This December, the public’s approval of Congress hit rock bottom. According to a Gallup poll, only 11 percent of American citizens approve of the job Congress is doing. Today, The Washington Post reported that while the median net worth 
of an American family has declined “from $20,600 to $20,500 between 1984 to 2009, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan,” the net worth of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives has jumped from $280,000 to $725,000 (and that’s excluding home equity).
As Public Citizen’s Craig Holman has been saying for years and recently talked about on Marketplace, it pays to be a member of Congress, literally. The Washington Post notes that, “Members of Congress have long been wealthier than average Americans, and in recent decades the wealth of the wealthiest Americans has outpaced that of the average.” Take CEO pay in America for example. Everyone knows the gap between executives and the average worker is growing.
And, as our research for a series of financial policy reports documents, Wall Street executives are dead-set on derailing the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, particularly the section that calls for CEO pay to be listed as a ratio of the average worker’s salary of their company. So what does $15.6 million in federal political contributions and the work of 712 financial industry lobbyists get you? Turns out, not much yet, which is exactly what officials at Goldman Sachs and J.P.Morgan want. More than a year after its passage, the majority of provisions of Dodd-Frank have yet to be implemented.
Regardless of any new regulations coming down the pike, we have a government full of officials who are far removed from the economic realities that their constituents face. Part of the problem is that it doesn’t help that the barriers to entry for political candidates become higher each year. The Post reports: “Since 1976, the average amount spent by winning House candidates quadrupled in inflation-adjusted dollars, to $1.4 million, according to the Federal Election Commission.”
Who better to afford the financial chore running for office has become than people who already have significant amounts of money? It’s a heck of a lot easier to come up with $1.4 million when you have money you can funnel into your own campaign and/or rich friends ready to work with political bundlers.
