The everyday corruption of our government by Big Money has real consequences for Americans, many of whom are struggling to feed their families. Take the farm bill that Congress spent time working on this week. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced an amendment to restore $4.5 billion in funding for the food stamp program, which assists
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On Wednesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center held a forum on the “Vanishing Moderate Democrat.” To demonstrate this supposed phenomenon, it hosted various self-styled “moderate” Democrats as panelists. But besides this supposed centrist ideology, these panelists all shared one other attribute — they all became corporate lobbyists after leaving Congress. Here’s a list of the panelists
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In our broken campaign finance system, Members of Congress know that they can introduce and advocate for legislation that benefits a certain industry or special interest group and then be lavished with campaign contributions from the same interests. On June 11th, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a bill titled the “South Carolina Off-shore Drilling Act,”
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Last year, Arkansas Representative Mike Ross was the Democratic co-sponsor of an amendment to delay the US Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing the Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which would curb the amount of soot and other dangerous chemicals released by industry. Regulators estimate that the rule could prevent 520 premature deaths in Arkansas every year, particularly because the
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Imagine if, when suspects were taken before a court to testify, they were able to pay off the judge and jury to make sure there was no serious grilling. Unfortunately, this isn’t a hypothetical. This is the U.S. Senate. This morning, the Senate Finance Committee — which is managed by a former JP Morgan lobbyist
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The for-profit college industry includes many schools that are scamming students and taxpayers. The industry accounts for 11 percent of college students but a whopping 44 percent of student loan defaults. Meanwhile, the industry has sucked up billions of dollars of taxpayer money through loans and grants without any proper oversight. The reason it can do
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Lobbyists, hoping to persuade lawmakers and their staffs on any number of important issues, breeze in and out of the halls of the Capitol every day. But a growing trend that has alarmed ethics experts is the extent to which influence peddlers have burrowed into government to take jobs that place them in positions of
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Yesterday, House Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a trove of documents that detail how the drug industry — through its powerful trade association PhRMA — was able to win all sorts of concessions in President Obama’s health care law. The documents show how top White House officials bargained away policies to
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