Every week the campaign dollars pile up, by the tens of millions, by the hundreds of millions, to a level never before seen in American political life. Outside groups now say they plan to spend $1 billion on behalf of Republicans in the November election, which will probably be twice the level raised by groups supporting Democrats. Even the slush-funders of the Watergate era would have been slack-jawed at the number of seven- and eight-figure checks pouring into groups with names like Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity.

The reason for these staggering numbers — and for the growing imbalance between the parties — is that the vast financial power of the business world has been loosed as a political tool by the federal courts. In pursuit of lower taxes and less regulation, businesses, led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, are determined to remove President Obama from office and return full control of Congress to the Republican Party. Executives and companies are the principal source of the unlimited checks that are fueling the rise of these outside groups.

Many of the executives are giving money to “super PACs,” which have to disclose their names. But because businesses usually don’t want the public to know of their political activity, they prefer to launder their political contributions through the Chamber or through “social welfare organizations,” which can keep the names a secret.

The law that permits these undisclosed contributions also puts explicit limits on these organizations’ activities. Tax-exempt social welfare groups, known by their Internal Revenue Code section number as 501(c)(4)’s, cannot be organized for the “primary” purpose of political activity. So far, the I.R.S. is looking the other way.