Fundraising by politicians doesn’t stop after their campaigns are over and they’ve been successfully elected, and neither does the pay-to-play system in Washington. Even putting aside acquiring the political dollars necessary to secure reelection, if a Representative or Senator wants to have influence in Congress, they have to acquire a position on a committee. Congress deals with a lot of complex and large-scale issues and so separates its functions into committees, which then control a lot of the policy-making in particular areas, like Energy and Commerce. The nominations for who serves on and chairs these committees are determined by steering committees within the party caucuses, and leaders in the parties have a lot of sway in determining their picks. The parties need money to function and win races, and so the key characteristic of a committee nominee is their ability to raise money, less so than their knowledge and skill in policy and legislation or even their personal relationships with party leadership.
Every committee is given a rank by importance, A, B, or C, and so every committee position and chair has a cost put on it by leadership. For example, in the 2013-2014 election cycle, the chairs of A rank House committees, which include Ways & Means and Energy & Commerce, were expected to pay dues of $990,000 for the Republican party, which controlled the House at the time, while ranking Democratic members of these committees were being asked for $500,000 in dues and an additional $1 million each to help the party take back control.
Top leadership roles bring even higher expectations, with the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, having to pay $20 million in the 2017-2018 election cycle, and while the Democrats currently don’t publicly disclose their dues and haven’t held the position since 2011, Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker and current Minority Leader, was expected in the 2013-2014 election cycle to bring in $26 million for the Democrats.
These committee price tags are officially referred to as “party dues”. Paying them can be as simple as transferring funds from a member’s campaign committee or leadership PAC to the party or to other members of Congress facing tough elections, but it most often involves soliciting contributions from donors to the party. Usually this takes the form of “dialing for dollars”, an activity where members leave their offices on the Hill for cramped cubicles at party headquarters, either the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), to make calls asking potential donors for money to fill their party’s coffers, the move being necessary due to the illegality of members raising money in their official offices.
Lawmakers are constantly reminded about the need to pay these dues, with the NRCC having a “wall of shame” on display at headquarters, a large tally sheet listing every Republican’s dues and how much they’ve raised, and the DCCC giving out lists of the same at caucus meetings. Some legislators end up spending more than half their time fundraising instead of attending to the needs of their constituents or actually working on legislation and getting it passed, and new members are actively encouraged to structure their schedules accordingly, as shown by this slide from a 2013 DCCC introductory PowerPoint.
And of course, legislators aren’t calling regular people with $27 to spare, but rather those with the ability to make a dent in their outrageous dues and cut down on call time. Shown below is an NRCC call sheet for a 2016 DC fundraiser, with the price of admission set at $33,400.
This is reflective of much of the money that flows to politicians. Averaged over the election cycles between 2010 and 2016, less than half a percent of the U.S. adult population gave over $200 to a candidate, the point at which they’re individually tallied, but together they gave about 2/3rds of all political contributions.
Small-dollar donors might look good to the public, but it’s the big-dollar donors that politicians rely on to win and keep their seats and committee positions, and these big donors are the ones they sit down with, whether it’s at a fundraiser dinner or in their office.