A Recent History of Money in Politics
Over the last decade, voters have voiced concerns on the increasing role of money in politics. The claim of campaign finance disparities and their potential to subvert our democracy propelled the issue to the forefront political discourse. Leading politicians such as Bernie Sanders to speak out against the issue, warning that “wealthy contributors can literally buy politicians and elections by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the candidates of their choice.” The U.S. has regulations governing campaign finance and the stringency of these rules vary widely over the years. What has contributed to the growing importance and attention dedicated to campaign finance law?
In the early 2000’s, corporations realized they could get around the funding regulations imposed by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Normally if a corporation or labor union wanted to create a pool of funding to donate to certain political causes, they would have to register as a Political Action Committee (PAC) and face hard caps on the amount of money they could give to candidates. But around this time, corporations realized that rather than applying as PAC’s, they could rebrand their funding pools as so-called “527 organizations”'. This allowed these organizations to receive unlimited amounts of money from donors (provided they publicise their donations) and spend this money running political advertisements. This produced a huge increase in the presence of “soft money”, or unregulated money given not directly to a candidate but to a party or committee, causing concerns among politicians that wealthy people may be able to control the voter base through ad spending.
In response to this and the worrying concern that these organizations had too much power, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain-Finegold, was passed with two main provisions to try and curb this spending. 1) It prohibited political parties and independent committees from raising money beyond federal limits, meaning corporations could no longer have endless amounts of money in their own committees for ad funds, and 2) it banned corporations from paying for ads to be run within 30 days of a primary or within 60 days of a general election.
Under this ruleset, if a corporation or labor union wanted to give as much money as possible to a campaign, they would be limited to creating a PAC or Political Action Committee. Through this PAC they are not able to donate money directly, but can encourage the members of their corporation or others to donate (capped at $5,000 per person), and then the PAC can distribute a limited (capped at $15,000) amount of funds to a candidate, or an unlimited amount to a political party. This bill seems to put a pretty hard cap on the lobbying that a corporation or union can do, so where does this talk of “wealthy contributors can literally buy politicians and elections” come from?
Right before the 2008 primary presidential elections, Citizens United, a conservative non-profit organization, funded a film titled “Hillary Clinton: The Movie” in clear opposition to then Presidential-candidate Hillary Clinton, fear mongering about the impending doom she would bring to the country if elected. They intended to advertise this movie within 30 days of the primary, therefore violating the second main provision in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. This prompted the FEC to intervene in their plans to advertise the film. Citizens United challenged this ruling up to the Supreme Court, who, on January 21st 2010 ruled in a 5-4 decision in Citizens United’s favor. The majority maintained that this was an issue of free speech and that political speech is indispensable to a democracy. Justice Stevens, among others who voted against Citizens United, argued that corporations are not people and thus don’t require free speech protection while also arguing that there are legitimate reasons that the government may want to curb the spending on elections. This decision allowed groups to bypass the two provisions from the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act thus allowing anyone to advertise their political opinions anytime with any amount of money (but the hard cap on giving directly to politicians remains).
To some this ruling strikes outrage as it allows wealthy donors to pump all the money they want into political advertising at any point in the election cycle. Others, like the 2010 Supreme Court, argued that banning this advertisement is a violation of Freedom of Speech and that the government should not have the ability to tell you what speech you can express while also arguing that the definition of what a “political advertisement” is can get extremely blurry.
As a consequence of this decision, in addition to PACs, there are now Super PACs, which, as long as they remain independent of a candidate or party, have no time or money limit to how much they can spend on advertising, or how much anyone can donate to it.
Although there is growing debate over whether or not money even has a significant effect on politics, it is clear that FEC regulation changes over the past decade have crucially shifted the way political campaigns are funded. Post Citizens United, the US has seen a significant uptick in the presence of money contributed to politics, spawning many concerns among voters about the true integrity of American Democracy.