Congress to constituents: “Show me the money”

Congress to constituents: “Show me the money”
BY CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM
March 11 at 10:31 am

Matea Gold reports today on the first ever randomized field experiment to assess the influence of campaign contributions on legislators’ behavior. While the results shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with U.S. politics (spoiler alert: money = access), the study takes a first crack at quantifying exactly how money influences the legislative process.

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Are Congressmen and their senior staffers more likely to grant face-time to potential campaign donors than to other constituents? The results are laid out in the chart below. The authors write:

Senior policymakers attended the meetings considerably more frequently when Congressional offices were informed that the meeting attendees were donors. Only 2.4% of offices arranged meetings with a Member of Congress or Chief of Staff when they believed the attendees were merely constituents, but 12.5% did so when the attendees were revealed to be donors. Members of Congress and Chiefs of Staff were thus five times as likely to make themselves available for putative donors as for constituents.



Two additional points are worth noting: success rates for meetings with Congressmen were low overall, but the study authors note that non-donors rarely obtained any meetings with Congressmen or chiefs of staff. This suggests that being a donor is a near-necessary condition for obtaining high-level Congressional access, but it is not a sufficient one.


MORE:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/11/congress-to-constituents-show-me-the-money/