In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, Common Cause was kind enough to release a summary of the apocalyptic-level events that will happen if Citizens United is victorious and the restrictions on corporation and union political expenditures are ruled unconstitutional.
For starters, corporations and unions will “unleash a flood of money into the political system and further diminish the public’s voice,” leading to greater public distrust of the government, and politicians so corrupt that it will be “hard how imagine how America can achieve real progress and tackle critical challenges.”
The bottom line for Common Cause, of course, is that before this decision is handed down and we know the real life implications of that, we should avoid debate about the topic altogether and simply pass the Fair Elections Now Act to dish out taxpayer dollars to politicians. Apparently, spending unknown amounts of taxpayer money beats corporations and unions being able to spend their own money on independent expenditures for federal candidates.
Not only is the logic flawed, but the few facts and numbers they incorporate into this argument are especially unconvincing. The report occasionally yields that “precisely how much money [would be spent by corporations] is hard to say,” but then goes on to pose a number of hypothetical situations in which corporations could spend extremely high amounts of money and “outspend all Congressional candidates combined,” and “target a discrete number of competitive races in order to give a majority in Congress to a particular party or ensure outcomes on critical legislation.” Though influencing election outcomes and policy is arguably the objective of any individual or group involved in a campaign, Common Cause seems to think that simply because corporations and unions could spend larger sums of money, their participation is particularly dangerous.
In arguing that the potential for high spending is enough reason to continue to restrict corporate and union political participation, the authors note that “on average, the biggest Fortune 500 companies, which are also among the biggest political donors, spent less than one percent of their profits on lobbying and campaign contributions during the last election cycle.” They say this to underscore the argument that if Citizens United wins, the danger would be in the resources corporations and unions could potentially bring to bear.
But given that the money spent on lobbying is already unrestricted and is such a small percentage of corporate profits, it’s more reasonable to assume that if political spending were also unlimited, corporations and unions would face similar, if not identical, internal constraints on independent expenditures as they currently do on lobbying. It’s certaintly a less sensational argument than assuming that, given the chance, corporations will forgo all corporate and shareholder profits and spend endless amounts of money on targeted and sinister campaign ads, but it’s a much more reasonable one.
Common Cause then offers a case study, explaining that after contribution limits were adopted in California, independent expenditures soared. No longer able to contribute directly to campaigns, many corporations, unions, and individuals spent as independent expenditures what they could not directly contribute under the new limits. To illustrate what a danger this is, the authors share the anecdote of the company which produces Turbo Tax spending significant amounts of money to defeat a candidate who endorsed the creation of a free on-line tax preparation program for the state. On Election Day, the candidate who endorsed the free on-line program won, but the independent expenditure “helped fill the gap in fundraising between the two candidates.” While it is unclear why this is a convincing argument against the dangers of independent expenditures, it does helpfully highlight an often overlooked fact in campaign finance debate — the candidate who has more money does not always win, and candidates who are aided via independent expenditures does not always win either.
What the California anecdote also brings up is that if contribution limits were eliminated, the desire of corporations, unions, or any group to spend independently would be severely diminished because they could simply contribute directly to the campaign, which is significantly less time, effort and energy on their part. The dangers that Common Cause believes are caused by independent expenditures would then be eliminated, but for some reason they go out of their way to warn that “Congress must avoid the temptation to make matters worse by giving in to temptation and raising contribution limits,” because that would be “the worst of all policy options.” I couldn’t disagree more, but then again, I believe that a plethora of voices is not a danger to our democracy.
When the authors state that a ruling in favor of Citizens United “would come as no surprise for the Roberts Court, as the conservative majority has moved steadily toward deregulation of campaigns over the past two years,” they use it in an effort to increase support for taxpayer financed campaigns for Congressional elections. But it reads more as a last ditch effort to fight the tide of deregulation happening not only at the federal level but in many states as well. Several states with long standing public financing programs are taking a harder look at both the constitutional aspects of their programs, and evaluating whether they’re even an effective way to spend taxpayer money, as these programs regularly fail to meet their stated goals.
Common Cause thus fails on two counts: first by attempting to whip up hysteria based on the nonsensical idea that corporations are going to empty their treasuries in an attempt to communicate with voters (and that shareholders will passively stand by and allow this!), and second by trying to push the failed idea of taxpayer funded political campaigns as the “solution” to a Supreme Court decision sweeping away Austin and parts of the McCain-Feingold legislation despite the fact that there’s no obvious connection between independent expenditures by corporations and candidates relying on the private, voluntary contributions of $2,400 or less from citizens who support them.
Other than that, I suppose the summary from Common Cause is fairly good.
