If you give it, they will vote...hypothetically anyway. Thanks to Opensecrets.org, we can look at the funding sources for all members of Congress. I was curious about members of the Senate Finance Committee because of their votes on the Public Option amendments introduced last week. Much to my surprise, there appears to be a relationship between the votes and how heavily an interested party has donated to the committee members. I am not saying the relationship is causal – that is far too difficult, nor am I saying it is quid pro quo, nor am I saying anything. Never-the-less, the numbers are below, along with a few graphs.
First, we need to understand what is meant by the Group of Four. These four are F09: Insurance Industry; H01: Health Professionals Industry: H03: Health Services/HMOs Industry; and H04: Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry. These four groups are the biggest donors who historically oppose any healthcare reform that includes a "Public Option." The H01 group, according to many reports, is not as anti-reform/ant-Public Option as they used to be, but for historical reasons, it is still included.
For for the latest funding cycle, I used the data from Opensecrets.org. I summed the contributions to a Senator’s campaign committee and leadership PAC (if they have one) from various industries (the total number of different industries ranged from 60 to 70). Then, I found the percent of the total funds contributed to a Senator by each industry. So, for example, if a total of $100 was contributed to Senator X, and $10 was donated by industry Y, the percent donated by Y would be 10%. I used percentages rather than actual amounts because the amount of money raised by each senator can vary greatly, based on the state they are from. From these percentages, I isolated the percentage donated by each of the Group of Four. I also looked at where these four were located in a Senator’s total contributions. In particular, I chose to identify how many of these four were in the top ten donors to a Senator.
For obvious reasons, I was primarily looking at the Democratic Senators, but I have included Republican members of the committee for comparison.
First a table of the percentages:
The Democratic Senators are to the left, the Republicans to the right.
From this figure, we see that the Democratic mean is 13.3% from the Group of Four, and the Republican mean is 21%. Only one Democratic Senator, Senator Baucus from Montana (24%), is higher than the Republican mean (although Senator Lincoln from Arkansas is very, very close at 20.2%).
The next figure presents another way to look at the contribution pattern; it shows how many of the Group of Four are among the top 10 donors to a Senator. 100% means that all four are in the top ten, while 25% means only one is. Senator Cantwell from Washington is the only Senator to have none in the top ten.
Finally, we can plot percentages of total dollar amounts vs % in top ten on the same graph (for the Democratic Senators only).
On this graph, you might say that level of influence increases from bottom left to top right. The top right is where more money of the Senator’s total comes from the Group of Four, and more of the Four are among the top ten donors.
So, if one were to draw a conclusion from this graph, hypothetically only, it might be that the Senators in the top right corner, inside the box shown, could, again hypothetically only, be beholden, in some hypothetical way only, to the Group of Four.
Finally, let’s make a graph of the Democratic Senators’ votes Against the amendments put forth in committee by Rockefeller and Schumer. In the figure below, a 1 means a Senator voted against BOTH amendments, while 0.5 means a Senator voted against one of the amendments, while 0 indicates the Senator voted against NEITHER amendment (he/she voted FOR both).
Now, compare the last two graphs. It is pretty clear that two AGAINST votes and a lot of money from the Group of Four puts you in the top right corner of both graphs...
But, it must be a coincidence...hypothetically.