We adopt a novel use for an old type of data – interest group scorecards – to explore the impact business organizations have on the political process. By aggregating congressional scorecards, we can develop a sense of how satisfied groups are with the US Congress as a whole. To do this, we generate interest group-level ratings of the US Senate derived from individual-level ratings of each senator. We find business groups tend to give higher aggregated scores relative to other types of groups, suggesting business organizations more often get what they want form Congress, which in turn, illuminates the importance of these groups in the political process. We also find that well-funded “niche” organizations tend to show higher levels of satisfaction with senators than larger groups with broad public missions.

We welcome the opportunity to respond to Pete Moore's comments on our paper. In doing so, we address the central issue raised by Moore concerning our use of the term “modern” in our analysis of the origin, structure, and management of Gulf states’ sovereign wealth funds. As it turns out, our use of the term modern is complex and multifaceted; we hope to show that the issue raised by Pete Moore runs in a variety of directions and is not so easily resolved, as he suggests.