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HBO's John Oliver Exposes the Absurd and Awful Ways Congress Members Raise Money
| Fortune | - |
John
Oliver has staked his reputation as America's most trusted comedic
anchorman of the post-Jon Stewart era by milking unexpected comedy from
segments about the poultry industry, abortion laws and the Medicaid gap.
HBO's John Oliver Exposes the Absurd and Awful Ways Congress Members Raise Money
“A form of torture.”
John Oliver has staked his reputation as America’s most trusted comedic anchorman of
the post-Jon Stewart era by milking unexpected comedy from segments
about the poultry industry, abortion laws and the Medicaid gap. On
Sunday’s installment of his HBO talk show Last Week Tonight, the
British satirist took aim at another target ripe with hidden absurdities
and conflicts of interest: Congressional fundraising.
In the 2014 election cycle, Oliver said,
candidates for the House and Senate raised a combined $1.7 billion—the
majority of that money solicited by politicians themselves rather than
political action committees or so-called “dark money.” Citing estimates
from former members of Congress, he noted that legislators can spend as
much as two-thirds of their time in office fundraising for their
reelection—rather than enacting laws. “Washington is like Rod Stewart’s
haircut,” the comedian noted. “Party in the front. Party in the back.
Frankly too much party! And no business anywhere to be found.”
Using published reports and video
interviews with current and past politicians, Oliver provided an
analytical breakdown of how they spend their fundraising.
Fundraisers that border on the weird
Among a reported 2,800 campaign
fundraising events during that period, some officials went outside
standard protocol to line their reelection coffers. Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for one, used her 30th wedding anniversary
to stage an event to raise thousands of dollars in campaign finances.
(Tickets were $1000 a couple.) Stranger still, 10 Republicans, five
Democrats and three political action committees used a Taylor Swift
concert as a staging ground for fundraising. They sold tickets at $750
to $2,500 a pop. Among them was Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia.
“I don’t know about you. But this man is not feeling 22,” Oliver said,
riffing off Swift’s famous song. “He’s feeling and looking very much
65.”
Hours on the telephone in a stinky room
More damning, a leaked Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee memo suggested lawmakers should spend
four hours a day making campaign fundraising phone calls––even if they
have a safe seat. (“The only time that makes sense is if you’re trying
to have phone sex with Sting!” exclaimed Oliver—a swipe at the rock
star’s reported penchant for tantric sex.)
Since federal law prohibits members of
Congress from soliciting money inside their offices, they have to spend
hours inside cubicles at party headquarters, making cold calls. “I felt
embarrassed. I thought it was ugly,” former Wyoming senator Alan K.
Simpson says in a video clip. “My staff kept saying, ‘You’ve got to go
do it.’ You get a Rolodex; you go outside the building for a whole day
and dial numbers of jerks you’ve never heard of in your whole life to
get money out of ‘em.”
According to a Reuters correspondent,
“the building can really start to stink… After a few hours, it starts to
smell like a locker room.”
Change no one can believe in
Despite it all, Oliver acknowledged that
enacting legislation to regulate such fundraising will prove difficult.
According to the controversial 1976 Supreme Court decision Buckley v Valeo,
spending money is a protected form of free speech. “Sure, there are
times when that is probably true,” Oliver said. “A 50-year-old man
spends money on a convertible is loudly saying, ‘I would like to
sexually disappoint a woman half my age.’ And we are hearing him loud
and clear.”
And while many politicians say they hate
campaign financing, nobody wants to back down. Oliver likened the
situation to the Cold War—but worse. “At least in the real Cold War, we
got a trip to the moon and the third best Rocky villain out of it,” he
said.
A congressman calls it “a form of torture”
Oliver ended the segment with an
interview with New York congressman Steve Israel. The representative
estimated he had organized 1,600 fundraising events—one every three days
over his 16 years in office—but announced his retirement earlier this
year by saying, “I don’t think i can spend another day in another call
room making another call begging for money.”
Asked by the host to paint a “word
picture” of his time inside a call center, Israel admitted it was “not
what our founders had in mind.”
“If you are in a very competitive
district and you know you’ve got to raise $1.5 million, you have to
raise a certain amount of money every quarter,” Israel said. “You break
it down to a certain amount of money every month. You break it down to a
certain amount of money every week. And you break it down to a certain
amount of money in every hour of call time.”
“This whole call center sounds like a [expletive] telemarketing operation,” said Oliver.
“It is, in my view, a form of torture,”
the congressman said. “The real victims of this torture have become the
American people because they believe they don’t have a voice in this
system.”
Watch the entire segment here:
Chris Lee is a former staff writer for Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He covers entertainment, culture and business in Los Angeles.
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