Chapter 11 General Electric Lobbying

1. General Electric
Zachary Burgess

2. What is General Electric?
General Electric, more commonly know as simply GE, has it’s hands in almost
anything we use today. It's almost safe to say that you have numerous products
from GE in your household.
From nuclear reactors, to refrigerators and ovens, to even protesting and
lobbying in Washington!
Click Here to learn more about General Electric

3. What are Iron Triangles?
This idea of a iron triangle is used within General Electric lobbying. This is a
unique relationship between three members in which both receive benefits in
one way or another.
Learn more about Iron Triangles

4. Missions
General Electric has been around since 1998 and their main
missions include…
Tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy
Their missions include over 20 problems that they lobby for
The top issues include taxes, banking, finance, and trade.
Click Here to learn more about Missions.

5. What are Special Interest Lobbying Groups?
The goal of a special interest group is to influence public policy.
General Electric is an institutional interest group which represents an institution's
beliefs on a subject.
Definition from Wilson’s explanation out of that Book.

6. General Electric is an Institutional Interest Group.
Being a Institutional Interest group means that General Electric is a company
that represents itself over many issues that they find most important.
The idea of General Electric’s incentive program is simple, to make more money
for themselves. This means that the ideas that they are lobbying for, like taxes,
would be incentives. Say they lobby for lower taxes, this will make more people
wanna buy the lighter taxed product, making it easier to sell their product and
make as much money as possible.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000125&cycle=2014

7. What Political affiliation?
The General Electric lobbying group is considered to be conservative. This
coincides with the ideas we have learned in class, with big company’s. Meaning
that the businesses most likely dislike any government limitations, and are for
limiting the national government making them Republican.
A example could be again limiting taxes on electronic products, letting them sell
more products so they can make more money in doing so.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/news.php?id=D000000125&cycle=2014

8. Current Issues
As of right now GE has invested $20,920,000 on the misc. Manufacturing and
Distributing bill that is now on the docket. This includes the release of materials
restrictions, immigration reform that would provide cheap labor, and even all the
way down to stop limiting cheap packing materials.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=N15

9. Political Contributions
What General electric has done, is make contributions to many PACs that
support their same ideas. They have donated 1,144,500 this year to PAC’s so
they could use this money to support the candidates of their choice,
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000125

10. Please take the short quiz below!
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