America Must Get Big Money Out of Politics

At the core of every modern democratic republic rests the idea that the government of any nation exists for the protection and preservation of its people and their interests. More to the point, government exists as an extension of our collective will. The citizens of America do not exist to serve a monarch as loyal subjects, for example, nor are we content to live under the whims of an authoritarian dictator. Instead, the US government and its authority is derived from the collective consent of the governed, the American People. While this idea remains a powerful concept and a goal we should continue to strive towards, the reality of the modern United States does not fully match this high-minded rhetoric. Much of the reason for the current disconnect between Americans and their government is due to the prevailing and growing influence of so-called 'big money' on our political system. Until we reverse the disturbing trend of the wealthy and connected funding the majority of our political campaigns, we'll continue to struggle with rampant political corruption and a persistent decline in the living standards of the working and middle classes of our nation.

The American political system is frighteningly close to broken, and it's been breaking for a while. While the US has had holes in its campaign contribution system and suffered from a lack of transparency in political-funding disclosure for years, over the last decade or so the Supreme Court has hollowed out what few true protections were in place to ensure the wealthy didn't have unfettered access to our electoral system. In 2010, the now-infamous Citizens United ruling stated corporations and unions cannot be barred from donating to political campaigns due to freedom of speech protections. Then, in their 2014 McCutcheon decision, they ruled limitations on campaign spending in any way is an infringement on First Amendment freedom of speech protections. Despite the obvious counters from the majority of Americans stating corporations and unions are not people but collections of people, and the seemingly-obvious fact that spending money does not constitute 'speech' and thus is not provided such protections, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the wealthy and the powerful. These and other less-impactful rulings have delivering the US into an era of unprecedented political spending and an unequaled injection of corruption into institutions which are intended to represent the will of the voters.

While both the Republican and Democratic parties have collectively received huge increases in campaign donations over the last several election cycles, most of that money has been spent to ensure as little changes for large business interests as possible. In fact, recent election cycles have resulted in large numbers of politicians who seem to only exist for the purposes of encouraging legislation which enhances the power of wealthy people and industries while discouraging anything which would disproportionately benefit the American people at large. Even the Affordable Care Act of 2010 passed under the Obama administration was an exercise in using financial subsidies and healthcare-plan requirements for Americans to satiate the profit-hungry healthcare and insurance industries, while the federal government picked up the tab for expanding Medicaid throughout the nation (within states which accepted the expansion). Instead of giving Americans a single-payer healthcare system or otherwise guaranteeing healthcare for all and properly regulating business, the government could only get healthcare reform passed by putting the greatest burden of the change on the American people while guaranteeing increased profits for large industries.

This Neoliberal mindset of profit-at-all-cost has infected every level of American politics and society. The 2017 tax reform bill passed during the early Trump administration was a painfully blatant giveaway to the wealthy and large business across a variety of industries, with only minor, temporary reductions put into place for some of the middle and working classes. This structure of giving middle-America little-to-nothing and placing the greater burden of change on us while granting large, wealthy industries one request after another on the taxpayer's dime has become the clarion call of modern America. As of now, the government of the United States functions more as a patron of the collective business interests of corporate America than as the protector of liberties and interests of the wider American People. This reality is negatively impacting nearly everything in our everyday lives: the cost of pharmaceuticals, the cost of housing, the lack of public transportation in much of the nation, the stalled-to-slow movement on climate change, increased costs of higher education, the expansion of charter schools at the expense of public education, the increased cost of food and gasoline, the high rate of inflation against a stagnate rise in working wages and more are all direct results of our modern Neoliberal era. If we want the collective standard of living within our nation to rise and keep up with the constant changes thrown at us, we must reverse these trends and hold our government accountable to the will of the People once again.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren's website so eloquently puts the situation: "Money slithers through every part of our political system, corrupting democracy and taking power away from the people. Big companies and billionaires spend millions to push Congress to adopt or block legislation. If they fail, they turn to lobbying federal agencies that are issuing regulations. And if they fail yet again, they run to judges in the courts to block those regulations from taking effect. But before all of that - before the legislative process even starts - lobbyists and billionaires try to buy off politicians during elections."

Such is the state of modern America. It's reasonable to ask, in the face of such overwhelming greed and money, what can we do? Well, power ultimately still rests with the American People, we just need to be reminded of our power and organize ourselves properly to exert it. Due to the Supreme Court's corrupt rulings, however, mere legislation passed through Congress won't be enough to settle this issue. We need a constitutional amendment which clearly and unequivocally states corporations, unions and other collectives of people are not individual people and thus are not eligible to spend money on political activities. Additionally, there should be a definitive cap on all political spending which can be adjusted over time to account for inflation and the public's spending power (such as no more than $5,000 donated in total per person in each election cycle). Finally, voting protections should be included in this amendment, from guaranteeing the right to vote for all to protecting automatic voter registration and access to voting assistance for the elderly and disabled.

On a legislative level, ranked-choice voting, open primaries, compulsory voting tax credits and protected mail-in and early voting should all still be implemented or strengthened throughout the nation. Also, since political campaigns would now be strictly within the domain of private citizens with donation caps, we should then implement a matched-donation tax credit up to a certain amount (such as $250, which can be updated over time) to incentivize as many citizens as possible to participate in the electoral process with their wallets and votes. These changes would put the motivation for politicians and thus political power squarely back in the hands of the American People, and would allow us to truly tackle our many problems as a nation much more honestly and effectively than we do now. While a daunting task, if we can fix our electoral-finance process and guarantee safe and secure voting rights to all Americans, we will have taken the largest single step in ensuring a more transparent and accountable, brighter future for ourselves and upcoming generations. As with everything else, however, it's up to us to educate ourselves and others, get involved, vote and volunteer and make this change happen. We can do it, and we know how, so let's get to it.


References:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States#Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

2) https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/campaign-finance-reform

3) https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/reform-money-politics

4) https://www.speaker.gov/issues/democracy-campaign-finance-reform-voting-rights

5) https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/campaign-finance-reform

6) https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/money-influence/campaign-finance/

7) https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/recommendation-1-5

8) https://www.bennet.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/9/bennet-colleagues-introduce-constitutional-amendment-to-overturn-citizens-united

9) https://time.com/5651417/constitutional-amendment-campaign-finance/

10) https://wolf-pac.com/

Location: California, USA

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