Finnan Westcott

English 11000

Professor Metenko

November 20th, 2021

The Danger of Money in Politics

It seems as though citizens of the United States have grown increasingly discontent and untrusting of politicians since the Watergate scandal involving the Nixon administration in the 1970s. Now fifty years out from the event, organizations and individuals employ craftier techniques to leverage politics for their own interests. American politicians act in the best interest of wealthy individuals, special interest groups, and corporations because it increases their personal wealth and grip on power. It is time we reform our election and democratic systems so that politicians won’t be incentivized to ignore the needs of citizens in favor of fortune and maintaining their role and office.

Campaigns aren’t cheap. If someone wants to get elected in the US to virtually any office at any level of government, they need to spend money. This way a candidate can afford themselves a staff and advertisements to put their name into voters’ minds. However, the government deems it illegal for individuals running for office to receive tax free donations from third parties so a legal invention was created. The Political Action Committee, or PAC for short, is an organization that can be run by a campaign that can accept donations, up to a certain amount, to aid in the campaign effort. It didn’t just end there though, because wealthy individuals and corporations like to ensure a victory when making a major donation to a candidate. The year 2010 saw a landmark case come through the doors of the Supreme Court.

Citizens United, a PAC, two years prior had funded a documentary that concerned then Senator and Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton. The film attacked candidate Clinton so the Federal Elections Commission, an organization that runs under executive (presidential) order, found that Citizens United acted unlawfully in the production and distribution of the film citing that it broke rules laid out in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Citizens United sought an injunction for the FEC actions and made an appeal to the Supreme Court when they lost the District Court battle. It was there, in the highest court in the land, the Citizens United won and changed the way campaigns could be funded, specifically that they could be funded endlessly. What started as a legal standing that PACs should be able to engage in freedom of speech somehow morphed into a court case that deregulated them almost entirely. Born out of this Supreme Court case was the Super PAC (officially independent expenditure-only political action committees). Thus, if a Super PAC existed in favor of the candidate from Party Number One, an unlimited amount of money could be given to said PAC by whomever pleased and as much of that money could be spent on an advertisement campaign to damage the opposing candidate’s reputation and image.

Not only can this action committee spend its resources on a smear campaign, it can spend its money in any way it wants. Although it is very much illegal to bribe a politician and for a politician to accept bribery, it is actually very much legal. It can be done through Super PACs. Stephen Colbert, the popular television show host, used his position as a satirist and public figure to demonstrate the ease with which the perks of Super PACs can be taken advantage of. Colbert hired a professional lawyer that specializes in the legality of running a political campaign in the United States, Trevor Potter. Inviting Potter on his show, Colbert asked scripted questions to emphasize his point. At this point in time no one really knew the extent at which rules didn’t apply to this new way of financing political aspirations. However, Colbert had a clearer vision of the implications of Citizens United v. FEC than anyone. One might think that the incorporation of a PAC and a Super PAC would be quite different as they are two types of organizations that follow very different rules, but Colbert learned and made his audience aware of the fact that the only difference in creating a Super PAC is filing the papers for a regular PAC (which is limited in the amount of resources it can receive and cannot receive them from corporations) is including a cover letter simply stating that it will be a Super PAC. With nothing but an extra sentence, an organization can take as much money from the treasury of a company as that company is willing to give it.

As mentioned before, it is illegal for a public servant to accept bribes. But bribes can be given through Super PACs. The key is that no type of PAC can be run by the politician it is supposed to support and those running it aren’t supposed to be connected to said politician. In this case though, the term ‘connected’ is extremely loose and essentially says that those running the PAC aren’t also employed by the political hopeful. That being said, they are free to communicate and discuss what type of boat the candidate would like to sail and the restaurant he or she will be dining at that evening. If money first goes through a Super PAC,it can be spent on anything discretionary for the candidate. When a company or individual funds a PAC like this for a candidate that is then elected, they expect some political consideration when the person is in office.

So a politician wants to run for office and their Super PAC is in place and donations are rolling in from anonymous sources that could have any number of intentions, good or evil. Although having more resources gives them an immediate advantage, the simple act of receiving money is a talking point for the strength of a candidate, it’s how you use this that is crucial to getting elected. A good idea would be to spend your resources on a staff to organize your campaign for you and advertisements to get your name out there. But if you’re a candidate the receives money from companies that have desires in direct conflict with private citizens, it can be harder to get elected because after all it is the citizens who vote. So money can be spent by PACs in more creative ways to trick people into believing the interests of companies’ and those that belong to the top one percent in terms of income are actually their own. Enter Frank Luntz, a Republican political consultant. His job was to take an issue that average, every day Americans didn’t care about or even opposed and get them to soften their stance or even change it. An example of an issue like this was the estate tax. This is a tax code that, upon a citizen’s death, the assets that they would transfer to another person would be taxed. This tax, though, didn’t affect the majority of Americans, “under current law, only estates worth $5.5 million or more have to pay the tax,” says Mark Abadi. Frank Luntz approached the issue of getting the American public to oppose this measure by holding focus groups. Luntz would ask a group of people what sounded worse to them, ‘estate tax’ or a ‘death tax’? Of course when asked this, the answer was that the term ‘death tax’ was far less appealing. With this new information, politicians that had gotten donations from people who actually opposed the estate tax, millionaires and billionaires, would espouse that something had to be done about this unjust ‘death tax’ when the money that the IRS would collect from wealthy individuals upon their death could be used for social programs for citizens that had well below the sums of money that would warrant such a tax.

It is argued though, that the advent of the Super PAC has empowered political equity and laid the way for fairer elections. Super PACs are more transparent because of the declarations they have to make to the IRS. This way any citizen could find out who was actually giving money to the campaign of any given politician. But your ordinary voter won’t feel the need to dig around and find out where the money is actually coming from. And supposedly, the influx of funds has given everyone running for office the ability to spend more money and compete better with political adversaries. This requires that everyone should be given the same amount of money which was more likely when donations were capped in a regular PAC. The most ironic and telling argument for the sake of the Super PAC is that they remind the voter of how corrupt our election systems really are and that politicians can simply be bought. The point is so absurd that Colbert might’ve said it as his conservative ideologue caricature from his show Colbert Report.

Money is necessary for running a political campaign, that is if one wants a chance in winning their election. But donations should be coming from citizens and voters who believe in what a politician has to say and not from a company that can make a politician say something on their behalf. The unchecked money that now circulates from offshore bank accounts to Super PACs has rigged the democratic system in the United States and has created something less of the politician. Once a politician was a servant of the people, an extension of them that acted so that their lives might improve and that justice might be served. Now a politician is a mouthpiece and pawn of the ultrawealthy and fights for the rights of money making machines.

Bibliography

Weintraub, Ellen. “Opinion | Taking On Citizens United.” The New York Times, 30 Mar. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/opinion/taking-n-citizens-united.html.

Dawsey, Josh, et al. “Donors Threatened to Shun the GOP after Jan. 6. Now, Republicans
Are Outraising Democrats.” Washington Post, 9 Nov. 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republican-fundraising-insurrection-january6-nrsc/202 1/11/09/1e260f2a-3753-11ec-9a5d-93a89c74e76d_story.html.

Krieg, Gregory. “What Is a Super PAC? A Short History.” ABC News, 10 Aug. 2012, abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/super-pac-short-history/story?id=16960267.

Potter, Trevor. “Here’s What I Learned When I Helped Stephen Colbert Set up His Super
PAC.” Washington Post, 21 Jan. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/21/heres-what-i-learned-when-i-h elped-stephen-colbert-set-up-his-super-pac.

“Republicans say ‘death tax’ while Democrats say ‘estate tax’ — and there’s a
fascinating reason why.” Business Insider Nederland, 19 Oct. 2017, www.businessinsider.nl/death-tax-or-estate-tax-2017-10?international=true&r=US.

Staff, The Week. “4 Ways Super PACs Are Good for Democracy.” The Week, 9 Jan. 2015, theweek.com/articles/478077/4-ways-super-pacs-are-good-democracy.