Want a seat in Congress? Got a million dollars?

Validating the TV spot I made in February 08 and ran on cable and broadcast:

The price of admission to the U.S. House of Representatives keeps going up.

More than half of the winning candidates in November — 252 in all — raised more than $1 million for their races, including each of those in the 50 most competitive contests, Federal Election Commission records show.

That’s 27 percent more than the 199 members who reached that threshold in 2004, the last U.S. presidential election.

“It is a new era of fundraising that raises the bar for non-incumbents” and encourages incumbents to seek “more and more cash to scare off challengers,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. “The real election is the race for money.”

Bloomberg.com: News.

We have the best politicians money can buy. And you wonder why your dollars don’t do as much for you as they used to?

The only way we’ll see real change in government, is when we see change in campaign finance. I’ve often said there should be a cap on how much you can spend on a campaign- it should never exceed what the position will pay over the term.

So, if you are going to make $400K as President for 4 years, the most you could spend on the campaign is $1.6 million. That’s a far cry from the billion dollar smackdown we just had (I’m guessing at how much was spent in the presidential final- add in the primaries and it was probably closer to $3 billion).

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tISxC39Bpc[/youtube]
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