Citizens United and Super-PACs
Sagar Vellalath | | December 14th, 2020
“There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”-Senator Mark Hanna, 1895
Political equality is fundamental to a functioning democracy. In essence, political equality is the universal right to be heard, understood, and represented in local, state, and national governments. In the United States, the vast majority of citizens believe that the government abides by the principle of popular sovereignty therefore there is political equality. However, this perception is incorrect. Corporations and special interest groups have constantly tried to undermine these rights and due to a series of Federal Court decisions, the US government over-represents the views of one percent of the population and corporations and tends to more often than not completely neglect the concerns of average citizens.
A CNN article from 2012 states that “in 1907, Congress banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in the wake of the Robber Baron-era scandals. In 1947, the ban was formally applied to corporate expenditures and extended to cover labor unions. In 1974, Congress enacted limits on individual contributions to federal candidates and political committees in the wake of the Watergate scandal.” These were necessary decisions by Congress to ensure, at least to an extent, that campaign finance was not an avenue of corruption. However, in 1976 the United States’ campaign finance policy direction was drastically shifted due to the Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo. According to Slate, the court ruled that “limiting what individuals may spend on elections imposes steep free speech costs that could violate the First Amendment.” Buckley v. Valeo set the precedent that led to the now-infamous Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court case and subsequent federal court cases. According to Slate, “Citizens United held that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend sums independently to support or oppose candidates for office,” and a federal court ruling following Citizens United ruled that “limits on individual contributions to groups that made independent expenditures were unconstitutional.” The effect these court rulings have had is a massive increase in campaign finance spending by the ultra-wealthy individuals and by corporations through super-PACS. A super-PAC is a political action committee that can collect unlimited amounts of money from corporations or labor unions and contribute that money to political campaigns. Electoral wins are enormously dependent on money available to the candidates to spend on campaign expenses such as hiring staffers and people to canvas as well as putting out political advertisements. So politicians succumb to the political agenda of the wealthy because they receive money from super-PACS to help their campaign.
According to Politico and OpenSecrets, “Super-PACS raised about $181 million in the last two years-with roughly half of it coming from fewer than 200 super-rich people.” and “The 10 most generous donors and their spouses injected $1.2 billion into federal elections over the last decade.”
When the overwhelming majority of congressmen and women are so heavily reliant upon the rich for campaign finance, they each effectively become puppets of corporations and the rich.
According to bulletin.represent.us, “93% of poll respondents say that elected officials listen more to wealthy donors than regular voters”
According to the Brennan Center, “One in four Americans — 26% — say that they are less likely to vote because big donors to super-PACs have so much more influence over elected officials than average Americans.”
The purpose of a government is to implement policies that uplift, protect, and improve the lives of average citizens. The end result of all of this is that the politicians who run our government are selected by large corporations that seek to increase their profits. This results in corporate politicians enacting policies that allow large corporations to: exploit labor, avoid taxes, profit off of individuals’ healthcare, etc. The corporations and politicians do not care regardless of how detrimental their policies are to the general public. Policies that would benefit the vast majority of the United States’ residents such as Medicare-for-All, and Free Public College, are ignored because those policies hurt the corporate bottom line. A true democracy cannot have representatives chosen by corporations because in reality, when representatives are chosen by corporations, the republic is an Oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. That is what the U.S is currently, a republic that sold its soul to the corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
