RE: Introduction; MoneyEraising distracts politicians

[Reed Davis <rd100@delphi.com>]

Michael E Morrell wrote:

> I'm sure we will get into many of the subjects discussed so
> far, but I want to throw one out that has not been mentioned.
> Often the justification for CFR is the
> control/access/corruption issue. I would like to suggest that
> an equally, and maybe even more, disturbing issue is the
> amount of time government officials must spend raising funds.

I agree.  The huge amount of time government officials must
spend raising funds is time taken away from the job that we
elected them to do.  Sadly, all of these harmful effects are
created for the lack of a relatively small amount of money.
I've posted some data for campaign financing through 1996 at
http://home.netcom.com/~rdavis2/acmpfin.html .  The data at
http://home.netcom.com/~rdavis2/cffedrec.html shows that the
total federal campaign receipts from the 1995-96 cycle was
about $2.5 billion.  This includes the presidential, Senate,
and House elections as well as soft money given to national
parties.  This $2.5 billion is less than one tenth of one
percent of the federal budget for those two years.  Hence,
to the degree that we are selling out our government, we are
selling it cheap.

Reed Davis