"Corporations
outspend unions by 11-to-1 in political campaigns." That claim has been repeated over
and over in the press as part of the campaign against California's Proposition 226.
Trouble is, it's wrong.
The
figure comes from the Center for Responsive Politics, a supposedly nonpartisan research
group...
And
reporters don't seem interested in checking CRP's claim. But the facts are of
interest to anyone who frets about money corrupting politics.
CRP's calculations are wildly out of synch with official
figures from the Federal Elections Commission.
In
the 1995-96 election cycle, the FEC reported that business political action committees
spent a total of $130 million, compared with $99 million spent by labor union PACs.
But
CRP claims that business PACs spent many times the FEC figure. And it reduces labor's
expenditures by $50 million dollars, to $49 million...
More
outrageous is CRP's inclusion of "lawyers and lobbyists," accounting for $51
billion in donations in the business category. One of the nation's biggest PACs, of
course, is the litigation-crazed American Association of Trial Lawyers -- archnemesis of
American business... the trial lawyers have spent millions fighting tort reform, a major
business objective...
Glenn Elmers is a policy
analyst with the Claremont Institute in Southern California.