Almost immediately after the Supreme Court handed down its pro-free speech decision in the campaign finance case McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission yesterday, liberals rushed to denounce the decision as one of the “worst decisions of all time,” and the end of democracy as we know it. Who knew political speech during an election could be such a terrible thing for the democratic process.
Despite the predictable hyperbole, the decision isn’t a game-changer in the 2014 elections and the sky isn’t falling, even if you belong to the liberal camp that believes First Amendment speech is sacrosanct so long as the Koch brothers don’t get to participate in it. The decision is, however, an eloquent defense of basic First Amendment principles.
To summarize, the Justices’ decision struck down aggregate contribution limits to individual candidates, political parties and political committees, which were capped at $123,200 total per an election, and only $48,600 of that amount could contributed to individual candidates. So prior to McCutcheon, you could give the maximum donation of $2,600 to 17 candidates, but if you tried giving the same amount to 18 candidates, you were presumed to be a corrupting influence and the contribution was illegal.
Will the decision result in “unprecedented amounts of money” flowing into the political system? Probably not. The most likely result are increased ad hominem attacks against wealthy, politically active donors and bogus accusations of “buying” our elections.
Even if a politically active millionaire wanted to contribute to all 535 voting members of Congress in the 2014 general election, the most they could give is about $1.4 million. Nobody needs to worry about the Koch brothers buying an election at $2,600 a pop.
And sure, it’s perhaps possible that a wealthy donor could concoct a scheme to donate to a hundred different political action committees, and get them each to funnel $2600 to the donor’s chosen candidate, something the dissenting Justices and liberal critics claim to fear. But it just isn’t likely or practical. As Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out, by giving $5,000 (the max contribution) to 100 differing PACs, the most a wealthy donor could funnel to a candidate is $26,000. A rational wealthy donor wouldn’t spend a half-a-million dollars to contribute a measly $26,000 to a single campaign when they could spend millions on their own independent political advertisements for that same candidate instead.
Of course, even if political spending does increase as a result of the decision, perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. In 2012, General Motors alone spent only half as much on its U.S. advertising budget ($3 billion) as every candidate, party and interest group in the country spent on the 2012 election combined ($6.3 billion). Why is it so awful to spend twice as much on informing Americans about candidates as a single company uses to convince people to buy its cars?
Regardless of the electoral consequences — or lack thereof — McCutcheon rests on the principle that the government may not punish people for exercising their First Amendment rights “too much.” The First Amendment doesn’t protect the government or entrenched incumbents hoping to shield themselves from well-financed challengers; it serves to protect Americans from infringements of their individual speech, especially political speech during an election.
The Chief Justice put it this way: “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”
Sorry Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — there’s actually nothing more American than the political speech Senate Majority Leaders and other government officials don’t like. Just ask the founding fathers.
