New financial regulations are pending in Congress, but both political parties get a lot of campaign contributions from the people they intend to regulate -- Wall Street.
The financial sector donates millions to both Republican and Democratic candidates. And during the last couple of election cycles, Democrats have outstripped Republicans, who have traditionally been thought of as more business friendly. Those political realities have made for interesting dynamics as the negotiations on financial regulation continue.
President Barack Obama answered questions on this topic in an interview with CNBC's John Harwood on April 21, 2010.
"In the 2008 campaign, you got a lot of money, about $1 million from employees of Goldman Sachs," Harwood said. "Your former White House counsel Greg Craig is apparently going to represent Goldman Sachs. In light of this case, do either of those things embarrass you?"
"No," Obama said. "First of all, I got a lot of money from a lot of people. And the vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country. And moreover, anybody who gave me money during the course of my campaign knew that I was on record again in 2007, and 2008, pushing very strongly that we needed to reform how Wall Street did business. And so, nobody should be surprised in the position that I'm taking now because it is one that I was very clear about in the course of the campaign."
What jumped out at us in this exchange was Obama's statement, "the vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country." We've seen that statement repeated elsewhere, but the evidence doesn't back it up. - Politifact
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