When I was going back to the early days of radio, I had a guy who was full of outrage about the powerful lobbying influence over the Marble Mafia and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This guy’s problem was not just with the garden variety lobbyists, but also with the horrible “K-Street” variety that MSM, OWS, and EIEIO staffers, and by proxy, all of us should hate specs for. He finished in a hurry when I asked him whether the same restrictions he would impose on K-Street lobbyists would be applied to the big unionists who at the time enjoyed revolving door access to the West Wing. (I’d call him about Solyndra and the rest of the green energy Edsels from 21street century, but they have not yet come to delicate).
Being an elephant with cards for now, during election cycles I receive requests for donations to one candidate or another. In September and October, my phone rang with Robo-Romney asking for another $10, $15, $20, or $100. Now I work in radio and as any radio guy will tell you, we get paid in baseball cards and car wash tokens, so I don’t think I’ll ever be able to spend enough cash to influence a candidate to do anything unless I have to stop trampling on me on the foot or something.
Either way, money makes the world go around and gets people elected. Unless you’re a particular Democrat president, in which case you’re also elected by people who vote for you four or five times at a time. But that’s another story for another time.
Now, during the election, you cast your vote and take a risk in the hope that whoever you choose will take you longer than the previous Yahoo. If you’re from Ohio like me, just look at John Boehner and see if you can change your birth certificate to show you were born in Texas. But beyond that, you can theoretically also donate to a political candidate of your choice
That’s where Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon comes in. Later this year, he has a date with that august group of people dressed in black known as the Supreme Court. Not many people find themselves in this situation. McCutcheon is a successful businessman, but he is by no means a K Street lobbyist. He’s not counting on political favor in the next Congress to facilitate secure oil and coal leases or finance energy storage equipment for electric vehicles. What he really wants is to make more contributions to more of his chosen political candidates and committees. However, the Federal Election Commission’s biennial rule places a total $48,600 cap on total donations for all candidates and limits total PAC donations to just over $74,600. Meanwhile, Super PACs themselves have no such restrictions.
A person like you or me can donate up to $2,600 to each candidate during the election cycle. The limit for individuals is $32,400 for a national committee and $5,000 per year for individual PACs, which are also not narrow by these limits. Since the average cost of a housing race in the U.S. hovers around $1,000,000, a few thousand dollars won’t make an impact on a single election.
McCutcheon’s problem is not one of limitation per se. Let’s be forthright, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone you know who can make $48,000 for an election. Well, most of us would. Rather, McCutcheon alleges that biennial giving rules limit the total number of candidates and committees he can donate to. And McCutcheon himself notes that he is not a supporter of officials. In fact, his political sympathies lie with the same outsiders from the Beltway that most of our politicians constantly claim to be during stump season. Aggregate restrictions stifle competition and favor the status quo.
McCutcheon took his complaint to the FEC and was met with the conventional bureaucratic response: “You can’t.” Changing the two-year rule rests with members of Congress, who are understandably concerned that the electorate may shift the burden of power to someone other than the incumbent. Hence this year’s visit of McCutcheon with the Supremes.
Few people are going to max out when it comes to the two-year rule. Probably not; and with a handful of car wash tokens I will certainly never do it. We’re not talking about shifting tides here. Oddly enough, we’re talking about bringing more challengers onto the field. We’re talking about people making a choice about how to spend their money freely, and the Federal Election Commission found that McCutcheon has no such choice. And it’s highly unlikely that Congress will give anyone that choice anytime soon. Democrats, independents and Republicans will benefit when individuals can donate directly to more candidates and committees at their own free choice, guaranteed under the Constitution.
Politics is not pretty. He can be brutal, sneaky and sullied. Even forthright Abe Lincoln got on the Republican Party ticket thanks to the clever political chicanery of his supporters. In delicate of the fact that we remain outraged and continue to feign surprise that the IRS has targeted organizations with which the administration has political and cultural differences, people’s voices matter now more than ever. The First Amendment matters now more than ever. Just like the voice of an individual.
