Word: pacs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...worth $300 million, then Senate Finance Chairman Dole poked fun at the commodity traders on the Senate floor. "They are great contributors. They haven't missed a fund raiser. If you do not pay any taxes, you can afford to go to all the fund raisers." But then commodity PACs and individual traders increased their contributions to Dole's own political action committee from $11,000 in 1981-82 to $70,500 in 1983-84. Dole, engaged in a campaign to become Senate majority leader, badly needed the money (his PAC contributed some $300,000 to 47 of the Senate...
...many lobbyists here pushing and pulling in so many different directions that, at times, nothing seems to go anywhere." The most pernicious effect of the influence-peddling game may simply be that it consumes so much of a Congressman's working day. Every time a Congressmen takes a PAC check, he is obliged at least to grant the contributor an audience. The IOUs mount up. "Time management is a serious problem," says Frank. "I find myself screening out people who just want to bill their clients for talking to a Congressman." The lobbyists are not unmindful of congressional impatience. Lobbyist...
...Washington Lobbyist Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. is on no fewer than 50 "steering committees" set up to raise money for congressional election campaigns. By night, Good Ole Boy Boggs can be found shmoozing at Capitol Hill fund raisers, where lobbyists drop off envelopes containing checks from Political Action Committees (PACs) at the door before digging into the hors d'oeuvres. By day, Boggs lobbies Congressmen, often the same ones for whom he has raised money the night before. Lately high-power political consulting firms such as Black, Manafort & Stone have taken not only to raising money for candidates but actually...
...Panetta of California: "There's a danger that we're putting ourselves on the auction block every election. It's now tough to hear the voices of the citizens in your district. Sometimes the only things you can hear are the loud voices in three-piece suits carrying a PAC check...
Legislators are often powerless in this three pronged grasp. They need PAC money to run their campaigns and PAC connections to help them with logrolling. The blob's organizational strength pressures congressmen, ever sensitive to popular opinion, into the slimy grasp of its politics. The creature knows its creators' weak spots...