Where Does Campaign Money Really Come From?: Crash Course US Government #3 · CrashCourse
揭秘美国联邦竞选资金的来源与去向，了解超级PAC、暗钱和独立支出的影响。适合练习政治、经济和英语听力。
Fourteen billion dollars.
140亿美元。
That’s the incomprehensible amount of money that was spent on just federal political campaigns in 2024.
这简直是一笔难以想象的巨额资金——仅在2024年，联邦层面的政治竞选活动就花费了如此多的钱。
And generally with each passing election cycle, that number only keeps growing.
通常情况下，随着每一次选举周期的结束，这个数字只会持续增长。
But get this – most Americans don’t donate to political campaigns.
但你知道吗？大多数美国人并不会向政治竞选活动捐款。
And a whole chunk of the billions thrown around in the last election were donated by…
在上次选举中花费的数十亿美元中，有一大笔资金是由……捐赠的。
well, we don’t exactly know.
嗯，我们其实也不太清楚。
So where’s all this money really coming from?
那么，这些钱究竟是从哪里来的呢？
And where is it actually going?
那么，它究竟会流向哪里呢？
Hi, I’m Kousha Navidar, this is Crash Course, and we’re answering Big Questions on U.S.
大家好，我是库莎·纳维达尔（Kousha Navidar）。这里是《Crash Course》节目，我们致力于探讨关于美国的重要问题。
Government.
政府。
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Fourteen billion dollars is a ton of money.
140亿美元是一笔巨额资金。
And some of it comes from pretty obvious sources, like spending by the Democratic and Republican National Committees.
其中一部分资金来源相当明显，比如民主党和共和党全国委员会的开支。
But the rest of it has to come from a bunch of different places.
但其余的部分必须来自许多不同的来源。
Now, the last time I checked, there’s no mention of campaign fundraising in the Constitution.
据我最后一次了解的情况，宪法中并没有关于竞选活动筹款的相关条款。
Wait, hold on.
等等，先别急。
We the people…
我们，也就是人民……
Yep, still true!
是的，现在依然如此！
In fact, when the thing was first written, the idea of a politician asking regular folks for money was seen as peak cringe.
事实上，当这篇文章最初被写出来的时候，政客向普通民众索要钱财这种行为被视为极其令人反感、甚至令人尴尬的行为。
It was okay to hand out free whiskey to voters, though.
不过，向选民免费分发威士忌也是可以接受的。
It was a different time.
那是另一个时代。
By the mid-1800s, campaign fundraising started catching on.
到了19世纪中叶，通过开展活动来筹集资金的做法开始流行起来。
And pretty soon, money from wealthy donors and businesses had become big enough of a deal that over time,
很快，来自富裕捐赠者和企业的资金就变得非常重要（或者说，这些资金在数量上占据了主导地位）。随着时间的推移……
lawmakers began to implement some actual rules around it.
立法者开始制定相关实施细则。
Today, the way you or I might
今天，你我可能会……
be the most familiar with financially supporting a campaign is through campaign contributions— those are direct donations to a candidate.
在为政治竞选活动提供财务支持的方式中，最常见的方式就是通过捐款来实现——这些捐款是直接给予候选人的。
These can come from individual donors, like you and I, or by Political Action Committees, also known as PACS.
这些资金可以来自像你我这样的个人捐赠者，也可以来自政治行动委员会（Political Action Committees，简称PACs）。
But in 1971, the Federal Election Campaign Act laid out requirements for campaigns to report all their donations,
但在1971年，《联邦选举活动法》规定了各选举活动必须报告所有捐款的相关要求。
and an amendment implemented in 1974 introduced
1974年实施的一项修正案对此进行了修改。
strict caps on how much and how often someone can give to individual candidates and their campaigns per election cycle.
对于每个人在每个选举周期内可以向个别候选人及其竞选活动捐赠的金额和次数，都设有严格的限制。
Like, did you know campaigns can’t take more than $50 cash if it’s given anonymously?
你知道吗？如果捐款是以匿名方式进行的，那么相关宣传活动接受的现金金额不得超过 50 美元。
And a single person can’t give more than $3500 to a campaign each election?
那么每次选举时，一个人向某个竞选活动捐款的金额不能超过 3500 美元吗？
Meanwhile, for PACS, contributions can’t surpass $5,000.
与此同时，对于PACS（影像存档与通信系统）来说，捐赠金额不得超过5,000美元。
Plus, each state can set its own limits for how much you can contribute in their state-wide elections.
此外，每个州都可以自行设定在本州范围内举行的选举中个人可以捐赠的金额上限。
There are a lot of rules, and when it comes to federal elections it’s up to the Federal Election Commission,
有很多相关规定；在联邦选举方面，这些规定由联邦选举委员会负责执行。
or FEC, to make sure they get followed.
或者使用 FEC（前向纠错编码）技术，以确保数据传输的可靠性（即数据能够被正确接收）。
So in 2024, out of that fourteen billion dollars spent on federal campaigns, campaign contributions only made up about 4.7 billion.
那么在 2024 年，用于联邦选举活动的 140 亿美元中，竞选捐款仅占约 47 亿美元。
But there’s a whole other way to spend money on campaigns: independent spending.
不过，还有另一种方式为竞选活动筹集资金的方式，那就是独立支出（即不通过政党或官方渠道进行的资金投入）。
That’s where, instead of giving directly to a campaign or party, donors spend as much of their own money as they’d like to boost advertising,
在这种情况下，捐赠者不会直接将资金捐给某个竞选活动或政党，而是会自行出资（金额由他们决定），用于增加相关广告的投放量。
organize rallies, or even help fund outside groups in support of a candidate– and those FEC rules don’t apply.
组织集会，甚至帮助为支持某位候选人的外部团体提供资金——这些联邦选举委员会（FEC）的规定都不适用。