But the real political money and power is in super PACs, since there are no donation caps.
A growing number of American companies are pledging to pause donations from their political action committees (PAC) to lawmakers who voted to overturn the Electoral College results showing President Joe Biden had won the presidential election. But halting these donations is a largely symbolic gesture because of campaign finance limits. « If they wanted to take a real financially meaningful stand, they would say, ‘we’re not going to give through the corporate PAC to office holders who try to subvert the democratic process and we are going to demand that any trade associations we give to follow those same rules, including for Super PAC donations,' » said Adav Novi, senior director at the Campaign Legal Center. Donations from corporate PACs to candidates’ campaigns are limited to $5,000 during the primary period and $5,000 during the general election, according to the Federal Election Commission. That means the most a company like Amazon or Google can give from its PAC to any of eight senators is $10,000 over their six-year term. Between 2016 and 2020, the eight senators who objected to the election results, led by Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, received a combined total of just $89,000 in donations from the 13 companies that said they would no longer give to them. It’s a tiny fraction of what the senators raised for their campaigns. In that same four-year period, the senators raised over $180 million for their races, according to a review of FEC filings.
