[Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate for campaign finance reform, called DeLay] the king of a Washington-lobbyist, influence-money approach for governing America. ... pay-to-play philosophy.

To effectively address the scandals in Washington, which revolve around the multiple ways lobbyists use money to buy influence, Congress must reform the lobbying, campaign finance and ethics rules, and create new means for enforcing these rules.

That doesn't mean there are no efforts to influence the minority parties, but the principal efforts almost always involve the party in power, the party or the individuals from that party who can deliver results.

Members use them as slush funds. You just don't have to do this to raise money.

seriously undermine the effort to close the soft-money loophole for 527 groups which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in unlimited soft money being spent to influence the 2004 federal elections.

I've still got a lot to learn about Washington. Thursday, I accidentally spent some of my own money.