Telecom amnesty vote and campaign contributions
Posted by Jacque on June 27th, 2008
A bill supporting legal amnesty to telecoms that aided the government’s warrantless wiretapping program was passed in the House of Representatives last Friday. The question arises, who do they “represent?”
Wired Network Blog reports that of the 220 Democratic members of the House who voted against telecom amnesty in March, 94 switched their vote last Friday, “supporting a bill ironed out by the House leadership that expands the government’s ability to conduct blanket wiretaps inside American telecom facilities and freeing those companies from the 40 or so lawsuits pending in Federal court.”
MAPLight.org analyzed the contributions from telecom political action groups to Congress and found that 88 percent of the Democrats who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008). Those who switched their votes received, on average, 40 percent more money in campaign contributions over the last three years from Sprint, Verizon and AT&T’s political action committees.
For instance, those who changed their votes collected $8,359 dollars from those PACs from January 2005 through March 2008, while those who did not change their opposition collected $4,987.
For all House members, including Republicans, those supporting immunity collected nearly twice as much money from those PACs than those who did not: $9,659 to $4,810.
MAPlight.org did not say that any member’s vote was purchased, but says the correlation raises questions. MAPLight.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that tracks all campaign contributions given to members of Congress, and how every member of Congress votes on every bill, “revealing connections between money and politics never before possible to see,” they say. Photo by Mysterious Mimir. Creative Commons license.
