A new loophole stuck into a budget bill last year allows donors to gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to political parties. However, only the Republican party is benefiting from it.
A provision quietly inserted into the combination continuing resolution/omnibus spending bill – or Cromnibus – last year increased the maximum that party committees can accept from $33,400 to over $334,000 each year. (The limits were also increased for Senate and congressional campaign committees to $234,000 apiece.)
And while Republicans are already taking advantage of this and have several donors giving this amount, Democrats are not keeping up.
According to the most recent FEC finance reports, while the Republican National Committee has six donors who have given the maximum of $334,600 to the GOP, not a single Democratic donor has even approached these totals in gifts to theDemocratic National Committee. This imbalance is less pronounced but still present in contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Campaign Committee versus those to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The result is that even as Democrats worry about the growing rise of Republican super Pacs heavily funded by conservative mega-donors, they are lagging even further in competing with the GOP in this new category of hard money.
