Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

78 Chapter 2
campaign donations are from the same superclass-controlled firms that hire
Washington lobbyists). 173
The 1970s and 1980s also witnessed the development and growth of an extensive
corporate-funded network of conservative “think tanks” aimed at influencing
public policy with conservative ideas and policies, such as “supplyside”
economics and “welfare reform.” 174 From the 1970s through the 2000s,
this network produced (and continues to produce) books, policy papers, and
press releases providing the ideological rationale (“free market”) and the “empirical
evidence” justifying political efforts to “reform” (typically via privatization
schemes) various public programs and institutions such as welfare, Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all levels of public education. 175
To help fund the political campaigns of candidates favorable to privilegedclass
business interests, the number of corporate political action committees
(PACs) grew from 89 in 1974 to 1,206 in 1980. 176 Business mobilization of
PACs continued to grow, and in 2005 corporate and related trade association
PACs totaled 2,621. 177 In the 2004 election cycle, corporate-organized and
-dominated PACs accounted for 73 percent of the $289 million contributed by
all PACs to congressional candidates. 178 In addition to the expansion of corporate
PACs, the amounts of money from business-based political contributions
of all types also increased dramatically as election expenditures for all
congressional candidates spiraled up from $342.4 million in 1981 and 1982,
to $765.3 million in 1995 and 1996, to a record, at the time, of $1.16 billion
in 2003 and 2004. 179
The 2004 and 2006 federal elections witnessed record spending by candidates
compared to previous comparable election cycles. In 2004 (a presidential
election year), spending by and on behalf of all candidates for federal
offices (i.e., presidential, congressional) totaled $4.2 billion compared with
$3 billion in 2000. In 2006 (a midterm election), the total was $2.8 billion
compared with $2.2 billion in 2002. 180 As we will see in chapter 4, the increasing
cost of political campaigns has led to an ever greater dependence, especially
at the national level, by both Republicans and Democrats on direct
high-dollar contributions from wealthy individuals and corporate PACs and
from extensive, but indirect, support from so called 527 committees (mostly
funded by superclass sources). These committees, named for the section of the
federal tax code that governs them, became increasingly important in the 2004
election as a result of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA),
which banned “soft money” (e.g., indirect) contributions to federal candidates.
181 In the 2004 elections, “hard money” contributions (regulated by
BCRA limits but coming primarily from wealthy individuals and corporate
PACs) to both major parties and federal candidates totaled about $3 billion,
split roughly 54 percent for Republicans and 46 percent for Democrats. 182 The
tilting effect of privileged-class dominance of national election funding in favor
of candidates from both major parties supporting the interests of this class
is evident in comparisons of total PAC and individual donations to federal