Adam Cohen reviews the history of denying corporations the ability to contribute to political campaigns. Of concern is that the Roberts Court is going out of its way to bring this issue before the court. Mr. Cohen speculates that perhaps the court wishes to reject 100 years of a congressional ban on corporate political contributions.
In 1907, Congress passed the Tillman Act, the first federal law barring corporate campaign contributions. States adopted similar laws.
Since then, Congress has repeatedly ratified the federal ban. In 1925, it folded the Tillman Act into the Federal Corrupt Practices Act. In 1947, it made clear that the ban included not just corporate contributions, but corporate expenditures on campaigns — and that it also applied to labor unions. In the 2002 McCain-Feingold law, Congress once again underscored that corporations cannot contribute to campaigns.
What do readers here think?
Should corporations have the same free speech rights as citizens?
I think not but I am open to argument.
Only IF we get optional public funding of campaigns so those without corporate backing have a chance to challenge the incumbent.
As it is, corporations can give money to PACs who can then give the money to candidates, so giving them official access will not change things much.
In fact, it may indeed shine a light that is currently being obscured. let’s ban PACs in the process.
Wow, speculation without an ounce of anything resembling evidence or information supporting it. I speculate the moon is made of cheese.
The topic itself is interesting enough, and worth discussing (though I’d guess there’s a pretty good consensus here) but the editorial was pretty much a partisan hack based on nothing more than opinion.
I cannot fathom any reason to allow corporations to contribute to campaigns. No good can come of it – and there is no existing rights or laws that can be construed to give business entities this. However, individual and PAC’s are something very different. I’ve really turned 180 degrees on this. Political speech/expression is perhaps our most critical right. The right to support candidates and causes a person believes in – though action or contributions – has to be exactly what was envisioned in the Constitution. PACs seem to me an example of right to assembly. I don’t believe in any restrictions on an individual to contribute. The Constitutional rights are just too important to surrender.
BUT – I do agree that money is corrupting and plays too big of a role in our political system. The solution seems simple to me. Very strict limits on what candidates can spend. There is no conflict with the 1st Amendment there – no absolute right to spend whatever you want to win office. Individuals can give whatever they want – but candidates can only spend a pre-set amount. Excess sits until they’re done with politics and then is either returned to the contributor or given to charity.
Anyone with a argument why not?
But there you favor limits that restrict the candidate’s speech? I’ve done a 180 on this too, though in the other direction. PACs = Corporations = PACs. What’s the difference? Except that corporations can hide their name if the filter dollars through a PAC.
And incidentally, public funding IS constitutional because it is OPTIONAL. If the candidate wants to take private money, he can. If he doesn’t want to be influenced by, or even perceived to be, he can take public funds instead.
In the context of running for an office, candidates are already treated as a special case and have limitations on their speech that regular citizens don’t. I can live with restricting the candidates further as a tradeoff for not restricting everyone else.
The ’08 Presidential election showed just how little that mattered. You have a rich, long-serving deep-war chest Republican who took public financing. And a new Democrat who espoused public financing right up until he realized he could raise more money without. While optional may well not have the Constitutional problems – it has a larger problem. It doesn’t work.
I think that corporations are not citizens or people. They are a unique entity with different rights and responsibilities when they operate in each state. When they operate between states and countries they are subject to the federal government.
Corporations should continue to be prohibited from participating in the political process at both levels in my opinion.
I like the idea of limiting whay they spend but I fear that it may be impractical to enforce and would just give rise to more PACs.
Well I certainly agree, but we have such a thing as a First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has ruled that corps essentially represent their shareholders, who are people. I think we should work to nullify their power, and that can be done by getting private money out of our public electoral system. Full public funding of campaigns in states like AZ, ME, CT have succeeded, and 70% of their legislators refuse private dollars. That drives corporations crazy, so it must be doing the job intended.
>>> “I can live with restricting the candidates further as a tradeoff for not restricting everyone else.”
But Locke, you will never convince the courts that such a restriction is legal. Why waste time on it?
And public funding does indeed work, or the Pols wouldn’t be fighting so hard to avoid it. It gives new politicians an opportunity to challenge well-funded incumbents. It levels the playing field and Pols hate level playing fields. For that reason alone it is a good idea. if the Pols don’t want it, it has to be good.
Obama didn’t go with public funds, and that’s unfortunate because he would have won hands down against the R’s previous eight years. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to.
For some reason, I was under the impression the Supreme Court’s rulings had focused on striking down contributions limits but not expenditure ones. Just did some very brief further reading on this and that is clearly not the case.
Looks like the most recent ruling is Randall v. Sorrell from 2006. There were actually 6 different opinions and it was a narrow majority ruling so there’s some hope there. Ultimately though, the deciding middle was Breyer, Roberts and Alito. Both Breyer and Roberts asserted stare decisis that an earlier case, Buckley v. Valeo (which I haven’t looked at yet) was the precedent. But in Roberts opinion, he specifically discusses the fact that there was no real argument made to call for a re-examination of Buckley. It sounded to me, like “you didn’t argue this point – and if you had, things might have been different.”
On the other hand, Breyer does strike a major blow to my idea when he said, “We said in Buckley that expenditure limitations impose
far greater restraints on the freedom of speech and association
than do . . . contribution limitations.”
I obviously disagree. But close decision and fractured opinions notwithstanding…as much as I’d like think that’s reason for some optimism, I have to concede your argument that major spending restrictions won’t happen is not a weak one.
The beauty of publicly funded elections is that with 70% of the politicians opting for public money rather than take from corporations, the corps are on the outside looking in. They hate that, and the public is the beneficiary. They can have all the campaign money in the world but if nobody is taking it, we’ve solved the problem.
See http://www.wicleanelections.org/
I’ve only taken a very brief look – but I look forward to spending a little more time reading your site and digging into it. Interesting.
The beauty of publicly funded elections is that with 70% of the politicians opting for public money rather than take from corporations, the corps are on the outside looking in. They hate that, and the public is the beneficiary. They can have all the campaign money in the world but if nobody is taking it, we’ve solved the problem.
See http://www.wicleanelections.org/
Could you kindly translate your site into German because I’m not so comfortable reading it in English? I’m getting tired of using Google Translate all the time, there is a cool WP plugin called like global translator which will translate all your posts automatically- this would make reading articleson your awesome blog even more cosy. Cheers mate, Thailand Top 100!