Campaign Finance: A Big Problem for America

In America, we currently have a very unnecessary war being waged between two seemingly opposite areas of political ideologies: the “left” and the “right”. This war has been tearing the American people apart from each other, and creating two very extreme and opposite sides. In order for our country to get back on its feet and be able to help the American people do the same, these two factions need to cease fire as soon as possible and join forces to combat a big problem facing us.

While the political left, the centrists, and the political right continue to fight one another over issues such as gay marriage, abortion rights, gun rights, racial equality, and fighting a terrorist faction (that we helped indirectly create anyways), those that wield an ever-growing amount of political and economic power are continuing to pump millions of dollars into super-PACs and lobbying congress to get what they want. While all of the issues that most people argue about are deeply important issues that need to be addressed, there is one single issue that needs to be tackled before we can continue to deal with a majority of these other issues. That is: fixing our very broken campaign finance system.

Right now, if you’re more conservative leaning, you may be thinking to yourself: “Hey, what this guy is talking about is starting to sound a lot like what Bernie Sanders is saying, and he’s a socialist; I like free-markets!” Or, if you’re more progressive leaning, you might be thinking: “Give up on progressive values like gun reform, LGBT and racial equality, and women’s rights. That’s a no-go for me.” If you thought something similar to these two thoughts, I implore you to continue reading this. I’m very glad that you feel so strongly about political issues and the world we live in, I do too. It’s very important to our democracy that we get involved in the problems that face us, become informed about these issues, and try to push what we think to be right.

However, thinking that way cannot and will not lead to the solution that fixes our broken campaign finance system that allow the “1% to bribe our congress and cheat the 99%”. Using more simple terms, fixing our broken campaign finance system is just “getting money out of politics”. Money in politics threatens the one thing I’m sure we can all agree is a good thing: our democratic republic, where us as the people are supposed to use our democracy to elect officials to do what we want them to do, and not those who have infinite sums of money to give our politicians to do what they want. Whether or not you like socialism or capitalism, or your opinions on abortion and what to do about radical terrorist groups, you won’t be able to express them through your vote if we continue to allow the super rich to gain more political power.

A cycle has been stirring for quite a while now, involving those who have an excess of money, such as millionaires, billionaires, large corporations, and large banks to be able to legally “bribe” those in congress to change the rules of the game for their benefit. They do this by using this broken campaign finance system to donate large sums of money directly to candidates, and give donations to PACs, and elusive super-PACs, which in turn use the money to get candidates elected by running countless advertisements for a candidate, and a lot of the time negative ones against a candidate’s opponents.

Now, a PAC is a political action committee. It is an independent organization that collects money from donors for the use of promoting a candidate or an issue. Being independent means they aren’t allowed to closely associate with a candidate, but even if they aren’t “allowed” to closely associate with a candidate, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, especially when the one’s running the PACs and super-PACs end up being close friends or family members. A super-PAC is the same thing, but allows donors to donate unlimited amounts of money and remain undisclosed to anyone outside the super-PAC. This means that anyone or any corporation can give any amount of money to a super-PAC can do pretty much anything it wants to with it, except for giving it to the candidate directly without disclosing that information. There is a really tricky way that you can cut a check without anyone knowing about it by using some loopholes in the law, though, and Stephen Colbert and an former chairman of the FEC does a great job at explaining how to do it.

Now, what caused this broken campaign financial system is not just one thing in particular. However, one of the biggest things in recent years, which is what allows super-PACs to exist, was the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision in 2010. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5–4 vote that “…independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” This ruling means that corporations or individuals cannot be barred from spending money for political reasons, as that is guaranteed by the First Amendment, and spending money counts as“speech”. This allows any individual for any or corporation to spend as much money as they please donating to these super-PACs. This decision is one of the worst Supreme Court cases in recent history. It easily creates a way for the wealthy to more or less bribe politicians to do their bidding.

Not only is it super-PACs that do lots of fundraising, individual campaign contributions themselves raise even more money, and this money goes directly to the candidates. Even though individual contributions have a limit of $2,700 each election cycle, it still generates hundreds of millions of dollars for candidates. Just because a large majority of these contributions come from regular people who just want to donate money to help a candidate they like, it creates a culture around campaign finance where it’s who ever can get more money that has the better chance of getting elected, because they can put more ads on TV, papers, magazines, etc. Coupled with the PAC and super-PAC money, it becomes a huge problem. It becomes who has more money and can get more people to know who they are than who has the better ideas.

One thing we need desperately to do is to reverse the Citizens United case decision, and create some form of completely public campaign finance system. One where every candidate gets the same amount of money to create ads and get their names and ideas out there, one that is not funded by ridiculously wealthy people and corporations, one that doesn’t allow for the pouring of hundreds of millions of dollars from super-PACs and even individual contributions, one that is funded by taxes and is doled out fairly and equally to any candidate running in each election cycle(meaning for their party’s primary and again for the general election).

One way of doing this is through creating a Constitutional Amendment that would create free and fair elections. This is something that WOLFPAC is trying to do, they are trying to get a serious constitutional amendment passed that would actually restore the free and fair elections, and put it into the constitution, so that it can’t be tampered with again very easily. Another way would be to just create legislation in congress to do this. However, creating a new amendment would create a more solid, albeit harder, way to do it.

All of these other issues, while they are important, are a distraction from the threat to our democratic republic, the only thing that allows us to be able to act on these other issues we hold so dearly. If we continue to fight each other and allow the wealthy and the biggest corporations to control our congress, it won’t matter what we think about these other issues, as we won’t be able to do anything about them anyways. So please, lay down your swords, and stop fighting the other side of the isle so we can all come together to save our democratic republic. If there were anything for conservatives, progressives, and centrists alike to come together on and create the unstoppable force of the American people in full, it’s the one thing that makes America great: our democracy.

A “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. This was stated in the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 , and it will continue to be true, but only if we come together as the people to keep it that way.