A milker’s bill is legislation designed to generate income for politicians by threatening to harm certain organizations or groups, causing them to rally against the bill and donate funds. These bills are also known as cash cows, juicers, or bill fetchers. They can involve tax reform, revenue threats, or changes to regulations. While some see them as extortion, they are difficult to prove as politicians can hide behind rhetoric. The funds generated are usually incorporated into political war chests and considered legal.
A milker’s bill is a piece of legislation designed to generate income for a politician or group of politicians. In such legislation, a threat is made that causes people to rally to defeat the bill, thus generating funds, and the politician later helps defeat the bill or amends it so that the threat is removed. In a classic example of a milkmaid bill, a politician would propose raising taxes for some companies, in anxious anticipation that those companies would dole out large amounts of funds to defeat the bill.
These bills go by a number of alternative names. They are sometimes bluntly referred to as “cash cows” because they actually generate a great deal of money for their sponsors when done well. Some people call them “juicers” or “juicer bills,” because milker bills are used to squeeze money just like you would squeeze an orange. They are also known as “bill fetchers”, because they literally fetch funds for their authors.
Many people see the concept of milker’s bill as simple extortion, and in a sense, these bills are in fact a form of extortion, because they involve the use of a threat to raise money. However, it can be difficult to prove categorically that a bill is being used to extort funds, as politicians can hide behind rhetoric, arguing that their intentions are honest and that everyone is entitled to a change of mind when they withdraw the bill. .
In some cases, a milker bill is actually used to generate direct cash payments from lobbyists and industry members. More commonly, however, the bill is used to pique interest, involving organizations attempting to defeat the bill in hopes that the funds raised will slowly flow into the politician’s coffers. A milker’s bill gives people something to organize and rally around, and this rallying point can in turn be used to fuel fundraisers, advertising campaigns, and so on.
Milker bills can involve things like demands for tax reform, threats to take revenue from certain organizations or groups, or proposals to change regulatory procedures in a way that could cause economic damage to certain organizations. Funds generated to defeat such bills are usually incorporated into political war chests in such a way as to be considered perfectly legal, even though the means of obtaining the funds can be somewhat ethically questionable.
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