Elected officials would still need financial support, and would bid for it through the policies they promote. If contributions dried up after they announced their support for policy X, they’d be tempted to back not-X. Mandated anonymity would dampen pay-for-play, however. The politician who wants to maximize his war chest might be led to vote for or against a broad policy, such as free trade, but with anonymous support he wouldn’t get the signal to push for the narrow and targeted provision in a thousand-page bill that benefits one company only. That means we’d see less big-donor money in
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Buckley makes regular distinctions between corruption and ideological politics as usual. A caller on thr cspan show tried to smear Paul Ryan as corrupt for passing laws that benefit corporations, but he insists that this is not the same as pay to play.
