Thursday, September 30, 2010

Millions for Republicans who block reform

In his recent blog post over at OurFuture.org, Zach Carter digs into which Republicans are getting big Wall Street cash to block the President's reform agenda. He uncovers 90 members of Congress who have close to $180 million in campaign funds from Wall Street sources. Here's what he found:
A full 90 members of Congress who voted to bailout Wall Street in 2008 failed to support financial reform reining in the banks that drove our economy off a cliff. But when you examine campaign contribution data, it's really no surprise that these particular lawmakers voted to mortgage our economic future to Big Finance: This election cycle, they've raked in over $48.8 million from the financial establishment. Over the course of their Congressional careers, the figure swells to a massive $176.9 million.

The complete list of these Crony Capitalists is below, along with the money they pulled in from Big Finance, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org). The career data goes back to 1989. Of the 69 House members who voted with Wall Street on both the bailout and financial reform, 60 are Republicans, while nine are Democrats. All 21 Senators who voted with Wall Street on both issues are Republicans, and Republicans raked in over 90 percent of the total campaign contributions. Here's a chart showing Wall Street's total contributions to this crowd for the 2010 cycle, by political party:






Some 90 percent went to Republicans. More reform over what has been won is going to take a big fight, and this Nov. 2 will make a huge difference about how that fight turns out.

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