The problem isn’t big government, it’s big corruption.

Conservatives will argue that most problems facing society are rooted in big government, when there’s a much larger issue at hand.

The federal government is perhaps the biggest its been in decades, but is that what’s causing the problems our country is currently facing? I would argue no, because government has done and can continue to do great things, such as the creation of Social Security and Medicare, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I believe that the issue at hand is government corruption.

In recent years, Congress has hit record-low productivity, the reason being that most members of Congress seek to keep the status quo, even considering how objectively terrible it is.

I took a deep dive into congressional donors, and how dark money has caused the lack of progress in American society.

For this article, I’ll be using Congressional leaders as an example. First, let’s take a look at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the 2020 cycle, Pelosi took the following amounts of money from the following industries: $83,433 from the defense sector, $1.74 million from insurance and real estate, $1.4 million from the health sector, and $834,000 from lawyers and lobbyists. Now, let’s analyze her voting record.

Pelosi took over $83k from the defense sector, which explains her vote to override Trump’s veto of the 2021 NDAA, as well as her support of Defense and DHS spending bills, as well as the 2020 NDAA. For insurance and healthcare, Pelosi sided with the health insurance companies, with her not co-sponsoring Medicare for All, and she also voted to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act, which had overhauled financial regulation in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Now let’s look across the aisle, to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell, throughout his career, received donations from the following sources: $432,000 from Blackstone Group (private equity investment firm), $284,000 from Humana Inc., a Kentucky-based for profit-health insurance company, $283,000 from NORPAC, which lobbies for Israeli-American relations, $274,000 from Kindred Healthcare, a healthcare company, $229,000 from UPS, a package delivery company, $221,000 from Blue/Cross Blue Shield, a federation of 36 for-profit health insurance companies, and $220,000 from Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, to just name a few of McConnell’s very top dollar donors.

Now, let’s take a look at his voting record: After the July 27, 2017 vote on the Healthcare Freedom Act, Newsweek “found at least 70 Republican-led attempts to repeal, modify or otherwise curb the Affordable Care Act since its inception as law on March 23, 2010.” McConnell, as Majority Leader of the Senate, attempted dozens of times to repeal Obamacare, which made healthcare more affordable for Americans, which goes directly against the wishes of the healthcare industry, including health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. McConnell has always sided with the Israel lobby while in Congress, examples being him consistently working and rallying with AIPAC, and him opposing BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), and co-sponsoring the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and the Combatting BDS Act of 2017.

Looking through all of this data, the root cause of our nation’s problems are not big government, in fact, big government has done tremendous things for the working class. The issue is corruption, which causes for crooked politicians to vote against working class interests in the first place, and to cause these problems.