Congress Spends 70% of Its Time Fundraising, Not Legislating

To have a realistic shot at winning a seat in his own district, Chris learned he'd need to raise about $2 million and take a year or two off from his day job. That's not a national race — that's a single Connecticut district. In this episode, we follow the money into the political system: why the average member of Congress spends up to 70% of their time fundraising, why 97% of election winners outspend their opponents, and what a Princeton study found when it compared what Congress actually does to what everyday Americans want (spoiler: there's no correlation). We also break down how Citizens United created Super PACs and untraceable “dark money,” and why a billionaire spending hundreds of millions on an election is simply a really good investment — using Elon Musk's 2024 spending and the returns that followed as a case study. We also look at Connecticut's own public campaign financing system — proof that a different set of rules is possible. This is the start of a new arc: next episode, we follow the same money into the maps themselves.