Facebook Donated To 46 of 55 Members On Committee That Will Question Zuckerberg (usatoday.com)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be questioned about user privacy protections next week by members of the House and Senate committees, but as USA Today notes, many of these members were also "some of the biggest recipients of campaign contributions from Facebook employees directly and the political action committee funded by employees." An anonymous reader shares the report: The congressional panel that got the most Facebook contributions is the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which announced Wednesday morning it would question Zuckerberg on April 11. Members of the committee, whose jurisdiction gives it regulatory power over Internet companies, received nearly $381,000 in contributions tied to Facebook since 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The center is a non-partisan, non-profit group that compiles and analyzes disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission.

The second-highest total, $369,000, went to members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which announced later that it would have a joint hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Zuckerberg on Tuesday. Judiciary Committee members have received $235,000 in Facebook contributions. On the House committee, Republicans got roughly twice as much as Democrats, counter to the broader trend in Facebook campaign gifts. Of the $7 million in contributions to all federal candidates tied to the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social network, Democrats got 65% to Republicans' 33%. Of the 55 members on the Energy and Commerce Committee this year, all but nine have received Facebook contributions in the past decade. The average Republican got $6,800, while the average Democrat got $6,750.

Comments

Re:Donations?

[Jason1729]

It happens just as much in other civilized countries, the only difference in the US the people can see the "donations" and the companies can use them as tax write-offs.

Re:Ban corporate campaign contributions

[dryeo]

There's no legitimate reason that corporations can make campaign contributions.

If you stop corporations from making contributions you would also need to stop unions. But that's never going to happen, because if the unions know that if they don't own their lawmakers the unions would cease to exist.

Here in Canada, both corporate and union donations have been stopped, as well as real people (actually only citizens and permanent residents) being limited to just over $1000 donations. We still have both unions and corporations.