Jonathan Rauch looks at the implications of the McCutcheon decision of the US Supreme Court this week:
The 5-4 ruling along the usual conservative-liberal lines, while not unexpected, has broad implications. Like it or not — and assuredly, progressives do not like it — the era of effective limits on contributions to federal politicians is drawing to a close. Want to write a million-dollar check to support a candidate? Chances are that now, or someday soon, you can.
For four decades, since the campaign finance reforms of the 1970s, limits on big-dollar, direct gifts to politicians have been the beating heart of the progressive paradigm. Before McCutcheon, donors could give only $2,600 to an individual candidate in any one election cycle — and they could only give an aggregate of $48,600 to all campaigns. (Here’s the whole list of contribution limits.) In McCutcheon, the court struck down the aggregate limit, reversing its own prior holding in the seminal 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo.
[…]
A calamity for the 1970s paradigm? Yes. A calamity for progressives? Maybe not. There is a way forward, a potential win for both freedom and political accountability, though it requires progressives to hold their nose and swallow hard: raise contribution limits. A lot. A whole lot. Like, allow contributions of up to $1 million for presidential campaigns and up to $200,000 and $50,000, respectively, for Senate and House campaigns. (In 2012, an average winning Senate campaign spent $10.4 million, and a winning House campaign spent $1.6 million, according to Vital Statistics on Congress.) At the same time, as part of the deal, close the wide gaps in today’s rules requiring the disclosure of donations.
Wait. Allow Senate candidates to hit up victims — sorry, donors — for $200,000 at a time? Legitimize contributions of a size that virtually guarantees special attention from office-holders? Why should progressives conceivably support that? Because the old means no longer serve the desired ends. As of now, the case for low contribution limits has all but evaporated — even if you believe, as I do, that the limits once made sense and that the Buckley court was correct in upholding them.
One of the reasons those of us north of the border are often shocked at US political spending is that Canadian election campaign limits are a tiny fraction of the US numbers. You could run a national political campaign and candidates in every riding (308 in the last election) for less than the cost of seven average US senate races. This may explain the limited success of US campaign tactics (and tacticians) periodically imported from the US.
I think there is a lot of false rage coming from the left down there as there are far more “rich” folks that support the liberal left agenda in the USA than the right. But then again, other than a couple of big names, the left are seen to be more miserly when it comes to giving away their own money, they would rather raid the public purse, as we saw in Canada when Chretien changed the political contribution rules and funded all the parties from taxes.
Comment by Dwayne — April 3, 2014 @ 09:18
That’s because “everyone knows” that the Republican party in the States and the Conservative party in Canada are owned and operated by “the rich”. The fact that both parties actually get a greater part of their donations from small donors than their primary opponents is wished away as being unimportant because it “can’t be true”.
As for Da Liddle Guy’s election contribution reforms, I’m sure they were tailored to harm Paul Martin’s organization at least as much as they were to be seen to be reforming the system to be more “fair”.
Comment by Nicholas — April 3, 2014 @ 10:14