The Power of Campaign Contributors

Campaign contributions are a common thing when it comes to elections, even though it allows runners to take its candidatures to another level, it also comes with a cost.

First of all,  it’s important to know what is a Campaign Contributions- assets raised to endorse candidates, political parties, or policy initiatives and referenda.

Besides that it’s also very important to know that’s prohibit by law, for the candidate to use the donations for personal use. Therefore donation can only be used in the following ways:

·         Donations to charities, as long as the candidate doesn’t receive compensation from the organizations and the donation is not used by the charity to benefit the candidate.

·         A donation of a maximum of $2000 to another presidential candidate.

·         Unlimited transfers to a local, state or national political party committee.

·         Donations to state and local candidates or transfer to a future election campaign committee of the same candidate (Bernie Sanders transferred $1.5 million collected from his Senate campaign committee to his presidential committee).

Money is a big part when it comes to winning an election, as studies shows that when more money is spend the higher possibility to win the race.

With this said, donors usually have a big influence on the government when their candidate wins. For example, in 2016 American presidential election, most of Trump’s donors where oil companies. Now that he’s in office, he has shown in support for oil companies, leaving many to speculate that Trump is paying those companies back for their support.  

Other examples is the American laws regulating gun-ownerships laws, its estimated that the congress wins $240000 to support, yet they can received $56000000 to oppose. Similar things happen to pass CISPA Cybersecurty bill, the approval of Keystone XL Pipeline transporting oil from Alberta to Texas, between many, making these episode quite frequent, not only in the US but all over the world.

There are several examples of corporate influence in government decisions such as lowering taxes for rich people,  lowering minimum wage, the not creation of “equal pay” policies, amongst others.

Campaign contributions give its donors political power and influence over a government, influencing the country’s policies and therefore its economy and wealth as well as it population.

What do you think about this ? Do you believe that’s that easy to buy a government? How do you think we should precede to help fight this ? 

                          

Source: CNN, Washington Post, Social Studies, business insider