AMY GOODMAN: Well, right now we’re going to turn to the issue of what is fueling these candidates financially. Last week, we talked extensively about the money that goes into each candidate’s pocket by contributors. Today we’re going to talk about the money that goes to the parties, to the Republican and Democratic parties, and then goes to the candidates.

We’re joined by Ellen Miller, who is executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

ELLEN MILLER: Good to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, tell us about the report you just released.

ELLEN MILLER: Well, we released an analysis today. And I feel like, you know, I’m bringing to you the money-in-politics horror story of the week. We probably could report on it even more often than that. But what we released today is an analysis of the so-called soft money which the national political parties raised.

Let me start with a definition. Soft money is political money raised by both political parties, but it is unregulated by federal law. It’s contributed by sources that otherwise would be prohibited from giving money — large corporations, labor unions — directly, and in amounts that far exceed federal laws. So it’s money that operates someplace sort of in the cyberspace of, you know, electronic transfers between political accounts. But there is no question that this is money that is a major loophole in the campaign finance system.

How much money? In this election, in 1995, just the first year of this election cycle, the parties have raised about $60 million of this money, with the Democrats tripling their receipts, the Republicans doubling their receipts, over the previous comparable period. So, this is, you know, one of these sort of limitless pockets of money that comes in during presidential election years.

AMY GOODMAN: How did soft money get established? What were the laws around it? How do they get away with this?

ELLEN MILLER: Well, it came in, in essence, through a regulation that the Federal Election Commission established following a 1979 amendment in which this kind of money was encouraged into the political system for local grassroots politics, for bumper stickers, yard signs. And I think it was generally thought that this would come in small amounts. It would go to support state and local candidates who really didn’t have an awful lot of political money. But the national political party saw an opportunity and seized it. And now the money comes in, you know, huge amounts. Hundred thousand dollars and more is sort of the price of admission to the soft money account. And what it does is, it has fundamentally undermined the public financing system of the general election process for the presidential candidates.

AMY GOODMAN: Who are the largest contributors, the largest soft money contributors?

ELLEN MILLER: Well, overall, it divides, depending on whether we’re talking about Democrats or Republicans. But, overall, it’s the financial industry with their interests. They gave about 18% of all the money that we analyzed for 1995. Securities and investment firms, insurance companies, real estate industries, you know, walk away, literally, with the bank. But when you break it down by party, you see different interests. Lawyers and law firms were the largest contributors to the Democrats, as was the media and the entertainment industry — interestingly, the very same largest contributors to the Clinton campaign itself. The tobacco companies led the way for the Republicans. But what’s fascinating to me — and I’ve not seen this on previous lists for previous presidential years — is tremendous number of — a tremendous amount of money coming from telecommunications industries. I wonder why.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to talk more extensively about the telecommunications bill that’s just been passed, an incredible boon to the mega media moguls that run telecommunications. Let’s talk specifically about the five top contributors to both parties.

ELLEN MILLER: Well, one of the interesting things is that this money is not ideologically driven. It’s really access driven. And we can tell that because of the tremendous number of double givers, people who give to both Democrats and Republicans, you know, figuring whoever is in power, whoever wins the next presidential race, or whoever they can curry favor with in the process, will be useful to those industries.

So, the five leading contributors, which included AT&T, Seagram & Sons, the Philip Morris, Atlantic Richfield and RJR Nabisco, two of those being tobacco companies, were leading donors to both parties. But more than 300 contributors gave to both Democrats and Republicans, and I think that’s the largest number of sort of hedge-your-bets, you know, cover-your-bets kind of giving that we have seen in the past. Again, six industries, the securities and investment industry, insurance, oil and gas, telephone utilities, lawyers and law firms and real estate, were among the top 10 sources of soft money contributions for both Democrats and Republicans. Business dominates, as it always does, in terms of political giving, giving about 82% of the money to Republicans. But interestingly, 55% of the Democrats’ money also came from the business community.

AMY GOODMAN: And labor unions?

ELLEN MILLER: Labor unions only gave 6% of the total money raised by the Democrats, and I think 0%, which is predictable, for Republicans.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Ellen Miller, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. If it’s Monday, it’s money on Democracy Now! And that’s what we’re analyzing, looking particularly at soft money. Now, how much of the soft money in the Democratic and Republican parties goes to presidential candidates or goes to the state or local party races?

ELLEN MILLER: Well, the way the soft money works is that, with a wink and a nod, it is often funneled from the national party committees’ accounts to and through the state party accounts, but with the express purpose of helping the top of the ticket, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. So, in essence, it all goes to help the presidential candidates. But because money is the most fungible of all political tools, it is laundered, in the classic political sense, in the classic Watergate sense, through the state party committees in a way that it is somewhat difficult to trace exactly how the money is spent.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there any move in Congress now or any movement at the grassroots level to start limiting soft money, to end it?

ELLEN MILLER: Yeah, absolutely. There is tremendous agreement among all campaign finance reformers that this is the loophole that must be shut down if we’re to have any sanctity in the presidential public financing process. And there are strong provisions in the two bills that are at least pending in Congress. These bills have other problems, you know, in different respects, including a political one as to whether they’ll even get rolling in this Congress. But the soft money provisions are very strong and ought to be enacted. In fact, I would urge that, you know, if the rest of the bill has trouble moving, that these pieces ought to be plucked out, the provisions that do eliminate soft money, and try to move those on the floor. But I’ve got to tell you, you know, the political parties are not happy about shutting down this enormous loophole.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, obviously, every congressmember who’s in Congress today has benefited from the system as it is, and so they’re going to be very reluctant to change that system.

ELLEN MILLER: Absolutely. I think that is one of the fascinating things about the grassroots strategy on money in politics, which is that it is both initiative and legislative, but it is not waiting for the politicians to make the decisions. Interestingly, Amy, there’s a very — there’s a good letter in the front of the letters on The New York Times today, the headline of which reads “Campaigns Need Total Public Financing.” And it’s written by a man named John Glasel. He’s the vice chairman of the Gray Panthers of northern New Jersey. And what he says, you know, is, in essence, that the campaign reform proposals pending in Congress are not broad enough and systemic enough. And it says that, in fact, what we need is total public financing of all elections, with no private or corporate funding whatsoever. Frankly, you know, I think that this is a fascinating idea. It would eliminate this soft money problem. It would eliminate the notion that candidates have been for sale over the years. We would eliminate the kind of financing we talked about last week, where each candidate gets their money from. And it would deal with the source of the money problem that so drives both who gets elected and what they want after Election Day.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking in The New York Times, there’s an interesting piece in the B section of the Times on politics, and particularly on Pat Buchanan’s money. And we all know that Patrick Buchanan has been castigating Wall Street, has been condemning it and the kind of control it has. But it talks about how Pat Buchanan owns a house valued at more than a million dollars and five rental properties in the Washington area, and that his stock portfolio, valued at well over $1 million, includes companies like General Motors, AT&T, IBM and Walmart, Walmart well known for selling cheap products from abroad often and, in cases, for example, in China, using slave labor. What do you make of this?

ELLEN MILLER: Well, it’s a fascinating profile of Buchanan, probably not surprising for someone who has been as successful and has as long a career as he’s had. But it does raise the question of hypocrisy. One of the other fascinating things about that article is that it shows that Buchanan used another one of the loopholes in the system — we think of him as another pocket of a politician’s coat — to advance his candidacy, and that is of a tax-exempt, we call them political foundations, another way for interests to curry favor with him and that operate outside of the federal election laws. It shows that some of his big direct funders have also funded his political foundation and helped his candidacy along enormously.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. It talks about one of his biggest donors being Roger Milliken, the South Carolina textile magnate. An official for Milliken’s company said he donated $1.8 million to the organization’s political arm — that’s Pat Buchanan’s organization — and talks about how he’s a frequent backer of conservative causes, opposes NAFTA, and his privately held empire would benefit from the sorts of tariffs and other restrictions on imports advocated by Buchanan. Is it tough to find this information?

ELLEN MILLER: It is tough to find this information. And one of the things that the Center for Responsive Politics is trying to do is to track all of the money in politics. We have these terrific databases on campaign contributions, the hard money, the money we think that comes in in regulated amounts. We also have a database now available for the 1995 money that comes in as soft money. We’ve done several studies in this area of political foundations, but that data is much more difficult to track. We are starting databases both on the — based on the new lobbying restrictions. But, you know, when we have a campaign finance system that is more loophole than law, every time we track down one piece of it, the politicians find another way to open it up again.

AMY GOODMAN: How are activists using your information? How can they get your information? And how are they using it now?

ELLEN MILLER:Well, they can get our information on federal candidates simply by giving us a call. We’ve done a series of conferences around the country for years, working with activists to understand how private money corrupts public elections and how it creates a sort of roadblock to their own work. I think probably the most useful thing we have done is to share how we do our research and what it can reveal with state-based activists, and we’ve worked with activists in maybe 20-some states to uncover money in their politics to look at the state-level work.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re coming up on the New York primary, and we just have a minute right now. But Senator Al D’Amato is one of the biggest fundraisers for candidates of his choice. He basically made the governor of New York, who was at the time obscure. He’s now governor, George Pataki. And he’s a large backer of Dole. Any information on Senator D’Amato and how he works?

ELLEN MILLER:A tremendous amount of information about Senator D’Amato, more than we have in 30 seconds. Some call him “Senator Pothole,” but he’s also known as “the senator from Wall Street.”

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to have to leave it at that now, but we’re going to continue that discussion throughout the week on the power of Senator D’Amato and the way he uses money in campaigns for himself and the candidates of his choice. Coming up in a few minutes, we’re going to hear from Farai Chideya, who is a CNN analyst, came from MTV, and wrote the book Don’t Believe the Hype about African American stereotypes and how the media perpetuates them. We’re also going to be hearing from an activist in Georgia who’s been tracking the right wing for many years and is now involved with renaming politics and the kind of vocabulary that progressives use, talks about starting to talk about human rights to universalize the language, and she also talks specifically about Georgia politics as we move into that primary. That’s all coming up on Democracy Now! And as we end, Ellen Miller, from the Center for Responsive Politics, can you give us your email address, your website, so if people want to get information in that way, they can?

ELLEN MILLER: Sure. Our email address is info@crp.org. And we respond quickly to our email. Or give us a call at 202-857-0044.

AMY GOODMAN: That number again?

ELLEN MILLER: 202-857-0044

AMY GOODMAN: Ellen Miller, Center for Responsive Politics, thanks for joining us. You’re listening to Democracy Now! Stay with us.