by Jay Mandle
“More Money, Less Transparency: A Decade under Citizen’s United,” is a terrifying report by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). It examines how the American political system is financed, and shows how, to an ever increasing extent, politics in this country is literally paid for by a handful of individuals.
The CRP reports that in the aftermath of Citizens’ United and other judicial decisions, “the balance of political power shifted from political parties to outside groups that can spend unlimited sums to bolster their preferred candidates.” By its count, ten individuals alone have spent $1.2 billion on federal elections since 2010. As a result, “even political candidates found themselves dwarfed by independent groups….” In a particularly dramatic example, the CRP cites the 2016 senatorial race in Pennsylvania. While the candidates themselves spent $53 million, the independent expenditures – “outside spending” – came to $127 million.
It is true that the number of individuals making small donations to candidates is at record levels. But the impact of those political contributions is dwarfed by the mega-spenders. Again according to the CRP, “…one check from a wealthy donor…could effectively neutralize the efforts of thousands, even millions of small donors.”
Big-donor contributions are remarkably large. During 2018, the 10 largest donors, and in some case their spouses, made donations of $447 million. Of that, 97 percent went to outside spending groups. Both liberal and conservative Super PACs (organizations that undertake only independent expenditures) are the beneficiaries of this flood of money. But no one matches the role played by Sheldon Adelson and Miriam Adelson. During the 2018 election cycle alone, these two individuals contributed $124 million, all provided to conservative organizations. In the 2020 election cycle, the Adelson’s are expected to contribute as much as $200 million to Donald Trump’s re-election effort.
Obviously, donations of this magnitude provide the donors with dominant political leverage. It is hard for a politician not to snap to attention when funds of this size are made available to candidates who adopt the appropriate political line.
The problem here, however, is deeper than the Citizens’ United decision. When that case was decided in 2010 by the Supreme Court, the assumption was that it would unleash a flood of political contributions financed by the corporate treasuries of big businesses. That has turned out not to be the case. Instead, it is spending by individual billionaires– the Adelson’s for example – that has dramatically increased. As a result, the problem of politically powerful mega-donors would remain even if the ban on corporate spending were re-imposed.
But even more importantly, reversing the consequences of Citizens’ United in an effort to curb the financial power of the super-rich would encounter an insurmountable free speech barrier. To limit the rich’s ability to use their wealth to advance their political ideas would violate the first amendment to the United States Constitution that explicitly states, “Congress shall make no laws…abridging freedom of speech.”
The concern in this regard stems not simply from that Constitutional prohibition. It also is because free speech restrictions are in themselves undesirable. Historically such restrictions have always been used by the more powerful to curb the speech of the less powerful.
Nevertheless, it is imperative to construct a mechanism to limit the extent to which the rich can use their wealth to exercise disproportionate political power. Small donor contributions, as we have seen, cannot achieve that objective. Rather, what is required is the creation of a source of countervailing power – power strong enough to enable people, other than the rich, to influence the content of the political process.
To erect such a source of power, politics will have to be reconceptualized to be treated as a public good. Politics provides services to everyone in society, as do other public goods such as roads, police protection, and water and sanitation facilities. But of these, only our politics is paid for privately, rather than by public funding. Because of that, politics is undersupplied. Viewpoints that are not supported by the rich are simply not heard, and office seekers who disagree with big donors are deprived of a fair chance of electoral success.
Of course, public campaign financing that could offset the power of private rich donors will be expensive. It will not be necessary, however, to match private donor contributions dollar for dollar. What is needed is enough funding for publicly financed candidates to mount credible alternative campaigns. But even if it were necessary to match the $1.1 billion of privately funded outside spending that the rich provided in 2016, doing so is well within the capacity of the federal government. After all, the budget that Donald Trump recently submitted to Congress called for spending 400 times that amount – $4.8 trillion.
This country has already paid a heavy price for the dysfunction resulting from the private funding of election campaigns. The tilt in policy-making toward the interests of the rich is widely acknowledged, and damages the interests of everyone but the wealthy. Reversing that political bias requires a robust system of public campaign funding.