Getting Money Out Of Politics

A further argument that compliments the idea that money increasingly dominates the US electoral process and is the main factor in contributing to a candidate’s success is Congress’ attempts to try and limit its influence. The Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act 2002 set limits on campaign finance but was effectively struck down in Citizens United 2010. Congress isn’t trying to set limits on the amount of events a candidate runs but rather the expenditure limits. This suggests that money increasingly dominates the US electoral process and is the main factor in contributing to a candidate’s success because Congress trying to limit indicates its influence and dominance. In the UK, there is a strict campaign finance rule, which also compliments the idea that it is a dominant factor.

Due to the absurd amounts of money that is required for the candidates to be able to creditably and adequately compete; candidates have been forced to turn to PACs to fund their campaigns. "The current system of campaign financing argues that the high cost of office-seeking and current ways of meeting those costs not only distract elected officials from their primary task of lawmaking, but leave the door open to the influence of special interests" (Power online). This method of campaigning is criticized to be undemocratic, because candidates do not attentively listen to their

These laws were the perfect way for the state to make sure that the system is stable in the future. Just recently on April 2nd, the Supreme Court of the United States turned down the overall cap on monetary political donations. This is a classic case of the state adopting policies to ensure the stability of the system. Coping the scheme of citizens united the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision allows an individual to donate as much money as they please to federal candidates in a two year election cycle. Although federal law bans direct contributions to campaigners by corporations and business, super pacs allow money to get to the politicians without direct contact. But this law still allows wealthy individuals to support the candidates that will represent their needs and wants in the national government. This creates an unfair system aimed at helping the elites because they will have more money to donate therefore will have more of the campaigners attention. Justice Breyer realized the importance of this decision being turned down and was recorded writing “Where enough money calls the tune,” he wrote, “the general public will not be heard.” (New York Times).

According Forbes Magazine, in the year 2010, a year that was not even a presidential election, the Koch brothers contributed over $45,000,000 to campaigns through a group they deemed “Americans for Prosperity” (Poole). With this money going towards the men in congress almost any legislation proposed by President Obama has been stalled, resulting in what is known as a policy gridlock. Whatever the case, seeing the huge money being contributed by individuals or their businesses, makes the campaigns run by people such as Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders more admirable for not being bought out by big money.

Of course, such influence establishes a tyranny of the rich that our forefathers clearly wanted to prevent. Senator Russ Feingold, a proponent of campaign finance reform, said, "The current campaign finance system is fueling the transformation of our representative democracy into a corporate democracy creating a political system that allots power in direct relation to the amount of money an individual or interest group can contribute" (Campaign Finance Reform). The horror of such a governmental system has fueled the cries for campaign finance reform.

It is time that the voters are the only one’s deciding elections. Candidates should be running on issues, not money. They should not be allowed to get money from wealthy investors, who keep the playing field unlevel. Any person who wants to run for office, and is qualified to run for office, should be able to regardless if they have a lot of money to set up a campaign or not. It is time for Campaign Finance Reform.

It is unsensible to believe that even the upper crest of the US financially can keep up with a corporation. Therefore receiving donations from corporations is the candidate's main goal, while ignoring the many small donors that truly represent America’s views. While there is no solid proof of corporations influencing candidates decisions thee have been sketchy moment in which corporations money influencing candidates decisions have been suspected. In 2000 when Bush was running for president an energy company based in Houston, Enron donated a substantial amount of money to Bush. They donated 2.5 million making them the highest donating energy company and the 36th highest corporate donator. After Bush was elected he passed 6 bills extremely beneficial for Enron that multiplied their revenue by nearly three times. In all Corporations donating limitless to candidates forces a candidate to pass bills beneficial for their donors and not the majority of people. This needs to stop or the purity of America’s political system goes down the

With the introduction of “soft” money in politics, elections no longer go to the best candidate, but simply to the richer one. Soft money is defined as unregulated money that is given to the political parties that ends up being used by candidates in an election. In last year’s elections, the Republican and Democratic parties raised more than one-half of a billion dollars in soft money. Current politicians are pushing the envelope farther than any previous administrations when it comes to finding loopholes in the legal system for campaign fundraising. The legal limit that any one person can contribute to a given candidate or campaign is one thousand dollars. There is, however, no limit on the amount of money one

You need money to run a campaign, and each federal election will eventually come down to who contributed the most money. The Service Employees International Union denounced the decision saying, “Today the US Supreme Court lifted the floodgates and started dismantling century-old restrictions on corporate electoral activiy in the name of the 'free speech rights' of corporations—meaning if you a 'corporate person', you are now free to hit the corporate ATM and spend whatever of your shareholders' money it takes to elect the candidates of your choice.” However, money doesn't buy elections. This couldn't have been made anymore evident by the 2016 election. (campaignfreedom.org, opensecrets,org) Clinton raised 687.3 million dollars to fund her campaign, while Trump raised a mere 306.9 million dollars. Not only that, ads for Clinton were triple the amount of ads for Trump. And most importantly, the three biggest super PACS (making a whopping one-fourth of total campaign contributions), all supported losing candidates. This election made it clear that money is less important than the person. People didn't vote for Hillary because of her emails and her corruptness, while people voted for Donald because we wasn't politically correct and desired change.

The right of free speech granted to all citizens in the first amendment, the necessity of funding expensive political campaigns, and the fact that small donations make a candidate responsive to the needs of their constituents, all make any restrictions on campaign financing unneeded and onerous. Congress should strike down any bills attempting to reform this essential part of the U.S. election process. Any further restrictions on donations to political campaigns will prove detrimental to the United States functioning system of elections by limiting individuals’ freedom of speech, making our candidate’s campaigns underfunded and unresponsive to the needs of the American people.

In a country built from unparalleled equality, our election system is not inclusive of the less affluent candidates. Inevitably, monetary funding has become a centralized focus point for American politics and has provided a reckless entry way for candidates not prepared for the presidency. Taking this current election for example, Hillary Clinton, democratic presidential candidate, received a donation of 25.6 million dollars from the Hedge-Fund, this being only a small fraction of her over all funding. Contrastingly, Jill Stein, Green Party Candidate, has only received 3.2 million dollars in total funding for her campaign. The difference is striking. Providing a

From the very first elections held in the United States, there has always been a strong link between money and politics. During the first elections in the late 1700’s you had to be a white male landowner over the age of 21 in order to vote, meaning that you had to have money in order to have your vote counted. It seems today that we cannot go a day with out seeing campaign finance in the media, whether or not it is through advertisements for politicians in the media or asked to donate money to help let your favorite candidate win. Because campaign finance has always been on the back burner of political issues, there has hardly been any change to the large influence money has over the election process and politicians. While money has it’s

America is a country founded on dreams and ambition. If one has the proper knowledge and training for it, they can become whatever their heart desires. However as our country has developed, we see that this is not the case anymore. We have become an incredibly expensive and money driven society. If one aspires to be president, or even a governor, then they better be fairly rich or know some wealthy people. A political campaign for the presidency “has cost between 450 million to 1 billion dollars since 2000 (Gilson).” It doesn’t seem particularly fair that money is such a monstrous factor that determines who the people see running for office. Political campaigns should be reformed in order to make the political field more open to candidates

Thanks to our representative democratic system, America is becoming more Oligarchic since our “one person, one vote” method continues to help the superrich as they continue to stealthily tilt the voting scale in their favor. This discouraging state of affairs continues to thrive all because some devious representatives also profit from it, and they are very crafty in how they shield the public view from their obscure mechanisms. Money should not influence elections, this is not true of

FECA put limitations on campaign advertising by political candidates. Lastly FECA created the Federal Election Commission to oversee and regulate campaign financing (The FEC). With all the restrictions placed on direct campaign contributions to political candidates, this type of contribution is known as “hard money”. One would assume this would make political campaign fundraising a difficult task, but in the 2008 presidential campaign one billion dollars was raised by candidates (Banking). Cleary “hard money” cannot be the only thing bankrolling our politicians.