opensecrets.org provides a moderated glimpse into the heretofore murky world of campaign contributions. For that reason, it's a great introduction, although for more powerful tools you might want to look elsewhere.
Campaign Contributions: Open Secrets
One of the hottest topics of the day is the role of campaign contributions in shaping national politics. Time and time again, we hear that members of the U.S. Congress are tempted, influenced, or even bribed outright by the contributions that fund their races for re-election. Granny D (aka Doris Haddock) has created a one-woman social movement built around the idea that these campaign contributions sully our democracy. Senator John McCain's legislative battle to pass some form of campaign finance reform has helped his star rise in national politics.
If campaign contributions are so important, it is a shame that obtaining information about them has historically been so difficult. Only four years ago, when I wanted to learn how much money the cable television industry had been sending to the Congress, I had to write the FEC and ask for specific reports on particular contributors. These arrived in the mail after some time.
Fortunately, with the advent of services like the Center for Responsive Politics' opensecrets.org, almost anyone can find out who's been siphoning money off to whom in the Congress. At opensecrets.org, this information is augmented by background and history of relevant legislation. The main page of opensecrets.org provides links to current hot topics in the Congress. Those links follow through to a report, which includes a list of contributions by relevant industries and the individuals associated with them.
For instance, if I clicked on the "bankruptcy" link, I would be taken to a page that described the bill passed recently by both houses of Congress that will make bankruptcy more difficult to obtain. At the bottom of the page, I found a link to the list of all House members, their vote on the bill and contributions by relevant PACs and individuals in the 1999-2000 election years. With some Excel grease, this kind of information can be easily transformed into graphs that lay bare the mutual influence of money and politics. The graph of contributions for bankruptcy reform lies below.
Unfortunately, not all kinds of information are available at this site. For instance, what if I thought that the bill getting out of committee in the first place was the really important hurdle? In that circumstance, I'd expect to find that folks voting "yes" in committee got even *more* money. Unfortunately, opensecrets.org doesn't provide that kind of specific information just yet. But a trip to a web site like Thomas provides the necessary supplements for the creation of an additional graph. The graph, which confirms our suspicions, looks like this:
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