Congressional Democrats get a pass on PAC contributions.

I just had a look at Ken Vogel’s piece called “Dem’s cash swing dwarfed by GOP’s 1995 windfall” over at Politico. It’s a pretty disheartening story. The implicit message in the headline and the text is that the Congressional Democrats should get a pass and a pat on the back for getting less lobbyist and special interest money than the Republicans did when they took over the House in 1995. The lesser of two evils is preferable, even though it’s still evil.

This article doesn’t tell me that the Democrats are running a tighter ship than Republicans, as it was meant to: it inadvertently flaunts the fact that Congress is bought off by special interests, regardless of which party is in power. Although non-ideological “…PACs tend to write checks to politicians in relatively bipartisan patterns…” these groups give based on who is in the majority:

“Their contributions are investments for access to those who control their issues, said Michael J. Malbin, Executive Director of the Campaign Finance Institute. And since the majority party controls the agenda, he said ‘giving patterns follow the institutional power in Congress.’”

Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions or being short-sighted, but “investments for access to those who control their issues” sounds very clearly like buying off legislators.