If I Had A Million Dollars…
…I would buy you a House [seat in Congress]?
Somehow The Barenaked Ladies‘ song just seems fitting after reading this article in The Nation about Jack Davis’ Millionaire Complaint:
Mr. Davis’s improbable claim is that the additional contributions allowed for his non-millionaire opponent are a burden on his own speech under the First Amendment.
Predictably, more progressive judges were concerned about fairness while Scalia resorted to the old boys’ club mentality:
In the argument Tuesday, a few opening inquiries from the Chief Justice and some questions from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested they may doubt whether Mr. Davis’s speech is at all burdened by relaxed limits for his opponent.
(snip)
Justice Antonin Scalia seized upon the argument that changing the contribution limits to accommodate this situation made them constitutionally suspect…
(snip)
The clear low point in the argument was when, in a through-the-looking-glass exchange, it became clear that the Court’s increasingly simplistic equation of money with speech may even make some Justices willing to defend the rights of the ultra-wealthy to purchase an election.
Justice Scalia threw Davis’s counsel a softball question concerning the state’s interest: “Who is more incorruptible than the millionaire, right?”
Indeed, who is more incorruptible than the millionaire? (Insert haughty laughter here.) This question from Scalia insults all people who are not millionaires, implying that everyone can be bought unless they already have riches. It also assumes that money somehow makes you immune from corruption. Wonder what Enron executives would have to say about that? What a gem we have in Mr. Scalia.
The matching funds set up by the current system are designed to ensure an election can’t be bought. If elections are for sale, which is possible if matching funds are not allowed, then if you had a million dollars, you could buy yourself a House [seat]. It’s all the rage. According to Jon Powers for Congress:
The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that 44% of the members in the House of Representatives and 58% of the members in the Senate are millionaires while only 1% of adult Americans have a net worth of $1 million.
So you see, millionaires are already buying the House. Let’s hope the Supreme Court doesn’t give in to the trend. (Read more here in this excellent article from SignOnSanDiego.com.)
The thing that scared me the most about this article is that its author claims that, if the justices go the way they seemed to lean during oral arguments, they may very well invalidate the Clean Money Clean Elections systems in place in Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut (don’t know if CT has implemented it yet or not). All those states have a “trigger” mechanism whereby publicly financed candidates get a boost in their funding if their opponent reaches a certain level of spending. You need that kind of assurance built into the system so that candidates will sign on. Otherwise, they face being blown out of the water by a well-funded opponent. And the Supremes had real trouble with the “trigger” part of the Millionaire’s Amendment and could strike it down. The Nation piece suggests that that would invalidate state public financing laws.
Exactly right, HP. This phrase from the article caught my eye:
“discussing whether the state’s interest in enhancing competition was legitimate. ”
If Ginsburg is concerned about this I worry about the amendment. The irony is that Republicans tout the value of free market competition enhancement all the time as their primary raison d’etre. They pass all sorts of business-friendly laws that give small businesses and large alike room to grow.
Maybe in our lifetimes we’ll see Buckley v. Valeo overturned, but, as much as I hope for it, I’m not holding my breath. But the notion that money equals speech is noxious in the extreme, I think.
I’m probably a minority view on this point, but in my opinion the critical part of campaign financing is transparency, not funding limits. For example, right now bundling is a common practice, yet pretty opaque. Bundlers contribute hundreds of thousands to presidential campaigns and what we see on finance reports is a bunch of individual contributions.
I’d trade extreme transparency for funding limits in a heartbeat, which would make Jack Davis’ argument moot.
Do you mean you’d trade funding limits in order to have more financing transparency? Actually, I think both of these are important. How can you not care about funding limits? Doesn’t that mean you don’t care if an election is bought?
[...] been MIA. And speaking of Davis, anyone have an update on his complaint to the supreme court that rich people aren’t getting a fair deal? I thought the Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy ™ would undercut that argument a little, but [...]