What is A Political Action Committee?
Political action committee (PAC), an organization established by businesses, labor unions, and other
interest groups in the United States to channel financial contributions into political campaigns. PACs
solicit contributions, pool the funds, and make donations to the campaigns of candidates for national,
state, and local offices.
Labor unions organized the first PACs in the 1940s as a way to circumvent federal laws prohibiting the
use of union dues to support political candidates. Businesses first formed PACs in the 1950s. However,
these organizations remained in a legal limbo until the early 1970s, when changes in federal election law
specifically authorized the creation of business and other kinds of PACs. Legislators believed these
reforms in the rules governing campaign finance would limit the influence of money in political
campaigns. However, these reforms led to the proliferation of PACs and to dramatic increases in
campaign spending.
The terms of the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act permit PACs to make larger contributions than
individuals to any congressional candidate. While individuals may donate not more than $1,000 to a
candidate, a PAC may donate up to $5000. Moreover, allied or related PACs may coordinate their
contributions, greatly increasing the amount of money a congressional candidate receives from the same
set of interests and individuals. As a result, PACs have become very important in congressional races.
PACs are also active in state and local election contests. American presidential elections, by contrast,
mainly depend upon public funding
More than 4000 PACs are registered with the Federal Election Commission, which oversees campaign
finance. Despite concerns about the growing influence of PACs, their numbers have remained fairly
constant since the mid-1980s. Most PAC money goes to incumbent candidates, who usually have a
better chance to win than their challengers. . . .
Many critics assert that PACs corrupt the political process by allowing corporations and other interests to
influence politicians with large contributions. Politicians generally agree about the need for reform in
campaign finance contribution laws. However, the Democratic and Republican parties have been unable
to agree on the direction this reform should take. The Republican Party has developed an efficient directmail fund-raising apparatus that can generate hundreds of millions of dollars in small individual
contributions. Thus, the Republicans would be willing to place limits on PACs. The Democratic Party, by
contrast, depends more heavily on PACs and fears that limiting their role would hurt the party's electoral
chances.
Contributed by Benjamin Ginsberg, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
PACs, Parties and Presidents
By Dr. Larry Sabato
Dr. Sabato is the founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, an interdisciplinary,
nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes the value of politics and seeks to improve civics education. He is
also the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics and University Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia.
It is important to know what a political action committee, or PAC, is. The term is bandied
about but we do not often define it. A PAC is a segregated campaign fund of a labor union,
business corporation, trade association, or an independent group that is created solely for
political purposes. It is a fund of campaign money that is kept separate from all other
expenditures of the organization or the union or the corporation. PAC is actually a colloquial
expression; it is not found anywhere in the federal statutes. Party committees are not PACs and
are completely separate from PACs. PACs use nonparty campaign funds; they are not formed by
nor are they connected to political parties. While PACs have existed since the 1940s, most PACs
have been formed since the 1970s. They were a product of the reforms spawned by Watergate.
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, amended in 1974, amended again in 1976,
amended again in 1979---a decade of campaign reforms spurred the growth of political action
committees, by making it possible for corporations and trade associations as well as labor unions
to form them.
There is great diversity in the PAC world. There are PACs on the Right and on the Left.
There are labor PACs and there are business PACs. There are Democratic-oriented PACs and
there are Republican-oriented PACs. There are PACs that are violently opposed to the party
system, that actively try to upset the current party balance. When we generalize, we have to keep
in mind that there are many kinds of PACs.
The diversity among PACs extends to their organization and to their fundraising as well.
Some PACs are democratically organized; they have representatives of all the individuals who
are contributing to the group on their candidate selection committee so that there is some form of
representation is choosing which candidates receive the PAC’s money. There are many other
PACs that are autocratically governed; the chief executive officer of the corporation makes all of
the decisions on how the PAC money is dispensed. They never report to their constituents---to
the contributors---about how the money was actually spent.
Many PACs raise their money through direct mail. They get money in ten or twenty-five
dollar contributions from tens of thousands of people. Because they are getting small amounts
from many people, there is little accountability. People contributing money through the mail
have no say about how their money is actually spent. There is no democratic process involved in
many of the PACs that raise their money through direct mail. Similarly, there is no democratic
process in the labor PACs because millions of people contribute only a dollar or two to the labor
union; generally the chief executive officers of the union make all of the decisions about
candidates. The members have little to say about who gets the PAC contribution. Disbursement
is separate from the solicitation process.
The most visible elements of PACs are contributions to candidates; that is what we
associate with political actions committees…[but] on average, presidential candidates receive
less than 2 percent of their total financing from political actions committees.
PACs do not generally contribute to presidential candidates because most PACs are
congressionally oriented. It is in Congress and with congressional candidates that they believe
they achieve their greatest influence. They believe that too many people and too many interests
contribute too much to presidential candidates. Their maximum contribution of $5,000 is a drop
in the presidential bucket; they would be gaining very little from a maximum contribution.
Whereas with a congressman a maximum contribution counts for more. More can be achieved
with less; they do not have to give a maximum contribution to a congressman.
Presidential candidates do have a connection with the PAC process. Their connection is
through candidate PACs. It is now an accepted part of the campaign process for serious
presidential candidates to establish their own political action committees. They do it because
they can form a PAC prior to declaring their candidacy for president, at which point they come
under all the rules of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Prior to this, they can operate
without the strictures candidacy places upon them, as long as they are not a candidate while
traveling state to state…They also use PACs to contribute to other candidates, to establish
obligations to draw upon during the presidential election year.
From Society, May/June1985, Vol.22, No.4, pp 56-59.
The Case for PACs
by Herbert Alexander
Excerpted from Public Affairs Monograph
1. PACs increased participation in the political process. The reform efforts that spawned PACs
were designed to allow more voices to be heard in determining who will become our nation’s
elected officials. Thanks in part to PACs, that goal has been achieved.
Although it is difficult to determine how many individuals now participate in the political
process through voluntarily contributing to political action committees, some useful information
is available. The survey of company PACs by Civil service, Inc., found that in the 1979-1980
election cycle more than 100,000 individuals contributed to the 275 PACs responding to the
survey, and that the average number of donors to those PACs was 388…
Surveys taken between 1952 and 1976 indicate that from 8 to 12 percent of the total adult
population contributed to politics at some level in presidential election years, with the figure
standing at 9 percent in 1976. According to a survey by the Center for Political Studies at the
University of Michigan, however, 13.4 percent of the adult population-about 17.1 million
persons-gave to candidates and causes during the 1979-1980 election cycle. Survey data suggest
that the increase registered in 1980 is due to the increased number of persons giving to interest
groups.
2. PACs allow individuals to increase the impact of their political activity. PACs and their
interest group sponsors not only encourage individual citizens to participate in the electoral
process, they provide them with a sense of achievement or effectiveness that accompanies taking
part in political activity with like-minded persons rather than merely acting alone.
3. PACs are a popular mechanism for political fund raising because they respect the manner
in which society is structured. Occupational and interest groups have replaced the
neighborhood as the center of activities and source of values and the ideologically ambiguous
political parties as a source of political action. Individuals seem less willing to commit
themselves to the broad agenda of the parties; they are interested mainly in single issues or
clusters of issues. PACs, organized on the basis of specific occupational or socio-economic or
issue groupings, allow individuals to join with others who share their values and interests and to
undertake action to achieve the political goals they perceive as most important to them.
4. PACs and the interest groups they represent serve as a safeguard against undue influence
by the government or by the media. By energetically promoting their competing claims and
views, such groups prevent the development of a single, official viewpoint or a media bias. They
demonstrate the lively pluralism so highly valued and forcefully guaranteed by the framers of the
Constitution.
5. PACs have made more money available for political campaigns. By helping candidates pay
the rising costs of conducting election campaigns, PACs help to assure the communication of the
candidates’ views and positions and thus clarify campaign issues. They also encourage
individuals without wealth to run for office.
6. PACs have contributed to greater accountability in election campaign financing.
Corporations are legitimately concerned about public policy, but prior to the FECA they were
uncertain about the legality of providing financial support to candidates who would voice their
concerns. That many corporations resorted to subterfuges to circumvent law is common
knowledge. By sanctioning the use of PACs by corporations, the law has replaced the
undisclosed and often questionable form of business participation in politics with the public and
accountable form practiced by corporate and other business related PACs today…
HOW PACs CAN RESPOND
PACs enjoy a growing constituency, but, in view of current anti-PAC publicity and endeavors,
PAC supporters must engage in a concerted educational effort regarding their methods and goals if PACs
are to avoid being restricted in their ability to participate in the political process. That effort should
include, certainly, responding with specific and accurate information to criticisms made of PACs and
making plain the many values PACs bring to the political process.
Educational efforts also might include using the methods of PAC opponents to the advantage of the
PAC movement. For example, PAC opponents frequently correlate PAC contributions and legislative
outcomes and conclude that the contributions resulted in specific legislative decisions. PAC critics
publicized widely the fact that maritime unions contributed heavily to some members of the House
Merchant Marine Committee who favored a cargo preference bill introduced in 1977 and supported by
the unions. They implied the committee members were influenced by the contributions to report out a
favorable bill. PAC supporters did little to discover and publicize the committee members’ other sources
of funds. The American Medical Association Political Action Committee, for example, contributed to
every incumbent on the House Committee, yet AMPAC and the medical practitioners who support it had
no vested interest in the cargo preference bill or in other legislation considered by the committee. Nor
was much publicity given to the fact that the two committee members who received the greatest financial
support from the unions represented districts in which there is a significant amount of port activity and
that consequently they would understandably be responsive to maritime interests.
When critics use simplistic correlations to demonstrate undue PAC influence on the decisions of
legislators, PAC supporters should endeavor to present the whole campaign finance picture: What
percentage of the legislators’ campaign funds came from the interest group or groups in question? Did
those groups also contribute to other legislators whose committee assignments gave them no formative
role in legislation of particular interest to the groups? Did groups with no special interest in the
legislation in question contribute to the legislators’ dealing with it at the committee or sub-committee
level? What factors in the legislators’ home districts or states might have influenced the legislators’
decisions? What non-monetary pressures were brought to bear on the legislators?
It might also be useful for PAC supporters to publicize “negative correlations” which would
demonstrate that PAC contributions often do not correlate with specific legislative decisions.
PAC supporters also should question the unarticulated assumptions at the basis of much of the anti-PAC
criticism.
 Money is not simply a necessary evil in the political process. By itself money is neutral; in
politics as in other areas its uses and purposes determine its meaning.
 There is nothing inherently immoral or corrupting about corporate or labor contributions of
money, any more than any other private contribution of funds.
 All campaign contributions are not attempts to gain special favors; rather, contributing
political money is an important form of participation in a democracy.
 Money is not the sole, and often not even the most important, political resource. Many
other factors affect electoral and legislative outcomes…
 Curbing interest group contributions will not free legislators of the dilemma of choosing
between electoral necessity and legislative duty. Even if PACs were eliminated, legislators
would still be confronted with the sometimes conflicting demands between doing what will
help them remain in office and serving what they perceive as the public good.
 A direct dialogue between candidates and individual voters without interest group
influence is not possible in a representative democracy. Politics is about people, their
ideas, interests and aspirations. Since people seek political fulfillment partly through
groups, a politics in which supportive groups are shut out or seriously impaired is difficult
to conceive.
There is a danger, clearly, in our pluralistic society if groups are overly restricted in their political activity.
It is useful to recall that …the most significant movements of the last two decades-the civil rights
movement, the Vietnam peace movement…-originated in the private sector, where the need for action
was perceived and where needed interest organizations were established to carry it out. These movements
would not have taken hold without the ability to enhance their political power.
The Choice is Clear: It’s People vs. the PACs
By Archibald Cox and Fred Wertheimer
Excerpted from People Against the PACs: A Common Cause Guide to winning the War Against Political
Action Committees (Washington, DC: Common Cause, 1983)
“A government of the people, by the people, for the people”-this was the vision of one of our greatest
leaders, Abraham Lincoln. Today Lincoln’s well worn credo is being subordinated by a new threat-the
threat of special interest money. An explosion of political action committees is robbing our nation of its
democratic ideals and giving us a government of leaders beholden to the monied interests who make their
election possible. If we do not fight to reclaim our government, we will find that it has become …
A GOVERNMENT OF THE PACS
A simple break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in 1972 touched off a flood
of revelations concerning President Nixon’s abuses of power. Among the scandals that surfaced during
Watergate were several concerning Nixon’s campaign finances: Illegal campaign contributions by
American Airlines to Nixon’s 1972 campaign occurred while the airline was waiting to hear about a
request it made to the White House for approval of a merger with another airline… A pledge by
International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. (ITT) to give $400,000 to the 1972 Republican National
Convention was followed by a favorable ruling by the Justice Department on alleged antitrust actions by
the multinational conglomerate.
Individuals got in on the bonanza too: Nixon’s campaign received more than $1.7 million in
contributions from people who were subsequently appointed as ambassadors.
In the wake of these revelations, a shocked public pressured Congress to enact sweeping campaign
finance reforms. Among them was the creation of a system of public financing for presidential races,
which allows major party and other serious candidates to qualify for public funds…
To prevent any one group or individual from lavishing large sums of money on presidential or
congressional candidates, Congress also placed limits on the amounts either could contribute to any one
candidate…
But for all its reforms, Congress left a key piece of work undone: Members failed to institute public
financing for congressional campaigns. To make matters worse, in 1974 they went along with business
and labor, both of which pushed forcefully to repeal a law that barred government contractors from
forming political action committees (PACs). The repeal of this law helped touch off a flood of corporate
and labor PACs…
BY THE PACs
PACs aren’t new. They were formed because corporations, labor unions and professional, trade and
other membership groups are prohibited from giving money directly to federal candidates. By
establishing a nominally separate fund-or PAC-these groups can contribute to federal elections. PAC
contributions are generally given by groups which are also regularly engaged in organized lobbying
efforts; not surprisingly contributions are often given with a legislative purpose in mind.
In the past few years, the PAC system has reached disturbing dimensions. In the eight years since
1974, the number of PACs has increased from 608 to more than 3,400-an increase of more than 500
percent. During the same time, the amount of money spent by PACs on congressional campaigns has
soared from $12.4 million to an estimated $80 million-a 650 percent increase.
Not only have the number of PACs and their total contributions increased dramatically; PACs now
play an increasingly instrumental role in financing congressional campaigns. Consider these facts:

In the newly seated 98th Congress, the average House winner received more than one third of his
or her campaign funds from PACs, up from 28 percent in the 1978 elections.

Winners in the Senate got 22 percent of their total campaign contributions from PACs. In the
1978 elections, Senate winners got only 13 percent of their campaign funds from PACs.
 More than 100 House Members received more than half their money from PACs.
If members of Congress seem less willing to shut the door on PACs, it may have something to do with the
way PAC spending favors incumbents over challengers: in the 1982 elections, incumbents running for
reelection received $48 million from PACs-quadruple the amount that challengers received. The gap in
PAC receipts has widened since 1980, when incumbents got about two and a half times more money from
PACS than did challengers…
FOR THE PACS
One of the most tragic aspects of the PAC system is that money becomes more powerful than votes.
“It is simply a fact of life that when big money in the form of group contributions enters the political
arena, big obligations are entertained,” says Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), a supporter of reform of the
campaign finance laws…
PAC contributions don’t always assure victory, or even support of a special interest. But over the
years, Common Cause has documented numerous instances where congressional votes in support of a
special interest position corresponded closely to campaign contributions received from the special interest
PACs. For example:
 An analysis of the 1981 House vote on dairy price supports and contributions from the three
largest dairy PACs showed that representatives who voted for higher dairy price supports had
received, on the average, nearly six times as much from those PACs between 1978 and 1980 as
did representatives who voted against the dairy lobby on that vote.
 In March 1982, the House Health and Environment Subcommittee voted to weaken the landmark
Clean Air Act. Members voting for the industry-supported bill received nearly seven times more
in campaign contributions from the major industries affected by the bill than did the opponents of
the bill.
 In May 1982, Congress voted to kill a proposed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulation
opposed by automobile dealers. The regulation, called the “used car rule,” would have required
used car dealers merely to disclose to prospective buyers any known defects in their vehicles. At
the time of their most recent elections, the 69 Senators who voted to kill the regulation received,
on the average, twice as much in campaign contributions from the automobile dealers’ PAC as
the 27 senators who voted against the auto dealers. The 286 House Members who voted for the
dealers’ position received an average of five times as much from the PAC (between 1979 and the
first four months of 1982) as did the 133 House Members who voted against it…
Without reform of the political system, similar stories are likely this Congress. PACs poured millions
of dollars into the 1982 congressional campaigns. The Members of Congress they helped elect will now
be deciding on a number of important issues that affect all Americans…
With good reason, Americans wonder if the leaders they elect are free to represent them. As a
consequence, the greatest tragedy of the PAC phenomenon lies not so much in the individual victories
PACs have won as the cynicism and disenchantment they engender. Americans are beginning to realize
their votes aren’t as important as the checks PACs sign over to a candidate’s campaign.
If you can’t beat ‘em-join ‘em!--My Wikipedia entry
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Political Action Committees (PACs)
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