“Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” That old phrase has never been more true than in modern elections! There’s a general understanding that truckloads of money is spent on every election, but just how much is it? How does this political hamster wheel get greased, and just how much grease is applied?
Here are Five Fast Facts on the mind-boggling cost of American elections:
- 🤯 Blow Your Mind - The kind of money spent in modern American elections is simply mind-blowing. In the current 2024 race, the two presidential candidates alone have raised a combined $1 billion! The total spending for all congressional candidates is projected to be around $16 billion.
- 🗳️ Makin’ It Happen - Looking past all of the candidates, the cost of the actual election is pretty significant, too. It’s hard to find current numbers, but at least back in 2012 it was around $2.6 billion. Given the inflation that’s happened since then, that should put this year’s cost somewhere north of about $72 trillion, right?
- 💲 The Little People - Individuals can donate a max of $3,300 to any specific candidate over a four year period of time. It’s $1,000 more than in 2020. Anyone who donates more than $200 in a year has to be reported by the campaign and the info is made public. Transparency, baby!
- 💰 Super PACs - Starting in 2010, these organizations (PAC = political action committee) are supposed to be isolated from the candidates (no coordination), and there are no regulations on how much you can give to them or how much they can give to candidates. Think legal laundering of political donations from wealthy people.
- 🕶️ Dark Money - Sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. Dark money is money spent on elections that can’t be traced to a source. Using a combination of shell companies and legal loopholes, they have almost no regulations or requirements for disclosure, so there’s pretty much no limit to the amount of dark money floating around big elections. Dark money is what you get when the people making the rules benefit from the rules being as full of holes as a cheese grater.
🔥Bottom line: Theoretically, the only taxpayer money that’s supposed to be spent on elections is what is spent on the administration of the election itself. Everything spent by candidates is donated either directly or through Super PACs. Of course, some might say that’s about as ironclad as a bowl of noodles. It is politics, after all.
Can you think of any better ways to spend money than all this?
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