A recently released report by the Sunlight Foundation found that the most politically active corporations saw huge returns on their lobbying investments.
Combined, between 2007 and 2012, America's 200 most politically active corporations spent a total of $5.8 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions, and in return, those corporations received $4.4 trillion in federal business and support, the year-long analysis by the foundation, titled "Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions," discovered.
That's more than the $4.3 trillion the federal government paid the nation's 50 million Social Security recipients over the same period, noted Sunlight.
Individual taxpayers paid a total of $6.5 trillion into the federal treasury over the same period, meaning that two-thirds of that federal taxpayer money was paid out to the most politically active corporations.
As part of the study, Sunlight examined whether the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in 2010 had contributed to an increase in corruption.
"We focused on the records of 200 for-profit corporations, all of which had active political action committees and lobbyists in the 2008, 2010 and 2012 election cycles - and were among the top donors to campaign committees registered with the Federal Election Commission," the report said. "Their investment in politics was enormous. There were 20,500 paying lobbying clients over the six years we examined; the 200 companies we tracked accounted for a whopping 26 percent of the total spent. On average, their PACs, employees and their family members made campaign contributions to 144 sitting members of Congress each cycle."
Sunlight examined 14 million records including campaign contributions, lobbying expenditures, federal budget allocations and spending, and found that for every dollar the 200 most active corporations spent on influencing politics, they received a whopping $760 in return from the government.
Forty-eight of the 200 companies were from finance, insurance and real estate industries, 28 were in the communications and electronics sector, 21 in healthcare, 13 in defense and aerospace, 13 in agribusiness, 11 in energy and natural resources and seven in transportation.
The finance, insurance and real estate industries are "consistently the largest source of campaign funds for politicians cycle after cycle," according to the report. "Congress and the executive branch have paid particular attention to the industry, approving hundreds of billions in aid to help it weather the financial crisis. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve advanced trillions in credit, which the nation's central bank hoped would trickle down through the rest of the economy."
The companies with the biggest returns on their political investments? UBS and Credit Suisse Group from Switzerland, Deutsche Bank of Germany, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Also making the list were weapons manufacturers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, McKesson - a pharmaceutical wholesaler that is the Veterans Affairs' biggest vendor - and the Carlyle Group, a wealth management firm.
The report also points out that many companies have successfully lobbied for their own tax code provisions.
"Blue Cross and Blue Shield has its own provision in the tax code, section 833, that saves its companies an estimated $1 billion a year. Life insurance companies like New York Life and Pacific Mutual, and their customers, are eligible for tax breaks that save the industry $30 billion a year, with about $3 billion going to the companies and the balance going to their policyholders. The corporate tax code is full of loopholes and subsidies that companies lobby for to help their bottom lines; Citizens for Tax Justice researched the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures filed by publicly traded corporations in an effort to determine their effective tax rates; its analysis included 89 members of the group Sunlight examined. The average effective tax rate of those companies was 17.7 percent between 2008 and 2012. Federal law, meanwhile, sets the corporate tax rate at 35 percent."
With returns like this consistent through the six years the study examined, in which both parties were in control of the White House and had at least partial control of Congress, it seems that it doesn't really matter which party is running Washington. The following paragraph summed up the situation quite nicely.
"During the six years we studied, newly elected Democratic majorities took control in the House and Senate. Two years later, the White House shifted from Republican to Democratic control, and two years after that the GOP came back to take the House. The collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 led to massive bailout efforts by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board, two massive stimulus bills and the loss of more than eight million jobs. Congress passed laws that overhauled health care insurance and financial industry regulation. Troops surged in Afghanistan and withdrew from Iraq. There were 16 separate "continuing resolutions" to fund the government, a debt ceiling standoff that caused a downgrade in the nation's credit rating and a 'super committee' to wrestle with the federal budget. As middle class Americans lost ground, the Fixed Fortune 200 got what they needed."
