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What About Campaign Finance Reform? Campaign finance regulation is of a great concern nowadays. The fundamental question is whether it has improved the political system, or whether it has instead aggravated the perceived problems it intended to solve. The available empirical evidence indicates aggravation rather than amelioration (Smith (a) 1049).
First, limitations on the size of campaign contributions have hardly affected total expenditures on campaigns. They have spawned higher levels of independent campaign expenditures that have largely offset any declines in candidates' own expenditures. Indeed, independent expenditures did not play a role in any meaningful forum prior to the rules first promulgated in 1974. For most of our history, Americans have enjoyed a relatively unregulated system of campaign finance.
These freedoms, like many others, began to erode in the 1960 s and early 1970 s as powerful groups pushed restrictions on the right to spend money on political advocacy (Hale 34). In 1974, Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), which set tight limits on overall campaign spending, imposed ceilings on contributions, continued existing prohibitions on contributions from corporations and labor unions in federal elections, and established government funding of presidential campaigns. The law was immediately challenged as a violation of the rights of Americans (Lott (a) 41). The Supreme Court's decision in Buckley v.
Valeo in 1976 partially struck down FECA. The majority set forth the tight connection between freedom of speech and money: "Virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money. The distribution of the humblest handbill or leaflet entails printing, paper, and circulation costs. Speeches and rallies generally necessitate hiring a hall and publicizing the event. The electorate's increasing dependence on television, radio, and other mass media for news and information has made these expensive modes of communication indispensable instruments of effective political speech" (cited in Samples 17) Limits on political spending thus limit political speech "by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. " Any limits on political spending, the Court concluded, violated the First Amendment (Lott (b) 9).
The tight link between money and speech would appear to apply to all political spending, including campaign outlays and contributions. After all, if I give money to a candidate, I'm expressing a position on politics and policy. However, the Buckley decision did not give campaign contributions the same First Amendment protections it afforded other spending on politics. Contributions could be limited, the justices said, to advance the state's compelling interest in preventing "corruption or the appearance of corruption" (Mcginnis 25). Hard money comprises campaign contributions regulated by the FECA.
Soft money has not been regulated by federal law until now. In the late 1970 s, Congress and the Federal Election Commission exempted soft money contributions to the political parties, which they could spend on voter registration, some campaign materials, and voter turnout programs. Far from a nefarious loophole in election law, soft money began life as an attempt to strengthen the parties and raise voter turnout (Smith (b) 127). Debates about soft money necessarily concern large sums that are often labeled "obscene" by those seeking new regulations. The total soft money raised in the 2000 election -- $ 490 million -- is a large sum in anyone's book.
Yet absolute numbers easily mislead. Campaign spending in general, and soft money specifically, pale beside the $ 2. 5 trillion spent by federal, state, and local governments annually. The soft money total for 2000 is less than $ 3 per eligible voter in the United States. Moreover, soft money accounts for only 15 percent of all money spent on campaigns (134). Advocates of new campaign finance regulations might argue that their real concern is not the numbers but how soft money affects politics and policy. They might point to the numerous scandals and suggestions of impropriety that haunted President Clinton and Vice President Gore from 1995 onward.
Supporters of Shays-Meehan believe soft money corrupts American politics. Are they right? Elizabeth Drew's book, "Corruption in American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why" also helps us in some way to examine this question properly. To her, the ex-reporter for The New Yorker, the primary problem is the campaign finance system. She describes the ways the money is obtained (some of it boundaries on extortion), why lobbyists go on to give (they fear for losing access when they really need it), and some of the brand-new methods lawmakers create and apply to raise huge amounts of cash. Her book is a revelatory view of how campaign finance has corrupted American politics in general.
What is corruption? First, there is direct bribery. Public officials are certainly corrupt when they provide political favors in exchange for bribes. This kind of corruption of American national politics is already illegal and rare - judging by the relatively few indictments and convictions of members of Congress. Some say legislators are corrupt if they cast their votes in Congress to advance the interests of their contributors.
Such indirect bribery is difficult to prove. After all, most contributors give to candidates whose policy views they share. Contributors don't corrupt a legislator who would have voted the same on an issue in the absence of the contribution. In any case, political scientists have found that campaign contributions have little effect on legislative votes (Corrado 25). The idea of indirect bribery is based on the false premise that the need for campaign funds is the most important influence on legislators. In contrast, political scientists assume officeholders give primacy to being reelected.
Being reelected requires many votes, not the greatest success in fund-raising. If corruption is defined as direct or indirect bribery, the case for regulating core First Amendment activities such as campaign contributions seems weak. Even advocates of new regulations do not contend that much direct bribery exists. We also have little hard evidence that indirect bribery is a big problem. Why so much talk about corruption and campaign finance? Advocates of campaign finance regulations equate corruption with what they see as the "undue influence" of contributors.
They argue that large contributions "distort" the legislative process and prevent representatives from advancing the true interest of the American people. Absent money, the advocates argue, members of Congress would help "the people, not the powerful. " More often than not, this means they believe Congress would enact a left-wing agenda if private campaign contributions were restricted or banned (Corrado 16). All political participation, including campaign contributions, tries to affect policy choices. The Constitution does not contain a matrix enabling us to distinguish "proper" and "improper" influence. It does forbid restricting fundamental freedoms to achieve equality of influence. As the Supreme Court noted in Buckley v.
Valeo: "The concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our community in view of increasing the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment. " Moreover, the advocates are incorrect that "big money" prevents Congress from passing leftist legislation. Scholars have found that Americans, including those of modest means, believe deeply in the American dream of individual freedom, responsibility, and social mobility. Congress does not enact the Left's agenda because Americans reject it, not because of campaign contributions (Campaign Finance Reform Conspiracy 5). The history of campaign finance regulation is filled with unintended consequences. Congress enacted contribution limits in the FECA to get average Americans involved in politics, but these limits reinforced the power of established groups and encouraged the candidacies of wealthy individuals. Trade unions fought hard to make sure political action committees (PACs) had a special status under federal election law only to discover that the PAC strategy worked better for their opponents than it did for them.
Low contribution limits aimed at freeing officials from special interests ended up forcing legislators to spend much of their time raising money. What are the likely consequences of McCain-Feingold- Cochran's ban on soft money? Will those consequences be good for America? Incumbent members of Congress are almost always reelected.
Challenging an incumbent is tough. Members of Congress supply themselves at public cost with significant resources to pursue reelection, including salary, travel, office, staff, and communication allowances that are estimated to be worth $ 1 million annually to House members and several times that for Senators. In particular, taxpayers now support unlimited trips by House members back to their districts (Smith 1057). In 1999, members of Congress had 11, 488 full-time staffers, many of whom focused on helping constituents with their problems, thereby generating support in the home district.
Members also possess the "franking privilege" which allows them to send mail to constituents free of charge. By the time an election rolls around, incumbents have much higher name recognition among voters than potential challengers. Such advantages of office are not governed or limited by the FECA (Lott 43). To overcome the incumbent's advantage, challengers must raise significant sums of money.
In 1996 and 1998, for example, challengers who defeated House incumbents raised on average well over $ 1 million; in the Senate, successful challengers raised many times that sum. Banning or limiting contributions of any kind makes it harder for challengers to be competitive. Prohibiting soft money particularly hurts challengers. Parties direct soft money toward close races, thus making elections more competitive. A recent scholarly analysis showed that PACs tend to donate to incumbents, while parties concentrate equally on vulnerable incumbents and credible challengers. The Shays-Meehan law bans the kind of money most useful to challengers and leaves unmolested the kind of money most useful to incumbents (Samples 20).
The law will hurt American politics in other ways. Political scientists Stephen Ansolabohere and James Snyder Jr. found that soft money supported numerous activities, including get-out-the-vote drives, broadcast advertising, and day-to-day campaign operations. Based on their analysis of how state and local parties use soft money, they argue that a soft money ban would force parties to cut direct campaign expenditures by 20 percent.
Given that it costs $ 15 -- 35 to get every new voter to the polls, Ansolabohere and Snyder believe banning soft money would reduce turnout by about 2 percent (Corrado 44). The ban on ads follows several unpleasant experiences of members of Congress. In 1996, for example, the AFL-CIO carried out a $ 35 million television advertising campaign that ran in dozens of congressional districts with vulnerable Republican incumbents. The ads attacked incumbents' voting records on such issues as Social Security, Medicare, and education.
In the election of 2000, labor was at it again. Rep. Clay Shaw, a Republican congressman from Florida who was a target, drew a revealing lesson from his experience: "After you " ve been a victim of soft money [ads], you realize the magnitude of the problem. I'm determined to address this problem when we come back.
It's really ripping at the fabric of our nation's political structure" (Smith (b) 52) Congress has now addressed Shaw's "problem. " Their solution is banning such ads or making them more difficult by requiring disclosure of the donors supporting the ads. The coming elections will be freer of ads criticizing incumbent members of Congress. But being criticized, even unfairly, goes with the territory of being an elected official. In a democracy, elected officials are not allowed to prohibit criticism. Most experts believe the Supreme Court will strike down the ad ban (Lott (b) 10). Last chapter of Elizabeth Drew's book, "Corruption in American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why" also ends in a question mark: "Reason for Hope?" Though, Miss Drew argues "against the idea now abroad in the land that Washington is irrelevant.
I point out many of the ways in which people make decisions here that change lives." She states that people are turned off [by] politicians, but the assertion that people don't care about campaign financial reform isn't true. Not when two significant presidential candidates are making it an issue" (217). In the end, campaign finance "reform" depends on a false and undemocratic premise. McCain, Feingold, Shays, and Meehan all believe that elections belong to the government, which has the right to decide who participates, and on what terms.
In the United States, however, elections belong to the people, who elect a government that should be their servant. Works Cited "Campaign Finance Reform Conspiracy. " The New American 18 Apr. 2005: 5. "Campaign Finance Reform Myths. " The Washington Times 16 Sept. 2003: A 16. Corrado, Anthony, et al. , eds. Campaign Finance Reform: A Sourcebook. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997. Drew, Elizabeth.
Corruption in American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why. Overlook TP, 2000. Hale, David (American Banker). "Howard Dean's Vermont Legacy: TIE's Co-executive Editor, Who Has Known the Democratic Presidential Candidate for Years, Offers the Inside Story. " The International Economy Fall 2003: 34. Lott, John Jr. (a) "A Short, Unhappy History of Campaign Finance Reform. " The American Enterprise Oct. -Nov. 2004: 41. Lott, John R. (b) "Empirical Evidence in the Debate on Campaign Finance Reform. " Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 24. 1 (2000): 9. Mcginnis, John O. "Against the Scribes: Campaign Finance Reform Revisited. " Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 24. 1 (2000): 25.
Samples, John. "Campaign Finance 'Reform'. " World and I May. Smith, Bradley A. (a) "Faulty Assumptions and Undemocratic Consequences of Campaign Finance Reform. " Yale Law Journal 105. 4 (1996): 1049 - 1091. Smith, Bradley A. (b) Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
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Research essay sample on What About Campaign Finance Reform
