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at their disposal to deliver favors, including attaching riders to mundane bills and exercising their power to steer bills in the congressional committee process. By not considering outcomes more broadly defined than roll-call votes on specific bills, existing research has arguably failed to detect some important benefits firms receive.” Brian Kelleher Richter, Krislert Samphantharak, and Jeffrey F. Timmons, “Lobbying and Taxes,” American Journal of Political Science 53 (2009): 894 (citations omitted).

38. Stratmann, “Some Talk: Money in Politics,” 135, 146.

39. Sanford C. Gordon, Catherine Hafer, and Dimitri Landa, “Consumption or Investment? On Motivations for Political Giving,” Journal of Politics 69 (2007): 1057.

40. Sanjay Gupta and Charles W. Swenson, “Rent Seeking by Agents of the Firm,” Journal of Law and Economics 46 (2003): 253.

41. Atif Mian, Amir Sufi, and Francesco Trebbi, “The Political Economy of the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis” (GSB Res. Pap 08-17 2009), 4, available at link #116.

42. As Lowenstein summarizes the skepticism, “When one takes into account all the defects and difficulties inherent in these studies, it becomes increasingly difficult to regard their mixed results as a clean bill of health for the campaign finance system.” Lowenstein, “On Campaign Finance Reform,” 322.

43. “As one Republican senator said: ‘[Fundraising] devours one’s time—you spend two or three years before your re-election fund-raising. The other years, you’re helping others.’ ” Peter Lindstrom, “Congressional Operations: Congress Speaks—A Survey of the 100th Congress,” Center for Responsive Politics (1988), 80 (quoting unnamed Republican congressman).

“As I spoke to political consultants, they all said I should not even consider running for the Senate if I weren’t prepared to spend 80 or 90 percent of my time raising money. It turned out that they were absolutely correct” (Rep. Mike Barnes [D-Md.; 1979–1987]). Philip M. Stern, Still the Best Congress Money Can Buy (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, updated and rev. ed., 1992), 130.

“The high costs of running for office at the congressional and statewide level has [sic] forced 55 percent of statewide and more than 43 percent of U.S. House candidates to devote at least one-quarter of their time to fund-raising.” Paul S. Hernson and Ronald A. Faucheux, “Candidates Devote Substantial Time and Effort to Fundraising” (2000), available at link #117.

Senator Robert Byrd, former majority leader, similarly observed: “To raise the money, Senators start hosting fundraisers years before they next will be in an election. They all too often become fundraisers first, and legislators second.” 133 Cong. Rec. 115 (daily ed. Jan. 6, 1987).

Former Senate majority leader George Mitchell explained that senators constantly wanted him to reschedule votes because “they [were] either holding or attending a fund-raising event that evening.” Schram, “Speaking Freely,” 37–38.

Representative Jim Bacchus explained that he chose not to run for reelection because he would have had to abandon the job he had “been elected to do in order to raise a million dollars and be a virtual full-time candidate.” Schram, “Speaking Freely,” 43.

44. Makinson, “Speaking Freely,” 86.

45. Carrie Budoff Brown, “Senate Bill Weighs in at 2,074 Pages,” Politico (Nov. 18, 2009), available at link #118.

46. Ernest Hollings, “Stop the Money Chase,” Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2006, available at link #119.

47. Andy Plattner, “Nobody Likes the Way Campaigns Are Financed, but Nobody’s Likely to Change It, Either,” U.S. News & World Report, June 22, 1987, 30.

48. Anthony Corrado, “Running Backward: The Congressional Money Chase,” in Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, eds., The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute; Brookings Institution, 2000), 75.

49. Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, “Conclusion,” in Ornstein and Mann, eds., The Permanent Campaign, 221–22.

50. Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, “When Congress Checks Out,” Foreign