McCutcheon v FEC: Citizens United Redux?

Thanks to the McCutcheon ruling, the House of Representatives is now up for sale. By Danielle Damper

Simple arithmetic will tell you that a max donation of 2,600 dollars per candidate multiplied by 435 representatives equals $1.1 million in donations to buy time with every politician in the house. This is great if you are one of the uber-wealthy that can afford to spend the equivalent of almost 75 years’ worth of UC Davis undergraduate tuition to guarantee that you have the ear of our politicians. However, this is not so good for the rest of us.

In fact, I would argue that McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission is the worst decision made on the topic of campaign finance since Citizens United.

In the controversial ruling, five Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of plaintiff Sean McCutcheon, who argued that limiting the number of candidates that an individual can donate to violates our first amendment right to free speech. Previously, individuals could “only” donate $123,000 to various political action committees, or PACs, and candidates; now, no such limit exists. And as long as they do not exceed limits for a single organization or candidate, they can spend as much as they want.

Viewed by those in favor of the ruling as a protection of “political speech,” McCutcheon once again opens the door wide for corruption. This allows a tiny fraction of our population, (about 0.00038 percent of all donors) to increase their already huge influence in politics.

I won’t try to argue that donations are not a form of speech, because indeed “money talks.” In fact, money is often the loudest voice in the room. The real problem is that money is such a powerful form of speech that it becomes hard to hear anything else over it.

When faced with an elite group of donors or broke college students who can barely afford their protest buttons, which voice will a congressman facing a tough reelection battle likely hear loudest?

The McCutcheon ruling sets up a climate that further differentiates the voice of the rich from the rest of the nation’s, and in this way hurts our individual rights far more than it protects them. After all, policy in a representative government is supposed to reflect the will of the people. Why then, do we continue to allow a small portion of our society to drown out the voice of the rest of us with gold incrusted microphones?

We need to return to an era of campaign finance reform that allows everyday people to have the chance to really make a difference in politics. The best examples of democracy in America were not bankrolled on the backs of Koch brothers and special interest groups, but the will of the people. Over 140 protests against the McCutcheon ruling broke out across the nation on the day the decision came out; but if we are going to fight corruption, we’re going to have to do better. So get up, go out and send the message that our government is not up for sale.