889 Million Reasons to Change U.S. Campaign Finance Laws
The libertarian/conservative Koch Brothers just announced that they will spend $889 million of their own money on the 2016 elections (presumably presidential and other races). On the liberal side of the spectrum, there are politically active folks (e.g. Tom Steyer and George Soros) who are equally as wealthy and contribute very large sums of money to campaigns. Political independent Mike Bloomberg also comes to mind as another mega campaign donor.
Let's say that one or two of these mega donors contribute to a bunch of US Senate races and help to get 10 senators elected/re-elected (say, by contributing $100-200 million towards the various SUPER PACs supporting those 10 senators). This would be perfectly legal under current US campaign finance laws. (Full disclosure: Because mega sums of campaign money is the mother's milk for each and every Republican or Democratic political campaign in the US under current law, I too engage in fundraising activities, but I am not comfortable with our campaign finance system, and I think it needs to be reformed.)
Once the aforementioned 10 senators get elected, does anyone seriously believe that those senators would be able to refuse a request by any liberal or conservative mega-financier of their campaigns to support them (i.e vote a particular way) on a specific issue? Won't it be infinitely easier for a mega campaign donor, as opposed to an average voter, to get access to these senators to discuss his/her issues?
Some may argue that ultimately, voters will decide it they like the way their senator voted on any issue, and if they didn't like it, they can vote against him/her after 6 years. But is anyone entirely comfortable with the obvious influence money has in our elections? Is this really how a democracy's electoral processes should function?
With this amount of money in politics comes the appearance and perception of impropriety, even if nothing unethical or illegal actually occurred. And if the public collectively perceives (regardless of whether the perception is accurate) our politics as corrupt, that will continue to erode the trust that voters have in our political system and our government. And apathy - even antipathy - among voters is a very unhealthy outcome for a democracy. Witness the paltry 36% voter turnout in the recent midterm elections.
Electoral processes and the nation's governance should be like Caesar's wife - even the appearance of impropriety should be frowned upon. And our campaign finance laws aren't helping.
Executive Director, Indiaspora
10 年Mea culpa: The Koch Brothers' network (not just themselves) is getting together to pool in the money, which the brothers will then spend at their own discretion, hiring an army of staff/advisors to help them in their political cash distribution. Apologies for this error in my original post. But my basic point still remains: A few hundred gazillionaires have the ability to get together and dump almost a billion dollars into the campaigns they choose. Let's say each of them gives $10 million - that's still more than enough money to command the attention of any candidate for high office, and perhaps get them to toe your line a little bit on certain issues. And like I said before, when these sums of money are involved, no one is going to be able to convince a cynical public (i.e. the average voter out there) that there is no corruption associated with it, even if there isn't any.