461: Take the Money and Run for Office

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. And today we have a big, big story of money and politics. It begins with a humble voice now.

Ira Glass

This is voicemail that Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Democratic congresswoman from Washington DC, left for a lobbyist in the fall of 2010. We don't know who the lobbyist is, but from the voicemail we can infer that he represents a contractor who's working on the new Homeland Security complex being built in Washington DC-- a complex that Eleanor their Holmes Norton, at the time, had a lot of power over.

Ira Glass

After pointing out that she is in charge of the project that he cares about, she gets to the point.

Ira Glass

This tape first surfaced on the Andrew Breitbart site, Big Government. The source was the lobbyist, and redacted his own name from the beginning of the tape. Eleanor Holmes Norton verified that it was real. She declined to talk to us for this program. This voicemail of a US congresswoman sounding a lot like a telemarketer is a peek behind a curtain that usually we don't get a chance to peek behind. It's a part of our political process that we all know exists-- the money gathering part-- but we usually don't get a chance to witness.

Politicians usually don't like reporters and film crews present when they ask for cash. Most of them never want to talk about it with a reporter. But it is daily life for pretty much every member of Congress, their staffs, lobbyists. Phone I calls like this are happening all day, every day. There are phone banks, literally phone banks, in offices in Washington DC, where congresspeople are making calls like this one, leaving messages just like this one.

And don't just take it from me. Here is the second in command of the US Senate, Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois.

Ira Glass

Well, today on our program, we will shock you. Alex Blumberg, from our Planet Money team has joined forces with NPR's Congressional correspondent, Andrea Seabrook, to take us deep inside this world that is hidden in plain sight. The world of lobbyists and money and political fundraising. A world that we all hear about all the time, but most of us never have seen up close.

They talk to the people who need the money, they talk to the people who give the money, and they try to figure out what exactly the money buys. Also, there's this little Supreme Court case you may have heard about, Citizens United. We'll talk about that as well. And we bring the old band back together-- McCain and Feingold, here on the radio. Original cast, no substitutions. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, The Hamster Wheel. Alex and Andrea start off our hour at the spots where the money actually changes hands.

Andrea Seabrook

The money changes hands in very specific places all over DC. There are townhouses whose sole function is to be rented out as venues for this. Dozens of restaurants do a booming business catering small parties in private rooms.

Alex Blumberg

And if you have an idea in your head of what a political fundraiser is-- I know I did-- get it out. It is not that super fancy, black tie gala event you hear about, like the one Barack Obama went to with the $30,000 a plate dinner and Alicia keys performing. It is not that at all. These are much more mundane.

Andrea Seabrook

Like this one here. Here's an invitation to one for Rep. Tim Bishop. He's a Democrat from New York. It's at a restaurant called Johnny's Half Shell. Costs you between $500 and $2,500 to get in. The time? 8:30 in the morning.

Alex Blumberg

Breakfast. See? Not glamorous. A lot of these fundraisers happen at breakfast. Or at lunch, like this one for a Republican candidate, Steve Daines of Montana. It's at the offices of a big trade group in town. Maybe 15, 20 people munching appetizers in a conference room.

Andrea Seabrook

A congressional watchdog group called the Sunlight Foundation collects these invitations to fundraisers and puts them online. Sifting through them, the same venues come up again and again. Lunch at the Capitol Grille, dinner at Bullfeathers, cocktails at the Monocle, breakfast at Johnny's Half Shell.

Alex Blumberg

Now, occasionally they do get fancy. You'll see fundraisers at golf clubs or hockey games, pheasant hunts-- yes, pheasant hunts-- or at live events. For example, this past week, for $1,000, you could join South Dakota Senator John Thune at a Van Halen concert.

Andrea Seabrook

Now all of these events just happened. Just in the last week actually. Our analysis with the Sunlight Foundation data shows that in peak fundraising months, there are at least 20 events a day. One lawmaker told us, "You could spend every day of the year raising money."

Alex Blumberg

And in fact, some actually do.

Andrea Seabrook

This is Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House. She's also the Democratic Party's number one fundraiser. Pelosi has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Close to $40 million in this election alone.

Andrea Seabrook

That's 400 for the year 2011. That's more than one a day, every day of the year, Saturdays and Sundays included.

Alex Blumberg

Now we know from fundraising numbers and scheduled events that the leadership on the Republican side is working just as hard. We contacted all of them and no one would speak to us.

Andrea Seabrook

Staff for the number two Republican in the house, Eric Cantor, said, quote, "We'll pass." House Speaker Boehner's staff said, quote, "It doesn't sound like a good use of time."

Alex Blumberg

And there's one thing driving all this activity-- a gnawing, relentless, voracious need for cash. To understand that need, consider Walt Minnick.

Andrea Seabrook

Minnick is a conservative Democrat who represented a Republican-leaning district in Idaho. He was first elected in 2008, and after he won, he took just five days off from fundraising. Then, two months before he was sworn in as a congressman, he was back raising money for the next election, two years away.

Alex Blumberg

Let's stop and dwell on that statement for a second, shall we, Andrea? $10,000 to $15,000 a day. The typical cost of a congressional race is about a million dollars-- although, if you're challenging an incumbent, you need more. Minnick's goal was even more than that-- $2.5 million-- because he was in such a competitive district.

Andrea Seabrook

That's typical for a member of Congress, and most of those hours are spent across the street from the Capitol, in special offices set up by the parties specifically for this purpose.

Alex Blumberg

Special offices because federal law prohibits lawmakers from making fundraising calls from their own congressional offices. Neither party is eager to let reporters into these call centers, but we got a couple Democrats to describe what it's like in there. This is Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio.

Alex Blumberg

This is Senator Dick Durbin, who says that on the Senate side, they'll have these things called "power hours" several times a week, where a bunch of senators will go into the call center--

Andrea Seabrook

Again, Walt Minnick.

Alex Blumberg

Now, there is an easier way to relieve some of that pressure and raise money faster. A way that doesn't involve tapping out your friends. Just go to the people who already have big stacks of money set aside to give to politicians-- lobbyists.

Andrea Seabrook

A lobbyist can throw you a fundraiser. A lunch a Johnny's Half Shell or a cocktail reception at Bullfeathers. And so, every week, lawmakers and their staffs work the phones, trying to find lobbyists to organize these events. Jimmy Williams used to get those calls. He was a lobbyist for the real estate industry for many years.

Alex Blumberg

This was one of the most surprising things I learned about this whole process. The way most of us generally think about it is absolutely backwards. We imagine the lobbyists stalking the halls of Congress, trying to influence members with cash. But more often than not, it's the reverse-- the member is stalking the lobbyists, saying, "Hey, can I have some of that money?"

Andrea Seabrook

And it's hard to say no, Jimmy says. Especially to a congressman whose work and votes he cared about. So, he'd say yes and then he'd have to round up a bunch of guests.

Andrea Seabrook

We're talking thousands of dollars that the congressman will make in just an hour. And imagine what this is like for the lawmaker. For someone like Walt Minnick, who has to pull in $10,000 to $15,000 a day. When his staff comes and says, "We've convinced this group of lobbyists to throw a fundraiser for you," it's a relief.

Andrea Seabrook

We were curious, how exactly does the money change hands? Is it like handing the groom an envelope at a wedding reception? Does someone collect it at the door when you walk in? Are you supposed to be discreet or overt?

Alex Blumberg

The answer is all of the above. Some people pay with plastic. A lot of times, there's actually a space on the invitation to put your credit card number. Sometimes, you'll tell a staffer, "Just put me down for this much," and then you send the money in later. But some, like financial services industry lobbyist, Scott Talbott, prefer a more direct approach.

Alex Blumberg

Talbot says, typically, there's the person who works for the member of Congress there, who's holding the checks. That person is called a "fundraiser."

Andrea Seabrook

Yup, the event is a fundraiser and that person is called a fundraiser. Jimmy Williams picks it up with what happens next.

Alex Blumberg

Jimmy says that it's not like the check will buy a vote on a bill, or even an amendment. But to get in front of the lawmaker, to make your case at all, you need that check.

Andrea Seabrook

People we talked to in this system said everyone understands the rules. You're going to cut checks from your PAC, your political action committee, to get access to lawmakers. But they tell us the rules are rarely explicit, although there are times, says Jimmy Williams. Like when he took a couple of clients to one Congressman's office.

Andrea Seabrook

Some members of Congress have a much easier time getting lobbyists and donors to call them back. Members whose positions in Congress give them more sway over powerful interests. A lot of that depends on committee assignments. Here's Jeff Flake, a Republican congressman from Arizona.

Alex Blumberg

The Ways and Means Committee covers the US tax code. Who gets tax breaks, who pays more. Every corporation in America concerned about the tax code-- which is a lot of corporations-- is suddenly concerned with your candidacy when you're on Ways and Means. The Science Committee can't compete with that. Although, Science isn't the worst. Here's Walt Minnick.

Andrea Seabrook

The leadership of both parties actually ranks each committee according to its fundraising potential. There are lists of the A, B, and C committees with fundraising targets for each one. Those numbers aren't public-- many lawmakers say these lists exist, but no one would give one to us.

Alex Blumberg

So we did our own list, based on publicly-disclosed fundraising numbers. Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, crunched data for us, going back to the early '90s. And the math shows the best committee is indeed Ways and Means. Just getting on that committee earns you an estimated quarter million dollars more in donations than the average member of Congress.

Andrea Seabrook

Number two-- no big surprise here-- the Financial Services Committee. It covers banks and Wall Street. It brings in $182,000 more per member than the average. Third best-- Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over the oil and natural gas industries. If you're there, you get a $142,000 boost in fundraising.

Alex Blumberg

And as for the worst-- it's true, Government Reform is bad. As are Education and Natural Resources. They all hurt your fundraising. Members on those committees bring in less than the average. But the very bottom spot belongs to the Judiciary Committee, which covers the federal courts and judicial nominations. Just being on Judiciary costs you $182,000 in donations.

Andrea Seabrook

And then there's leadership. According to the Sunlight data, having a leadership position on any committee-- even a dud committee-- will bump up your fundraising. So, for example, even the chairman of the Government Reform committee does very well, bringing in about a half a million dollars more than the average House member.

Alex Blumberg

And if you become a chairman of a powerhouse committee, an A committee, like Ways and Means or Energy, you pull in over $1 million more. Like Congressman Barney Frank. He became a leader on the Financial Services Committee in 2003 and saw his fundraising skyrocket.

Andrea Seabrook

But there's one catch to getting on a good committee or taking a leadership spot.

Alex Blumberg

Jeff Flake, the Republican from Arizona, says once you get on a good committee or become a chairman, your party's leadership expects you to raise even more money and turn it over to them, so that they can spread it around to members who are less fortunate. Ones in tight races who don't have such an easy time fundraising for themselves. Remember that list of the A, B, and C committees? Flake says leadership makes those targets pretty explicit.

Andrea Seabrook

Lawmakers of both parties told us that if you're on a good committee, you regularly get called up in front of your party's leaders to go over your fundraising numbers.

Alex Blumberg

And let's say your numbers aren't that good. You know there are other congressmen out there hungry for your spot, trying to prove to the party leadership that they'd do a better job raising money if they were in your position.

Andrea Seabrook

And you can hear this pressure in the voice of Eleanor Holmes Norton. She's the congresswoman who left that voicemail we played at the beginning of the show. This is a part we didn't play earlier.

Alex Blumberg

And this brings us to the big question-- what does the money buy? What are corporations and special interest getting in return for the billions of dollars they spend lobbying each year?

Andrea Seabrook

There tend to be two views on this. If you're cynical, you think money buys votes, pure and simple. Washington is owned. Money drives everything.

Alex Blumberg

But lobbyists and politicians will sometimes tell you the opposite. Money has no effect. After all, they say, there's always two sides, and both are giving. Exporters versus importers, bankers versus Realtors, businesses versus unions. The money cancels itself out.

Andrea Seabrook

When we asked Barney Frank about this, he said both of those positions are caricatures.

Andrea Seabrook

On the other hand, he says, there are things that influence a politician besides money.

Andrea Seabrook

But the fact is, most legislation, your district doesn't care about. The stuff that makes the news is a tiny fraction of what Congress actually does. They're deep in the weeds of tax law and business code and replacing the "and" in subsection b of title one with an "or." Things most voters have no opinions on. The only people who do care, or who even understand what that small print means, are the lobbyists and the industries and interests they represent.

Alex Blumberg

Consider the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. This was a piece of legislation that lots of multinational corporations spent a lot of time lobbying for because it got them a huge, one-time tax break. Some of the profits-- the profits they made overseas-- would be taxed at just 5%, instead of the normal rate of 35%. A massive windfall.

Andrea Seabrook

This law caught the attention of a tax professor at the University of Kansas, Raquel Alexander. She thought it might help her understand a pretty difficult question she and her colleagues had been considering.

Andrea Seabrook

With the American Jobs Creation Act, Alexander and her colleagues finally got something that could help them add up the lobbying costs and benefits.

Alex Blumberg

They simply compared the amount that companies spent lobbying with the amount they saved on their taxes. They came up with a figure. A figure they called "the return on investment for lobbying." Now, for some perspective, money in a regular old savings account, you be lucky to get a 1% return on your investment. On the other end of the spectrum, Bernie Madoff advertised annual returns of just over 10%. If you want to come up with a big, impressive-sounding lie, a 10% return on investment is what you say. The return on investment to lobbying, in the case of Alexander's study--

Andrea Seabrook

In 2010, there was a total of $3.5 billion spent on lobbying. $3.5 billion. It's hard to imagine that every one of those dollars got a 22,000% return. There are certainly companies out there that spend a lot of money and don't get what they want. They've just lost money.

Alex Blumberg

And it's not to say that the things they're lobbying for are bad public policy. There are lots of people, President Obama included, who think a lower corporate tax rate would benefit the country.

Andrea Seabrook

Barney Frank and lots of others told us straight up, a lot of times, the lobbyist knows much more about your subject than you do as a congressman. You depend on their expertise, and so you listen to their arguments.

Alex Blumberg

The problem is, those arguments are accompanied by a large check. The other side of the issue-- you don't always hear from them. Again, Walt Minnick, the one-time congressman from Idaho.

Alex Blumberg

When he was talking about this, Walt Minnick told us, "I think I was able to vote in ways I don't regret." That ambiguity, it's built into the system. And now he's on the other side of it. After losing his reelection bid in 2010, he became a lobbyist. And he still has misgivings about the power of money and politics to frame the issues and set the agenda.

Andrea Seabrook

Money in the political system helps explain why oil companies get big subsidies, even while their business is booming. Why the federal government provides flood insurance for rich people to build beach houses in hurricane zones. Why corn syrup that goes in soft drinks gets federal subsidies, and fruits and vegetables don't.

Alex Blumberg

It helps explain why the Defense Department paid two different companies to make engines for the Joint Strike Fighter. Why you can deduct the interest you pay on your mortgage, but not the interest you pay on your credit card.

Andrea Seabrook

That's our system. If a congressman went in front of a town hall meeting and said, for $5,000, I'll sit down with anyone of you and have breakfast. You can tell me exactly how you'd like me to vote. He'd be booed off the stage.

Alex Blumberg

But that's the case for pretty much everybody in Congress. They don't even have to say it.

Ira Glass

Alex Blumberg is a producer on our program and on the Planet Money team. Andrea Seabrook is NPR's congressional correspondent. On the internet right now, the Sunlight Foundation and Planet Money crunched numbers from over 13,000 fundraising invitations. Put together an interactive map showing the most popular spots in DC for hosting a fundraiser, charts listing the best and worst congressional committees for fundraising, how many fundraisers over the years have been birthday parties, golf tournaments, and hunting trips. That and more is at Planet Money's website, npr.org/money.

Coming up, how everything that you just heard is now changing. Changing in such a big way to give individual donors and corporations and unions way, way more leverage, thanks to the United States Supreme Court. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, "Take the Money and Run for Congress"-- stories about the moment that money is handed to a politician and what it buys. We've arrived at act two of our program. Act Two, PAC Men.

So everything that we described in the first half of the program-- the fundraisers, the phone banks of congressmen asking for donations-- all of that right now is, at this very moment, changing dramatically. The way that money flows into politics is changing because of the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case. Citizens United lifted a bunch of restrictions on political spending. It opened the door for unlimited political spending by corporations and by unions. And it gave birth to entities called "Super PACs." These funds can take, again, unlimited amounts directly from corporations, unions, millionaires-- anybody-- and spend it on politics. And because of the way the laws are written, Super PAC donors can either temporarily or, sometimes, permanently keep their identities from becoming public. Meaning that people can drop millions into any given race. They can write commercials, they can attack candidates, and voters will never know who they were.

A lot of attention has been paid to what this is going to do to presidential politics, but where it is already having a big effect is Congress. Ben Calhoun tells how.

Ben Calhoun

Here's one pretty good example of how Super PACs are affecting American politics. Affecting the whole balance of money and influence. It starts in Northern California. Starts in the suburban congressional district around Sacramento. And it starts with this guy who was never supposed to win.

Ben Calhoun

Ami Bera is a doctor, a college professor, and when he ran for Congress in 2010, his chances were pretty bleak. He was a Democrat in a midterm election where Democrats took a beating. He was a first time candidate taking on a sitting Republican congressmen named Dan Lungren, and this was in a district that favored Republicans.

Just to give you a sense of how bad it looked, at the beginning of the summer, Ami Bera took a poll.

Ben Calhoun

30 points. 30 points is a lot. But week by week, Bera got his feet underneath him. He shook hands, he spoke at events, gathered volunteers, asked friends and acquaintances for money. All summer he did this. July, August, September.

Ben Calhoun

Just quickly, when it comes to the art of judging congressional races-- figuring out which ones are really competitive, which seats could change hands, all that stuff-- there's pretty much two people that everybody listens to. There's one guy named Charlie Cook. The other is Stu Rothenberg. So this Bera staffer goes to a computer, looks at The Rothenberg Report.

Ben Calhoun

Soon, Time Magazine and The New York Times were reporting on how competitive the race was. The Times actually ran a piece calling the incumbent, Dan Lungren, "endangered." All of a sudden, more and more people were looking at Bera like he was a possible winner. And people started treating him like one. Donations took off. Everything sort of continued to fall into place until one very specific day.

Ben Calhoun

American Crossroads is a Super PAC, put together by some of the country's leading conservative operatives and donors-- most notably, Karl Rove. In the Super PAC world, Crossroads is massive. Moneywise, they raise a ton-- $27 million last year and this year. Their directors are prominent conservative leaders and their donors, who give millions of dollars, are big ones. For example, Bob Perry, the main donor behind the Swift Boat stuff. Perry's given Crossroads more than $8 million.

But anyway, back to Bera, who, after weeks of picking up steam, has just found out that Crossroads is about to spend money in Sacramento. And it was a lot of money-- $682,000. When Bera heard about this, he hoped that at least some of that money was going to be spent going after this other Democrat one congressional district over.

Ben Calhoun

This is the commercial that Rove and American Crossroads ran against Bera. Just for the record, Bera thought Obama's Health Care Affordability Act-- aka Obamacare-- he thought it was flawed, needed to be fixed. He did not say what the commercial is saying. And he told this to anybody that would listen, but it was hard to counter Crossroads's ad buy, which was in heavy rotation.

Ben Calhoun

This is Bera's campaign manager, Josh Wolf.

Ben Calhoun

Day by day, as these ads continued to run, the Bera campaign struggled to respond. Bera sent out emails, sent out press releases, talked to reporters, but what Bera really needed was money. According to him, the campaign had budgeted money for a late rainy day, but it wasn't enough to match $682,000. Eventually, the situation got so dire that Bera tried to bail out the campaign with a $400,000 loan.

Ben Calhoun

Of course, it's impossible to know if, without the Crossroads ads, Bera could've closed that eight point gap and won the race. Eight points is a lot of ground to make up in two weeks. What is possible to know, though, is that Bera could not compete with $682,000 in TV commercials. I mean, just to put that number in context, during the entire campaign, the Republican incumbent, Dan Lungren, raised and spent about $1.9 million. That means American Crossroads, when it spent about $700,000, it single-handedly increased spending on Lungren's side by more than 30% in a single day.

Ben Calhoun

I did call Dan Lungren to get his side of all this. As it happens, Lungren's actually the chair of the House Administration Committee, which oversees the enforcement of elections law. So if Bera felt like this whole thing had been unfair, I just wondered what it looked like to Lungren, who had benefited from that big ad buy. I talked to his campaign, talked to his office in DC. After contacting them more than half a dozen times, Lungren never explicitly said he didn't want to talk about any of this. His staff just never responded to any of my requests.

You probably heard little about this because it didn't really get covered, but in 2010-- on both sides of the aisle-- Super PACs we're doing this all across the country. Swooping into congressional races, spending hundreds of thousands-- sometimes millions-- of dollars. affecting who was representing us in Washington. Again, lots of us weren't even paying attention.

This year, we've seen a lot of headlines about this person and that person putting millions of dollars into the presidential race. But Super PACs can throw their weight around more in smaller races, like House races. There, every dollar is more influential. Put $5 million into a presidential campaign-- no matter how flashy that is, you're still ultimately just a drop in the bucket. Put half a million dollars into the right House race, you can change the fate of an entire campaign.

Ben Calhoun

This is Norm Ornstein. He works at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Ornstein's been living in the world of congressional politics for decades as a journalist, an academic, a columnist. He says these big chunks of Super PAC money that seem to be roaming around have everybody nervous. They've taken the pressure on candidates to raise money and they've turned it up even higher.

Ben Calhoun

If you do the long division of what's happening, it's not hard to see where it's headed. That we're drifting towards a new version of Congress, one where there are people in the House and in the Senate who have had their political existences made or broken by a single entity, one single donor. Norm Ornstein says money, in these kinds of amounts, in some cases, people don't even have to spend it and it can affect what happens in Washington.

Ben Calhoun

In this environment, Democrat Ami Bera and Republican Dan Lungren are going for round two. In some ways, Bera's got the wind at his back. California remapped Lungren's district, made it more Democratic. Bera's also out-fundraised Lungren. But at this house party event I went to with Bera, he took questions from a crowd for about half an hour. And Super PAC spending-- it came up three times.

What everybody seemed to agree on was that this big infusion of outside money-- they were all pretty much counting on it happening again. They talked about it as the new reality, because the role of Super PACs is only getting bigger. Republicans and Democrats are both amassing money. Everyone's planning to do more of this. Last time, Karl Rove's Crossroads group spent $37 million on about 40 different races. This time, including all the races-- presidential, House, Senate-- this time, it's been reported that Crossroads plans to raise and spend more than $300 million. And they're just one of many.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun. He is one of the producers of our show.

[MUSIC - "IF YOU'VE GOT THE MONEY, I'VE GOT THE TIME" BY JO STAFFORD]

Ira Glass

Act Three, The O.G.s. In the wake of Citizens United-- it seems like forever ago, but it was only a decade ago, in 2002, that Congress voted to reform how money works in politics when it passed BiCRA, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, better known as McCain-Feingold, after the Republican and Democratic senators who sponsored the legislation, John McCain and Russ Feingold.

Ira Glass

For this last act, we wanted to talk with the two senators who have spent so much of their political lives fighting to lessen the impact of money in the political system. John McCain, of course, was the 2008 Republican nominee for President. He's still in the Senate, representing Arizona. Russ Feingold was swept out of office in the 2010 election. He'd represented Wisconsin there since 1993. He's now teaching at Stanford University. The two men spoke with Alex, Andrea, and Ben. And, listening to this interview, one of the things that stands out most is, well, how angry they sound when they're talking about the Citizens United decision. For example, McCain talking about the part of the Supreme Court ruling that says that candidates are not supposed to coordinate with the Super PACs that support them.

Ira Glass

What Senator McCain is referring to is the fact that the candidate's own staffers are often the ones who leave to run these Super PACs. A pro-Obama Super PAC called Priorities USA is run by President Obama's former deputy press secretary. Carl Forti who is political director of American Crossroads and senior strategist for a pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC called Restore Our Future, used to be Mitt Romney's political director. We'll pick up our interview here where the two senators are talking about what it was like the day they went over to observe the Supreme Court hearing arguments during the Citizens United case.

Ira Glass

Former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold and his 2002 legislative partner, Arizona Senator John McCain, with Andrea Seabrook, Alex Blumberg and Ben Calhoun. Senator Feingold's the author of the book, While America Sleeps.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Ben Calhoun and Alex Blumberg with Sarah Koenig, Jonathan Menjivar, Lisa Pollak, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder, Seth Lind is our production manager, Emily Condon's our office manager. Production help from Matt Kielty. Music help from Damien Graef, from Rob Geddis.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

[MUSIC - "MONEY TALKS" BY THE PENGUINS]

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. Life This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia, who is very, very concerned about the power of the atheist lobby in Congress.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

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