick contributions from your typical everyday blue collar citizen, but where do the quadruple 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 run by this money and their agendas are the ones that congress on both the state and national level. The outdo way to sum up how all this works is "Youre one of 435 ants in the House, and unless youre on the right committee a litter of these people dont even return your phone calls." Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), on raising money from PAC directors ("Sp eaking Freely, 2nd Ed." by Larry Makinson (Center for antiphonary Politics, 2003)). Interest groups give what is called delicate money to candidates in return these candidates resist the issues that the interest groups hold important. For instance, recently on 60 MINUTES they ran a special on the prescription do drugs companies and the government. It is shown that the United Sates pays double for medicinal drug what the rest of the world pays for the same thing. The reason this is occurring is due to the fact that these drug manufacturers are pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in to these campaigns. Since 1999 certain legislators have received more and so one and a half gazillion dollars in campaign contributions from pharmaceutic companies. President Bush personally has received half a million dollars. (60Minutes, CBS News). It is quite amazing that if you look at the top 100 boilers suit donators in 2002 that seven of them are the largest drug manufactors in the wo rld, and the are all heavy republican supporters. On the same side to this is the insurance companies. They in any case give large contributions to politicians. In 2002, companies such as Blue peril / Blue Shield, AFLAC, and Cigna, were all huge contributors to the Republican Party. Since the late 80s republican have always been able to raise more soft money. In 2002 alone democrats raised 217 million dollars, while the republicans raised a whopping 442 million in soft money (opensecrets.