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Comment by aetherson | Hacker News Reader

The snide answer is that the biggest benefit of money in politics is that it diverts the attention of politicians from "governing."

But seriously, the idea that the poor politicians are just TOO EXHAUSTED FROM FUNDRAISING to give us the good government that they desperately want to provide us seems, at best, under-argued to me. What evidence is there that this is the case?

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NPR did a great series of pieces on this.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/30/149648666/senat...

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t...

Here's a quote illustrating how much time fundrasing takes away from their normal job...

  Andrea Seabrook
  How many fundraisers do you typically go to in a given week, do you think?
  
  Nancy Pelosi
  A lot. Yeah. Either on the phone or attending events. But I think they've said
  this year I attended almost 400 fundraisers in nearly 40 cities.
  
  Andrea Seabrook
  That's 400 for the year 2011. That's more than one a day, every day of the
  year, Saturdays and Sundays included.

Nancy Pelosi has an incredibly safe seat in a district that would literally sooner die than elect a Republican, and enough power within the Democratic party to turn any challenger from the left into a greasy oil stain. Let me suggest that if she's going to 400 fundraisers per year, it's not because she's forced to at the expense of what she'd rather be doing.

EDIT: And here's in fact the bit right before the part you quoted:

"This is Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House. She's also the Democratic Party's number one fundraiser. Pelosi has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Close to $40 million in this election alone."

To wit: she's not representative, she's in fact the very extreme.

Nacy Pelosi isn't attending 400 fundraisers for herself -- she is doing it for the Democratic party and other candidates. Holding a single 'safe' seat in the House is not that important, but electing a few dozen more party members can make a difference, hence the crazy fundraising schedule.

She fund raises for the others to stay in the leadership not to stay in office. Poor questions from NPR.

Congressmen are expected by their parties to spend 4 or so hours per day, every single day, calling people and asking them for money. 28+ hours per week calling people and asking them for money, every single week, during their entire career. Plus attending fundraisers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressi...

A friend of mine was an intern for a candidate that was on the national stage for the presidential election in 2012. This was a couple years before the election. He said all of the candidate's time was fundraising. The person was almost never in the office. Money is simply everything when it comes to being re-elected.

In case it's not clear, he was a supporter of this person (their families were long-time friends), so he wasn't saying it as a derogatory thing or speaking from a negatively-biased place.

Common sense? If someone spends 80% of their time on something, that is the thing that will get the most attention. That is where the 80/20 rule comes from.

That's not what the 80/20 rule is.

Do you have any evidence that politicians spend 80% of their time fundraising?

What is the big list of bills that just couldn't get drafted because the politicians were too busy fundraising?

Not 80% but it looks like as much time is spent fundraising as doing legislative work: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressi...

And my worry isn't about not being able to draft bills. It's about being able to review already-drafted bills. Isn't the TPP several thousand pages?

The idea that congresspeople would just dive into the thousand and ten-thousand page bills of dense legalese if only it weren't for these inconvenient fundraisers is just not based in any version of reality.

You're missing the point.

The biggest issue with all this fundraising isn't that it's just taking away from time to legislate. The biggest issue that amount of time fundraising can makes it difficult for an honest politician (spare me the jokes) to not be influenced by the people he's asking for money.

As a legislator, you only have enough time and attention to research and care about a handful of issues. The remainder of those issues, you have to trust the expertise of fellow legislators and lobbyists. Lobbyists are experts in their fields and apart from being able to write checks, they know how to explain policy to a legislator so the legislator believes they're doing the right thing.

I realize asking people to have pity on congressmen is a tall order, but don't delude yourself into believing they have free-will that translates into power or influence without sucking on the fundraising teet.

According to Rep. Capuano of Cambridge/Somerville MA, the reason he can't effectively evaluate the TPP is that he isn't allowed to write any notes or consult people who are actually trade experts.

http://capuano.house.gov/e-updates/eu2015-05-15.shtml

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