Spending Restrictions for Corporations Towards

Spending Restrictions for Corporations Towards Campaigns

Since the 1970's the overall issue of the influence of corporations, labor unions, political action committees, advocacy groups and 527 organizations have been facing increasing amounts of scrutiny. This is because the overall roles that these entities have been playing, in the world of politics are being increasingly brought to the forefront. As a result, various campaign finance laws have been enacted to reduce the overall amounts of influence / access that these groups have to various elected officials. One of the most sweeping was the McCain Feingold Act. This placed a ban on what is known as soft money. Simply put, soft money is when the above mentioned entities are donating unlimited amounts of money to a political party. This is significant because in many campaigns, various corporations and other organizations could contribute large sums of money to both political parties. (Gill, 2010) At which point, they would have greater access to various elected officials, through the upper levels of the different political parties. After the law was enacted, there was a series of court challenges that caused the case go to the Supreme Court (Citizens Untied v. The Federal Election Commission). Where, the court ruled, that it was unconstitutional for the government to regulate the overall political contributions given to various parties. This was based largely on the interpretation that a corporation is considered to be the equivalent of an individual person in a legal sense. Therefore, to restrict the contributions of such organizations is a violation of the First Amendment. As a result, this decision is the equivalent of the Dredd Scott v. Sandford decision. Where, the court ruled that African-Americans were not U.S. citizens and were essentially slaves. However, within ten years, the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment would highlight how irresponsible the court was when they made such a decision. ("Dredd Scott v. Sandford," 2010) A similar situation has occurred in the area of campaign finance, as the high court has made their own version of Dredd Scott case. This will have a number of disastrous consequences that will force the issue to be revisited, at some point in the future. To fully understand the implications of this decision requires that you compare the decision with previous rulings / case law and then examine how various entities will benefit from this ruling. This will provide the greatest insights as to why Citizens Untied v. The Federal Election Commission is such an irresponsible decision.

Case Law and Precedents

To fully understand the scope of this decision requires that you examine relevant aspects of the law and different rulings. The McCain Feingold law was intended to improve the overall regulation of campaign finance. This is because the influence of special interests and the wealthy in various political campaigns has become an important role. Part of the reason for this is the increasing costs of running for office (such as advertising / financing various campaign functions) and the longer election cycles. To limit this influence, the passage of the Federal Election Act and FECA reforms restricted the overall amounts of money that individuals as well as corporations can give to political candidates. However, as time went by various political action committees and 527 groups would provide an effective way of circumventing the law. These are organization will receive money directly from special interest groups. Their job is to make campaign contributions to the candidate within legal limits, promote issue awareness (since there is no restriction on running their views on various issues) and to provide campaign funding to those political parties that have similar objectives. As a result, the overall influence within political campaigns would become more perverse, as special interests were able to circumvent the law. At which point, the McCain Feingold legislation was passed to close these obvious loop holes that existed. (Schmidt, 2009) The law was in line with previous Supreme Court rulings on this issue of campaign finance. Some good examples of this can be seen with the cases Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (which ruled that restrictions can be in place to control access of corporation to political candidates) and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (which limited campaign spending by unions / corporations). (Liptak, 2010) What this shows is that the Supreme Court has completely disregarded all previous case rulings on the law. This could more than likely open the flood gates for various organizations that want to see event greater access to political officials. Where, they could use Citizens Untied v. The Federal Election Commission as precedent to severely weaken the campaign finance laws.

The Effects of Citizens Untied v. The Federal Election Commission

The overall effects of this decision will be far reaching, where various PACs, 527 groups, labor unions and corporations will have even greater amounts of influence. This means that during the next several elections, these organizations can continue funding the various political parties, to have increasing amounts of influence to various political officials. The reason why this is troubling is because these various entities could use their influence, to restrict legislation that will protect the public, but hurt their organization. In an era when there are increasing calls for more government regulation, means that many of the organizations that helped contribute to the current financial crisis, will have more of a voice than the average citizen. This is problematic because these various government officials could have some sort of relationship with a particular entity, who can have some of their own people in high powered positions. Once this takes place, they can have an even greater influence, in shaping the outcome of any legislation / regulations, to benefit their organization. A good example of this can be seen with the relationship between Enron and the Bush Administration, where some of the President's tops advisers including: Lawrence Lindsey, Karl Rove, Robert B. Zoellick, Theodore W. Kassinger and Thomas E. White were employed by the company at one point in time. This is significant because once Bush was President; Enron would meet with top officials to discuss energy policy. All of this is occurring, while the company is lying to shareholders about their profits and losses. (Millbank, 2002) What this shows, is how Citizens Untied v. The Federal Election Commission decision will only cause such improper relationships to become more common. This is troubling because in the case of Enron, they were committing one the largest corporate frauds in U.S. history and had access to the highest levels within the White House. If such a relationship had not existed, the overall ramifications could have been mitigated. As the various government regulators, may not have had undue amounts of pressure to leave a particular organization alone, even though they were breaking the law.