Update: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Lawmakers

The average consumers who need an occasional boost between paydays are no longer the only ones turning to payday loans. The government has been making fast payday loans to enormous credit firms that have run their assets dry. The mortgage and consumer credit giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were given enormous stimulus packages a couple months ago in order for them to stay afloat during the hard hits of the recession. In Washington DC on Tuesday, December 9th, the mortgage firms were subject to a hearing by the House Oversight Committee where they were grilled by Congress over their corporate strategies that led to the near destruction of their companies. What had apparently happened was that the leadership of those companies had invested in mortgage backing for their cash flow. So they basically bought other people’s debt, thinking that it meant instant cash flow, especially when they raised the interest rates on the mortgages that they purchased. Borrowers who had borrowed money from irresponsible lenders started defaulting on their loans, thus, the companies that had bought their debt began to stagger towards the brink. House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman called their action irresponsible, especially after senior risk managers had questioned the call to make and invest in such loans. This shocking incident emphasizes the importance of being extremely responsible with your finances. Budget properly, practice smart spending habits, save money, and don’t put money into anything that looks too good to be true. If you need some help with a sudden emergency expense, payday loans are available at a reasonable rate to keep your finances above water until your next payday. Click to read more on Fast Payday Loans.

We are looking at this data all wrong. Consider this. If you remove Obama from this list then list the members of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. You will notice that most of the members are on the top of this list as well. Both Democrat AND Republican.

In my humble opinion. I feel that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were influencing the committee vote, to their own benefit.

I agree with a previous post, this should be illegal as there tends to be a great conflict of interest.

The Obama connection is simple. Raines works for his campaign. Former CEO and one of the people who should be investigated for cooking the Fannie Mae books to get huge bonus' and contributing to the financial meltdown.

Everyone who is involved should be investigated both Democrat AND Republican.

This is the nature of the supposedly clean, certainly dubious "individual contributions" to Obama. McCain has released the names of his contributors under $200, why won't Obama do the same? Couldn't be the same Obama who used the rules to exploit the caucus system to ridiculous advantage could it?

It just cracks me up when these right wing ideologist call the NY Times a liberal newspaper. Thick baloney...

Was there a Bush policy that the NY Times didn't support. Seems to me they had a couple of full time writers to sell us the Bush/Cheney lies that started the Iraq War. Lying to start a war is an entirely right winged proposition. (And one of thiose writers is spreading the lies about Iran to this day in the Times.)

Then they held the story of the government spying on emails & telephone calls for a year at the request of the administration.

And needless to say, Israel can do no wrong in the eyes of the Grey Lady.

If the NY Times were indeed a liberal paper, each and every day the banner headlines would read, "Impeach Bush". Did not say that today, the Times is not liberal.

The NY Times is a right winged publication and you right wingers are guilty of spreading Goebbels Big Lie in an attempt to further cow tie the newspaper.

I am amazed at the fact that people think The New York times is credible. They lean so far to the left I'm surprized their building hasn't fell over.
CeeCee claims that 95% of Obama's contributions came from INDIVIDUALS that work at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To me the only way that would be possible is if the companies were funneling money to the campaign thru employee's, because I refuse to believe employee's of the companies are able to contribute 400 million dollars out of their own pocket. Not even the executives. One thing you people on the left fail to realize is the goose egg under PAC contributions in McCain's stats.
Another thing you fail to realize is how Obama has earmarked almost a billion dollars in his short career, and McCain has NEVER earmarked anything in his very long career. Keep on dreaming of the Dancing fairy, sugar plum, candy rainbow, imaginary LA-LA land,
under Obama's socialist/communist regime. I do not think the majority of this country want this
GUN-GRABBER as our president. Only 13.4 % of this country is black. Thats not going to cut it.
All minorities combined isn't half this country.
So unless a large portion of the rest suddenly get a case of the stuck on stupid syndrome, Obama doesn't have a chance.
If you disagree your welcome to voice your opinion to me at my webpage. I respond to all respectful emails. I do not respond to childish insults.

http://www.youtube.com/user/rightwing55

Rightwing

What happened to the honesty and integrity that politicians once had as George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson? All those men worked for their country and from their hearts not for their pocketbooks. These politicians today could care less about the american people. All they care about is how much money they can make for their personal gain. It's very sad that we have come to this point in time where there is nothing but corruption and dishonesty. That is what runs the Whitehouse today.

While I appreciate the difficulties of including lobbyists and directors, I think the disparity between NYT funding breakdown and the one on this site should if nothing else, serve as an indication that reality is more complex than either organisation is indicating.

Given the contrast, I have to ask; which is worse, bad data (for an uncertain level of "bad"), or no data?

What I'd be quite interested in seeing is a breakdown of the organisations each director is a member of, and the director's donations, with the same being done for lobbyists. There could be all sorts of interesting data in such an exercise.

My totals:
Democrats:
PACs 1.540.749
Indiv 1.222.353
Totals 2.763.102

Repubs:
PACs 603.922
Indiv 1.470.298
Tot 2.073.970

So gasp, it seems that Democrats do indeed get more money from FNM/FRM.
But ... this list does not say at all how much repubs or dems got from the 30 OTHER banks, who are part of this scandal.

Not that this list has no value, but are democrats more culpable than repubs just because they got a 'staggering' 700.000 more?? Methinks not.

Especially if there's merit to the NYT list
McCain got $169,900 + 21.550 = 191.450
(of which 21.550 from individuals)
Obama got $16,000 + 126.349 = 142.349
(of which 120.349 from individuals)

Shows what kinda president both would be:
Mccain gets his cash mostly from the companies, but Obama? From the people.

Lets start a movement to have the politicians pay back the contributions to the American people. Why should they benefit from the disaster they created. The congress changed the lending laws so why are they profiting while others are losing their homes. Maybe someone can even make a youtube about this. I think both Democrats and Republicans should do what they expect us to do. Sacrifice.

Anybody in charge of this website?
Someone who can make the headline and the first few lines accurate?

This line is deceptive:

"All Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008"

It makes people expect a list of all recipients of [all] Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, 1989-2008.

It's a list counting _some_ Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions -- but with only partial dollar amounts, and very misleading.

Yes, you've got a reason -- buried down in the comments thread -- for your numbers aren't consistent with the totals reported elsewhere.

You're "teaching the controversy" -- it's bogus.

Get real, people. Don't just mumble in your comments, fix the dang headline so it informs people sent here by other sites.

Sheesh.

http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/MapAppRefreshTran.do

This is a search for McCain for just Fannie Mae, easy to do for Freddie mac.

Why is everyone pretending he is not getting money from employees of these two GSE's?

There's more than one methodology one could employ in trying to calculate contributions associated with a particular company. Some analysts take the most conservative route, including only contributions from political action committees, since that's the money a corporation can direct. By that measure, as our chart shows, Obama would have received $6,000 from PACs of Fannie and Freddie (since we're looking at his Senate career, too), and McCain would have received $0. We feel that limiting such studies to PAC money makes them too narrow; PACs account for just 1 percent of the money in a presidential race. The New York Times chose to include contributions from employees AND from members of the boards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which is not the Center's standard methodology when examining contributions associated with companies. We feel that universe is too broad. As I've stated in previous responses to comments here, directors usually work at their own companies and they often sit on the boards of multiple corporations. How should we categorize them? To count their contribution as being from both the company where they are employed and the companies on whose boards they sit would entail double-counting (or triple or quadruple...).

The wider you cast your net, the more tenuous the connections become. If we include contributions from a company's board of directors, should we not also include the contributions of those who work for the company where the director is actually employed? After all, if a director of Company 1 is the CEO of Company 2, it's very possible he would lean on his employees at Company 2 to make contributions to the candidate of his choice. This, too, seems overly broad.

So, again, there's no single "right way" to do this kind of research, but we believe the Center's methodology is a responsible one - meaningful while sufficiently conservative. We sense in this debate that detractors of our research are searching, in a partisan way, for any methodology that will produce a different result. Having put out nonpartisan campaign finance research for more than two decades, using the methodology I have explained, we at CRP are used to this kind of discussion. Feel free to calculate the numbers differently than we have, but please be upfront about your methodology and your reasons for it.

Finally, to address your assertion that the FEC has different tallies: The Federal Election Commission does not aggregate contributions by company or industry, as CRP does, so I would question any numbers of this sort that you've seen attributed to the Commission.

To Ms. Mayer,

As someone pointed out, many people are linking to this webpage that seems to be saying that Obama has received more donations from Fannie/Freddie than McCain. But your comment suggests that the chart only reflects donations from employees of Fannie/Freddie and not Directors or Lobbyists.

So are we to interpret that other people affiliated in some way with Fannie/Freddie, have contributed but their contributions are not going to show up in the amount of money listed?

My understanding is that the FEC reported that Sen. McCain received ten times more in donations from Fannie Mae than Obama did.

Can you clarify this?

Thanks

I don't care what everybody says about who got which from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, people will take sides. I do know, however, that a person (Obama) who shows disdain and disrespect for the flag of the United States citing so many lame excuses does not deserve my vote!!!

I think the author of the article, Ms. Mayer, produced the correct data of interest. Some comments on her article regarding omitting contributions of individual directors/officers seem to me to be off the mark. My concern with the contributions to FMae & FMac stems from why a Governmentally-Sponsored Organization has any business whatever, trying to influence Legislators who vote on critical matters relating to the organization. Seems to me this is a direct, and rather unique, conflict of interest and should be illegal on the face of it. But, how an individual , officer or not, elects to donate his monies to Legislators is a totally separate matter. This is a much more general issue that could relate to any person making a donation to a Legislator. I believe campaign finance laws already provide limitations under which this may be done. That the current campaign laws leave much to be desired is certainly a valid point, but that’s a different matter for a different discourse.

Right wing sites are linking to this to suggest that Obama was in the pocket of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because he is the second highest recipient of donations on the list of Senators and Congressman.

This is an absurd assertion on so many levels. Seeing as how his presidential campaign has raised more money from everywhere than any other in history makes a comparison of his figures to lawmakers raising money for a House or Senate race on its face ludicrous.

And notice how 95% of his contributions came from INDIVIDUALS that work at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are not the policy makers of the company. These are just employees that reflect America.

Everybody works somewhere. I happen to work for an oil company. My contributions to Obama will show up under the name of an oil company, as will my co-workers'. We support Obama's positions because they're good for America, regardless of whether they may or may not be good for the executives of our company.

So the contributions from individuals in a company do not mean that that company has influence over the candidate.

Why doesn't our government step in and FREEZE all foreclosures, for us, across the board, in every state and let the little guy regroup?

They have some mickey mouse system setup allegedly, to let those of us who are facing foreclosure, "if we fit the criteria" to sign up for help.

It's a sham! Like our credit bureaus and banks are going to allow that to happen. They want the "bad mortgages off the books"

You know, it's all fine and dandy that our government is helping big corporations, fannie mae etc....What about us?

This latest new conference by Paulson, is a joke! They try to make it look like it's helping us, bullpoop!

Those of us who are getting ready to be thrown out on the streets because of this unscrupulous lending?

We are hearing about how they are helping banks and big organizations to regroup, why can't "we the people" regroup?

How can we regroup when the credit bureau's have slaughtered us? How can we ever escape this vortex?

CEO's are walking away with fat pockets and we are crawling away with barely, the shirt on our backs!

Who is going to be our voice? Who can we go to? You can't reach anyone on a top level, they are impossible to get to.

We are drowning. Where is our life boat?

Maybe a naive question, but how does a member of congress justify receiving a contribution directly or indirectly from an organization that is partially subsidized by...legislation passed by congress? Seems like the fox is guarding the hen house.

I also don't understand why directors/officer numbers are not included? From NYT (double checked some at Federal Election Committee http://www.fec.gov/) McCain's contributions ARE higher.

From the Federal Election Committee/NYT

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Directors/Officers/Lobbyists
Contributions

Name McCain Obama
----------------- ------ -------
Geoffrey Boisi $70,100 $0
Alfonse D'Amato $30,800 $0
William Lewis, Jr $0 $4,600
Herbert Allison, Jr $0 $2,300
Brenda Gaines $0 $2,300
Jerome P. Kenney $2,300 $0
Patrick Swygert $1,000 $1,000
Robert Glauber $0 $1,000
Daniel Mudd $1,000 $0
John Sites $1,000 $0
Louis Freeh $200 $0
Others (29 lobbyists) $63,500 $4,800
-------------------- ---------- -------
Total $169,900 $16,000

hmmm...anyone have any insight?

thanks

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this blog item. For a number of reasons, CRP's methodology re: contributions associated with corporations does not include money from the board of directors or lobbyists. We code only employees of the companies receiving a paycheck. Members of the board of directors could be on the boards of multiple companies, so instead of adding their contributions to all of the companies on which boards they sit, their contributions are lumped in with their actual employer's contributions. As for lobbyists who are "hired guns," their contributions would fall under the name of the lobbying firm for which they work, since, similar to directors, lobbyists usually represent multiple clients. In-house lobbyists for a company would be included in the company's totals, however, since the company is their sole employer.

Figured out why the data doesn't match.

The person who compiled this data apparently didn't search the FEC site for the individual donors' names, and probably simply did blanket searches for "Freddie" and "Fannie".

If you search the FEC for "Geoffrey T. Boisi", a Director of Freddie Mac, you will see exactly where the NYT got their data. In fact, Boisi has contributed $72,400 to McCain since 2007.

Yet this data is conveniently omitted from the above.

This data is completely bull.

According to the New York Times, John McCain received $70,100 from Geoffrey T. Boisi, Director of Freddie Mac. Yet this contribution is not included in this data. There are a further $90,000 of contributions to John McCain in the NYT data, also omitted from this list.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/09/10/us/politics/10fannie.graphic.jpg

Total Contributions: $4,844,572
Total by PACs: $3,017,797 (62% of total)
Total by Individuals: $1,826,775 (38% of total)

Total Contributions by Party
(Percentiles are relative to total contributions to specific party divided by total contributions)
Democrats: $2,770,352 (57%)
Republicans: $2,045,720 (42%)
Independents: $28,500 (1%)

PAC Contributions by Party
(Percentiles are relative to total contributions done by PACs to specific party divided by total contributions done by PACS)
Democrats: $1,547,249 (51%)
Republicans: $1,458,798 (48%)
Independents: $11,750 (less than 1%)

Individual Contributions by Party
(Percentiles are relative to total contributions done by individuals to specific party divided by total contributions done by individuals)
Democrats: $1,223,103 (67%)
Republicans: $586,922 (32%)
Independents: $16,750 (1%)

Total Contributions to Democrats
(Percentiles are relative to total contributions to Democrats by PAC or individuals divided by total contributions done to Democrats)
PACs: $1,547,249 (56%)
Individuals: $1,223,103 (44%)

Total Contributions to Republicans
(Percentiles are relative to total contributions to Republicans by PAC or Individuals divided by total contributions done to Republicans)
PACs: $1,458,798 (71%)
Individuals: $586,922 (29%)

Total Contributions to Independents
(Percentiles are relative to total contributions to Independents by PAC or Individuals divided by total contributions done to Independents)
PACs: $11,750 (41%)
Individuals: $16,750 (59%)

Using the obama standard its legit to question how much money he's gotten from Fred and Fannie. Keep in mind he's accused the McCain campaign of being fueled by PAC and lobbyist contributions despite the fact those account for less then 2% of McCain's total campaign intake.

Jesse, McCain may have the lobbyists of Fannie and Fred but the people who actually ran the company are on the other side. Fannie and Fred didn't get here because they spent too much on lobbying. They got here because the people who were running the two did a very poor job. To put another way if Fannie and Fred were succeeding beyond the wildest dreams of Wall Street would anyone care about the lobbyists?

If the point that Charles II makes is that we shouldn't give much weight to the high numbers for Obama, Clinton and Kerry, because each has run for President, what are we to make of the low number for McCain, who has run for President twice?

McCain has also been in Congress for the entire 18.5-year period covered, versus only 3.5 years for Obama.

for example, this list shows McCain receiving almost nothing. But read this...

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=28F13661-3048-5C12-000140B077704AAA

Typically a corporation has a PAC, and it is funded by corporate funds AND individual employee contributions.

Employees have the option to let the company decide how to disburse the money, or can "earmark" the money to their preferred candidates.

Officers, Executives, and managers have varying degrees of pressure to cough up money. But the lower you are, the more latitude you have to earmark.

I would question the validity of the inclusion of the individual contributions. Individual employees can 'earmark' their contributions to their own candidate choices.

So there should be a correlation in the individual amounts between candidates who were successful in getting a lot of private individual donations and individual earmarks.

Look more to the PAC column and keep in mind the duration of the time period, but this is chump change compared to their overall lobbying expenditures.

While the data goes back to 1989, it would be very helpful if you were to also add the year the member received their first donation. some of these folks have been since '89 but quite a few have not.

While the data goes back to 1989, it would be very helpful if you were to also add the year the member received their first donation. some of these folks have been since '89 but quite a few have not.

It would be much more helpful to see the totals as a percent of campaign contributions. As I pointed out on your earlier report, a dollar is much less likely to influence a legislator who has contributions of a million dollars than a legislator who has contributions of 100K.

This is especially telling with anyone who has run for president. Barack Obama has received contributions of over $400M. Against that, any contributions he received from Fannie and Freddie is tiny. You have three major presidential candidates (Obama, Clinton, and Kerry) among your top 20. All of them are Democrats. If you were to look at the rankings by percent of funds raised, you would find a very different picture of which individuals are being influenced-- though doubtless, overall, the attempt to influence legislators is bipartisan.