Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of the disastrous Citizens United decision, the most consequential – and destructive – campaign finance decision by the Supreme Court in nearly half a century. The legacy of Citizens United has been even more damaging than almost anyone understood when the ruling came down.
The decision helped return the most dangerous and corrupting money to our elections. It provided the wealthiest Americans with a predominant role in campaign financing by giving birth to super PACs permitted to collect multimillion-dollar checks. It allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in large, secret contributions to be spent to influence federal elections through the use of undisclosed “dark money” given to nonprofits.
In short, the destructive impact of Citizens United on our political system has made the Watergate campaign finance scandals, the worst of the last century, look like child’s play.
The history of money in American politics is a cyclical story of scandal and reform. Scandals occur. Reforms are enacted. They work for some period of time. When they are not enforced or updated to address changed circumstances, they eventually break down. New scandals occur. New reforms follow. And the cycle repeats.
The Watergate scandals of the early 1970s were followed by the landmark Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974. The new law included three fundamental ideas: full disclosure to eliminate secret money in elections, contribution limits to prevent corrupting political donations and public financing to provide a new way to finance presidential campaigns.
These reforms worked well for more than two decades. But the presidential public financing system eventually broke down when the costs of presidential campaigns dramatically increased and Congress failed to modernize the system.
The contribution limits also broke down as federal officeholders and candidates invented a new mechanism, called “soft money,” to raise contributions for the political parties. This money supposedly could not be spent to influence federal elections. But the Federal Election Commission failed to enforce the law, and the parties spent hundreds of millions of dollars of unlimited soft money contributions to support their federal candidates.
The soft money scandal was shut down in 2002 by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act, enacted with strong bipartisan support.
Then came Citizens United, decided by a 5-to-4 court.
The result was that the old corruption of soft money was replaced by the new corruption of super PACs. In the past four elections, super PACs raised nearly $5 billion in unlimited contributions to spend in federal elections. The top 10 individual donors alone contributed $1 billion to super PACs during this period, an average of $100 million per donor. Nonprofit groups spent more than $800 million in “dark money” to influence federal elections.
As long as Citizens United stands, political money corruption will continue in Washington unless federal candidates are given a new way to finance their campaigns that frees them from the iron grip of influence-seeking funders. The court’s rulings, and its newly enhanced conservative majority, present serious hurdles to addressing many of the ills of our current campaign financing system. But there are ways to mitigate the damage and dramatically improve the flaws of the current system.
Last March, with the support of a coalition of more than 145 organizations, the House passed HR 1, an unprecedented package of democracy reforms. The reforms included a new, alternative financing system: a small-donor, public-matching funds system for presidential and congressional candidates. A companion measure to HR 1 is sponsored by 47 senators.
This new system would empower ordinary Americans to counter political influence money by matching their contributions up to $200 with public funds at a 6-to-1 ratio. This system would allow candidates to run for federal office without being dependent on influence-seeking funders, whose impact would be greatly reduced. The costs of the new system would be borne not by taxpayers, but by corporate lawbreakers paying a small surcharge on the penalties and fines they pay to the government for violations of law.
Enactment of this system will by no means address all of our campaign finance problems. But the system would provide candidates with the ability to run for federal office without having to go hat in hand to big-money funders seeking influence over government policies in return for their money.
Some people believe this is an impossible battle to win. But as Nelson Mandela taught us, “it always seems impossible until it is done.” I and other supporters of reform will continue the fight for HR 1 until that battle is won and a new round of fundamental campaign finance reforms takes effect.
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