Money is Flooding into the Political System

March 12, 2026.

In Ohio today, Republican candidate for Governor Vivek Ramaswami launched a $10 million

TV and digital ad campaign to run until election day.

Jeremy Palzer of Cleveland.com explained that this ad by alone is more than twice as

much as the $4.4 million Democratic candidate Amy Acton, the former state health director,

has raised.

And it is only about half of the $19.5 million Ramaswami's campaign has raised.

Forbes reported in December 2025 that Ramaswami's net worth had nearly doubled from about $1

million to about $1.8 billion since he announced his candidacy in February 2025.

On March 9, Mike Baker and Stephen Rich of the New York Times published a long expose

of the corruption of American politics by billionaires.

They explained how underwriting political campaigns from those for local school boards to

the presidency has enabled the very wealthy to lock in their policy preferences for tax

cuts, deregulation, and cuts to the social safety net, while also steering valuable government

contracts to themselves.

In 2024, Baker and Richnote, 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated

19% of all political contributions in federal elections, either directly or through political

action committees or PACs.

While that amount does not account for money that might have gone through dark money groups

that don't have to disclose their donors, it still amounts to more than $3 billion or

an average of $10 million per family.

The author's example of what this flood of money looks like in the political system

is the victory of Senator Tim Sheehy, a Republican of Montana, who beat popular Democratic incumbent

John Tester in 2024, with the help of $8 million from billionaire Stephen Schwartzman and

at least 63 other billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members, who donated

about $47 million to Sheehy's Senate race.

In the Senate, Sheehy has become a key ally on tax policies that benefit the wealthy and

co-sponsored a proposal to eliminate the estate tax, the author's note.

Sheehy has been in the news lately for killing a decade's old solar energy tax credit

when his own home uses solar power.

Sheehy's spokesperson declined to tell reporters if he had used the tax credit for 26% of

the system's cost.

Sheehy has also been in the news for jumping into the effort of three Capitol police officers

to eject a protester opposed to the Iran War from a Senate Armed Services Committee

hearing.

The arm of Brian McGinnis, a Marine Corps veteran who was wearing his dress uniform, was stuck

behind the door.

As Sheehy threw his weight into McGinnis, there was the audible crack of his arm breaking.

When a spectator called Sheehy a coward, the Senator appeared to tell him, go f*** yourself.

Sheehy later said he was trying to de-escalate the situation and blamed McGinnis for causing

violence.

Senator Elon Musk spent close to $300 million in the 2024 elections, putting much of it,

as well as the support of the social media platform X behind Trump.

After his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency created a backlash to

his companies and sparked a rift between him and Trump, Musk said he was going to step

back from political spending.

Yet, by the end of 2025, he had already given $20 million to Republicans to prepare for

the 2026 elections.

It's a big deal for Trump and for the Republicans to have the world's richest man on their side.

Republican strategist Brian Cicic told Julia Muller and Julia Shapiro of the hill in February.

Baker and Rich noted that while both parties had reaped windfalls from billionaires in

the past, in 2024, that money turned sharply toward Republicans.

For every dollar of billionaire money that went to Democrats, they wrote $5 went to Republicans.

During his term, President Joe Biden called for securing the solvency of Social Security

and Medicare and addressing the growing national debt with higher taxes on the wealthy

and corporations.

He wanted to increase the tax rate for those making more than $400,000 a year to close

the carried interest loophole and to impose a tax of 25% on Americans with a wealth of

more than $100 million, saying during his 2024 State of the Union address, no billionaire

should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, a nurse.

When she took over as a Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris also called

for higher taxes on the wealthy, although it's slightly lower rates than Biden backed.

In contrast, Trump promised billionaires he would extend the 2017 tax cuts that benefited

the wealthy in corporations.

At a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, he told oil executives that they should raise a billion dollars

to put him back in office.

That price tag would be a deal, he told them, because of the taxes and regulations they

would avoid if he were in charge.

And so, some of them pumped money into his campaign.

Once back in office, Trump gave his wealthy supporters what he promised, the one big beautiful

bill act that extended the 2017 tax cuts, cut regulation, and slashed the Social Safety

Net.

But along with those tax cuts and deregulation, those who supported Trump gave the country

an erratic president who has destabilized the world economy through tariffs and now has

led us into war in the Middle East.

Today Paul Krugman wrote in his newsletter that this is the billionaire's war, since it

was their campaign money that mobilized low information voters to rally behind Trump

and his minions.

There are major societal implications for that war.

It is already costing at least $1 billion a day, and administration officials have suggested

they are going to ask Congress for more money for it.

That request will come on top of the news of March 10th that, according to the Congressional

Budget Office, the U.S. has borrowed $1 trillion over the past five months.

That's $50 billion a week on average as Trump's tax cuts slash revenue.

Republicans are sounding the alarm about the ballooning debt and suggesting the only way

to address it is to cut more programs that benefit the American people.

But that raises fundamental questions about the purpose of the U.S. government.

What should it do?

Home should it benefit?

And why?

In the 1860s during the U.S. Civil War, the Republican Party reacted to rising expenses

and growing debt, not by punishing everyday Americans, but by inventing the income tax.

In a time when the very existence of the American government was under threat, Republicans

argued that the federal government had a right to demand 99% of a man's property for an urgent

necessity.

When the nation required it, Vermont's Justin Smith-Moral said, the property of the people

belongs to the government.

From the beginning, Congressman graduated the taxes according to income.

Moral said, the weight of taxation must be distributed equally, not upon each man an equal

amount, but a tax proportionate to his ability to pay.

Knowing that those who supported the government financially would care deeply about its survival,

the American people welcomed the taxes.

Even conservative Republican newspapers declared, there is not the slightest objection raised

in any loyal quarter to as much taxation as may be necessary.

Here's from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.

It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music

composed by Michael Moss.