Party Dues

Casey Burgat writes at Brookings:

Merely to earn a slot on a coveted committee, a member is expected to fulfill certain party fundraising expectations. Party dues, it is important to note, are completely separate from and in .addition to funds each member must raise for his or her own personal campaign.

Such fundraising stipulations essentially serve as a “committee tax,” argues Michael Beckel of Isssue One. In an illuminating new report, Beckel exposes these little-known, but very real fundraising requirements of members of Congress.

Using publicly available fundraising data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the Federal Election Commission, the report thoroughly details how members pay for their committee seats via transfers of fundraising dollars to the national campaign organizations of each party for their respective chamber. The report also includes fundraising totals for many committee chairs and ranking members across committees, as well as the amounts of cash transferred by members to their party’s war chest over four campaign cycles