Essay on The Debate Over Campaign Finance Regulations

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

The Constitution of the United States was written in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, where it was held in Philadelphia. It was written by a group of people known as “Farmers,” or the “Founding Fathers,” and few of the most famous Founding Fathers were George Washington (The first president of the USA), Thomas Jefferson (The first vice president and the third president of the USA) James Madison (The fourth president of the USA), Samuel Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. The old government, the Articles of Confederation was not working as it supposed to be, it was vulnerable and cannot secure and defend the new born nation and for that reason the constitution of the united states saw the light.

In the winter of December 7th, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the U.S. Constitution was ratified to establish the new country of the United States as a democracy. After their victory over the British for American Independence, the United States government created the Constitution in an effort to further establish themselves as an independent nation. With a new form of government that would not allow the injustices caused by the British monarchy to occur again, the Constitution’s fundamental principles abided by many of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian beliefs about people and government. The Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman seeds of democracy contributed to the United States’ democratic government by protecting the rights of the individual and by giving the ability for the citizens to vote on its leaders and laws.

The issue of campaign financing was argued again more recently in the Supreme Court case, Citizens United v FEC. In this case the Citizens United conservative non-profit argued that an ad for the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 was critical of George Bush and therefore the commercial was a campaigning ad funded by an outside group within sixty days of the general election. Citizens United argued the ad was illegal according to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) passed in 2002 that stated no electioneering committee could fund an ad 60 days before an election. Citizens United believed Fahrenheit 9/11 was critical of Bush’s response to 9/11 and therefore was an ad for the opposing candidate Al Gore. The Supreme Court decided that if a company wants to use their money to campaign, since money is an expression of speech, there cannot be any law limiting when you can express your views politically. The court determined that the portions of FECA and BCRA related to restrictions on corporate and labor union spending was unconstitutional as it prohibited free speech. Citizens United reaffirmed the president set by Buckley vs. Valeo that money is

‘Despite several attempts to regulate campaign finance, money increasingly dominates the U.S. Electoral process and is the main factor contributing to a candidates success’ Discuss (30 marks)

The 1970s began a more active era of campaign finance reform. The passing of the Revenue Act of 1971 allows citizens to contribute one dollar to a presidential candidate’s campaign fund by checking a box on their federal income tax returns. Along with the Revenue Act of 1971, the Federal Election Campaign Act was also passed in 1971. This law institutes disclosure requirements for federal candidates, political parties, and political action committees of donations more than $100. This law also sets a spending limit of $50,000

In 1974, FECA–the Federal Election Campaign Act–a campaign finance law, was amended to place legal limits on campaign elections to a maximum of $1,000 per individual and $5,000 per PAC–political action committee–for each primary, election and runoff. However, FECA neglected to take into account the effects of inflation. Since 1974, inflation has caused $1,000 today to equate to only $240 in 1974, less than a fourth of the originally intended amount. Due to this, candidates need to raise four times the amount of money that they did 41 years ago when the act was amended. Consequently, candidates must focus more on fundraising and have less time to meet citizens and tend to their official

The Constitution of the United States is one of the first written constitutions and one of the ‘oldest’ to have been made on the national level and applicable today. It was developed and adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May and September, 1787. The Constitution of 1787 followed the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power” (Madison, Federalist Paper No. 63). After the Colonists gained their freedom from Great Britain, delegates from the colonies gathered and drafted the first written body of law for the United States, the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation had many flaws, like not instituting an Executive branch to enforce laws and not allowing Congress to tax Americans. It created a weak central government . Realizing this, fifty five delegates representing twelve out of thirteen states, met up in Philadelphia in May of 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. Too many disagreements upon revising this document led the delegates to draft a brand new document, the United States Constitution. The constitution was made to divide power equally among the states’ and central government, while also giving the people power and preserving their rights. The United States’ Constitution, thus, . The constitution prevented the United States from being ruled by tyrants and/or corrupt leaders because it adapted the concept of federalism, created a separation of powers among the branches of government, applied a checks-and-balances system to the branches of its government, and compromised the needs of big states and small states.

After so many years of imposing taxes, differing views, and bloodshed the United States Constitution was finally able to make its way in 1788. The U.S Constitution called for a revision of the Articles of Confederation, establishing a new form government. In the end, it completely threw out the out the Articles of Confederation. The ratification of the U.S Constitution caused much criticism and separated Americans into two groups Federalists and Ant-Federalists. Although there was much objection, with George Washington as the leading figure behind this new central government, more people were less hesitant towards it.

The current network of campaign finance is a complicated web involving individual contributors, soft money and hard money, and political action committee influence. In the aftermath of the crooked Watergate scandal, anxiety over campaign finance led to the passage of two major reform bills—the Revenue Act of 1971 and the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974—that have set the guidelines and regulations for campaign finance. Although many other laws and acts have been passed in effort to regulate campaign finance, these two acts set the main standards for campaign finance regulation. The main ideas of the acts stipulate that candidates for the two houses of Congress receive no public funding, candidates in the presidential primaries receive matching dollars, and candidates

The very first document created to run The United States’ government is known as The Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was adopted on November 15, 1777, and ratified by the Thirteen Colonies March 1, 1781. Several drafts were written separately by Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and John Dickinson in the year 1775, but were canceled in 1786.

The United States Constitution of 1787 was drafted at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which addressed the problems of The Articles of Confederation. The U.S Constitution of 1787 was a document that was used to establish the organization, function, and the power of the government which later replaced The Articles of Confederation. The U.S Constitution suggested that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land and that it was designed to centralize and increase the government power. On the other hand, Texas Constitution was ratified in 1876, demonstrating a decentralized in the government power.

The Supreme Court also sited in that same ruling that, “In a free society by our Constitution, it is not the government, but the people-individually as citizens and candidates and collectively as associations and political committees-who must retain control over the quantity and range of debate on public issues in a political campaign” (Keena 6). While it may be a violation of freedom of speech to limit television ads, many of today’s candidates have made a mockery of the existing legislature regarding campaign financing. Ex-president Bill Clinton bent the rules and laws more than possibly any elected official ever, and certainly farther than anyone since Richard Nixon. Thad Cochran, a veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, stated, “Clinton used his own party and had it operated out of the campaign office, which was the White House, to coordinate expenditures by the Democratic Party and his election campaign in an unlimited amount, using soft money to pay for the ads, with his own chief-of-staff making the decisions about the kind of advertising, and Clinton himself was involved in writing some of the ads that were actually run by the Democratic Party using soft money” (Williams 10). No elected official had ever gone so far as to run soft money ads out of his own office, let alone rewrite the ads himself. It is cases such as this one that are prime examples for why there is such a need for new laws to govern campaign financing.

     After President Nixon and the Watergate controversy in 1971, the United States began to put limits on how much a candidate could receive and spend within a campaign. In order to enforce fairness between candidates,