Corruption In Congress

Money for Something

How campaign contributions influence members of Congress is an important question that imply moral and ethical dilemmas that greatly affect the decision making in Congress. It is widely known that in the past various interest groups influenced members of our Government either with cash ‘donations’, and or favors for personal use, such as construction projects on a house, would be granted in exchange for political favors. The ability to purchase an individual for personal pleasure or profit is fundamentally the root of why many Americans do not believe that the members of Congress represent “We the People”.

Contributions

Various social scientists tried to understand what the intent of these interest groups

However, corruption has also attracted much attention from other social sciences, particularly from political scientists, and more recently from anthropologists and sociologists. In order to understand corruption, one cannot overlook the importance of political factors. Originally, it was thought that corruption was due to deficiencies in the political system, and particularly in the “democratic deficit”. It was viewed that corruption was caused by a political system that was lacking democratic checks and balances, accountability and transparency. The relationship between corruption and democracy is fundamentally understood as the less democracy there is, the more rampart corruption is. Widespread corruption is often viewed as a sign of a poor functioning state, and as a failure of ethical leadership, democracy and overall good principles and

Ginsberg and Green (1986) discuss why money possibly influences members of Congress, thus possibly affecting the outcome of certain principles. In addition to corruption affecting the poorest sections of society, the effect of corruption on politics is that it renders the state incapacitated and powerless. Corruption is damaging to the state’s ability to extract taxes, to implement coherent and rational development policies, to redistribute among groups and consequently to its ability to transform the society and the economy according to political priorities. The capacity of the state to extract taxes would be erode when individuals and groups are able to pay their way out, and certainly when public officials are embezzling revenues. When bureaucratic regulations are reorganized, manipulated and operate in a confusing manner, the methods are there to enable bureaucrats to easily collect bribes. As public officials are preoccupied with other tasks, insecurity will hamper investments, and the state’s revenue will shrink further and its ability to render public services will be