It seems that the massive bill Congress has negotiated to fund the government is also going to be a bill to fund political parties. A provision in the $1.1 trillion spending deal would
dramatically raise the amount a donor can contribute to a political party in a year. Currently, one person is limited to giving a combined $97,200 to the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, and National Republican Congressional Committee or their Democratic counterparts. There are conflicting reports of the details of the proposed new limits, but it's possible that:
... under the rider, that same donor each year could give the $97,200 to the three main committees, plus that same amount to as many as an additional seven accounts – described as “separate, segregated” funds – set up within the committees [...]
While calculations of the rider’s impact differed in the hours after it was revealed, it appeared that a single donor would be able to give at least $388,800 per year to the various national committee accounts, and possibly as much as $777,600, depending on how the language was interpreted.
NPR and
Bloomberg report lower total numbers, though they're in agreement that the limits will be raised enormously.
The optimistic read is that this will lead big donors to redirect their contributions from dark money groups to the parties, increasing transparency. However, you don't have to be a raging pessimist to suspect that this just means more money in politics in general. Ugh, just fabulous.