Let’s
start with looking at campaign finance reform and the money it takes to get
things done.
The
problem for many of us is scale. Two teachers making $45 thousand per year won’t
earn six figures even with their dual income. For this couple, $200,000 is a
lot of money. When governments deal in millions, billions, and trillions, it
can seem incomprehensible to process. Running the government of the third
largest country on earth costs vast amounts of money. For example, the U.S.
spends about $700 billion on its military – the most of any country. China,
which has five times our population, spends $120 billion, making it the second
in the world. The U.S. spends $830 billion on Medicare and Medicaid. That
number, in turn, is about half of California’s GDP; if California were a
country would be the world’s ninth largest economy. The national debt,
meanwhile, is a rising $15 trillion. Given these enormous amounts of money, should
we, then, be concerned with a (comparatively) “measly” $5.3 billion dollar
election?
A
startling statistic: over 90% of recent House and Senate elections since the
1990s have gone to the candidate who spent the most money. Regardless of the relative amounts being spent on these elections,
money in these elections is clearly playing the most important role in
determining who wins elections. If you think a free market approach is an
acceptable way of running Congress you still have to consider the consequences
of constantly fundraising. Individuals can give up to $2,500 to a candidate. If
our Representative requires $10,000 a week to get reelected, which is the
national average today, then he needs at least four major personal
contributions secured every week. A Congressman’s job is basically paid on
commission. Instead of doing his job on the House or Senate floor he’s
constantly trying to raise money. The consequence of the current system
basically is designed to keep the Representatives from doing their job –
legislating and debating the important and difficult questions facing the
country.
Turning
on the news, news commentary, and comedy news shows on the TV brings a familiar
refrain: the government is too bloated, it isn’t nimble enough to effectively
handle problems, and the bureaucracy is out of control. While this may be the
case in other branches, or overall, it isn’t true of the House:
constitutionally the proportion originally was one Representative for every
30,000 people. If this proportion held true today there would be 10,387
Representatives. An act in 1929 capped the size of the House at 435, with a
little over 200,000 people per Representative at the time. Now each Rep stands for an average of 700,000
people. Our legislative body comes down to 535 people in the Congress: .0001%
of our population. Those who have the money to give to these very few hold
tremendous sway and influence over an individual who constantly needs to raise
money. Congress isn’t a bureaucracy so much as it is a bottleneck.
Nor
does it reflect American opinions. The majority of Americans, across 19 polls,
consistently prefer taxing the rich. A majority of Americans polled support gay
marriage. Exactly half of the country supports legalizing marijuana, an
all-time high. A majority of Americans favor government support for Planned
Parenthood. If Congress were really reflective of America then Washington would
reflect American attitudes and opinions – yet they don’t reflect this at all,
and certainly aren’t passing legislation echoing our sentiments. In keeping
with this trend it’s not surprising that a majority of citizens, regardless of
affiliation, support campaign finance reform.
One
of the most promising bills, the Fair Elections Now Act, was proposed in 2011
by a bipartisan group of Representatives. Limiting contributions to $100, the
candidate would first have to get 1,500 contributions from their state to show
support. After they’d proven their supported base they’d be given a fixed sum
of about one million dollars, 40% to spend on the primaries and 60% on the main
election. It would cost about $850 million to implement nationally – a far cry
from the billions we currently waste on our elections.
Congressional
money, of course, can come in forms more opaque. Consider in 2003 when
Republicans attempted to bribe party members for their votes on a Medicare bill
on November 23. So, too, are to be considered the periodic ethics scandals
regarding finances on both sides.
So
too have earmarks increased in recent years. In the mid-1990s an already
troubling $10 billion was set aside for some 1,430 projects. Within a decade
the number of such project passed by Congress had increased to 10,656, totaling
$22.9 billion[1].
The figures are still in the $20 billion a year ballpark in recent years. By
means of comparison $20 billion dollars is the total amount BP spent to clean
up the Gulf Coast Spill, one of the worst and costliest environmental disasters
in history. Or four times the entire United Nation’s annual budget.
The
2004 election is a good example of how wealthy candidates can rely on their
existing assets to squeeze out any competition. Rodney A. Smith explains the
situation in Money, Power & Politics:
“In
December 2003, during the early stages of the 2004 presidential primary
campaign, Senator John Kerry was mired in a crowded field with the support of
only 9% of Democrats nationally. He was running a distant third in Iowa and was
over 30 percentage points behind in New Hampshire, his cash reserves were
running low, and his campaign was $3.8 million in debt…
“Caught
in this do-or-die situation, Kerry quietly set up a $6.4 million dollar
personal line of credit for his campaign, using his home in Boston as
collateral. Immediately thereafter the campaign borrowed $2.8 million dollars
in December 2003 and $3.5 million in January 2004, for a total of $6.3 million
just prior to the Iowa caucuses. This quick injection of cash gave Kerry the
financial resources he needed to win a come-from-behind victory…
“While
neither Senator Kerry nor campaign did anything illegal or unethical in setting
up a bank loan, this large infusion of cash at just the right moment vividly
demonstrates the importance of money in politics, particularly to a campaign
that’s struggling.” [2]
Smith,
who served as the National Finance Director of the Republican National
Committee, concludes that it would have taken a competitor, making phone calls
under the best possible circumstances, working ten hour days, until mid-May to
have raised the same amount[3].
The
inability to defeat incumbents is also getting worse. Smith cites that the
average length of a Congressional term, historically, has been 4 years, but as
of 2000 it had swelled in the House to 14, and the Senate 18 years of service.
Since the Campaign Finance Reform bill in 1974, the number of no-contest House
elections has increased 15%, just as the number of semi- and not-competitive
races have also each increased by 5%. These numbers are identical for the
Senate.[4]
Arguably,
then, campaign finance reform is the single most important problem to fix in
the United States. Until the legislative branch reflects the people’s will we cannot
claim to have a real democracy. I cannot over-emphasize the most important statistic in this whole problem: whoever has the most money almost certainly wins the election. Whoever the deep pockets want to win, therefore, will win. But the problem does not exist in a vacuum – it
is intimately connected to the role of lobbyists. This, almost certainly most
powerful role in Washington will be examined in the next section.
1 comment:
I like the citations.
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