Whos Corrupting Whom with Political Spending?

By: Carl Graham, CEO, Montana Policy Institute

This week opened with news that Montanas Attorney General filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court asking them to revisit their 2010 Citizens United decision and give Montanas restrictive campaign finance laws a pass. With all due respect, I think our AG is either stuck in a time warp or doesnt understand the basics of a marketplace, and especially a marketplace of influence or ideas. Montanas campaign finance laws date back to when copper barons outright owned much of our states legislature and most of its media outlets. The argument that those conditions could be recreated in the internet age and in a widely diversified and dispersed state economy seems like a longer stretch than Westby to Whitefish. History aside, the basic argument against political spending is that its corruptive and provides undue influence to those with more money, and especially those rich, evil corporations. Well Im as much against evil corporations as the next guy, but most of them arent evil. My friends family farm organized as an S-Corp isnt evil. Nonprofits organized as public benefit corporations arent evil, at least not all of them. Its an inconvenient fact, but the vast majority of corporations are just small businesses trying to get by. Theyre simple groups of people or families organized as legal entities for tax, liability, or estate reasons. Restricting their free speech rights just because they choose to associate or become affiliated with other people who share their interests isnt just unconstitutional, its morally wrong and damaging to our republican form of government. Our right to free speech isnt protected to talk about the blueness of the sky or to sing Kumbaya out of key. Its protected to allow dissenting and unpopular voices to be heard. And in our society of mass media, speech takes money. Restricting spending restricts speech. In the rare and difficult to prove cases where money is spent with a quid pro quo involved, we have laws for that. But whos to say that someone is paying to send a message based on ideals or interests? Or that those things are necessarily at odds? Would owning a business disqualify me from speaking up about free enterprise? All we do by restricting speech is protect those who already have megaphones in place. Thats one reason why members of Congress enjoy an 85%-95% reelection rate with a 10%-15% approval rating. Campaign finance laws should really be called incumbent protection laws, as they erect enormous barriers to any new voices or interests.

Whos Corrupting Whom with Political Spending

And anyway, all thats beside the point if its corruption that sticks in your craw. The problem were having with undue influence and there is a problem isnt that theres too much money in politics; its that theres too much politics in money. So long as the government is large and powerful enough to pick winners and losers people will always find a way to either get on the winners list or stay off the losers list. One is influence peddling, the other a protection racket. Passing more laws will just require more lawyers and consultants, creating even more barriers to individual voices. Every voluntary transaction has a willing buyer, a willing seller, and a product. When it comes to money in politics we tend to focus solely on the buyer the contributor or lobbyist. We spend little time looking at the seller the politician or bureaucrat. And we completely ignore the product the influence that money buys. But without the product youll have neither a buyer nor a seller. Get rid of what George Will calls the political allocation of wealth and opportunity governments ability to threaten or guarantee peoples livelihoods, lives, and basic rights and there would be no need to regulate how much the buyer can spend or the seller can accept. There wouldnt be any buyers or sellers. Anything else is just regulating corruption at some tolerable level; and what is more corrupt than a political system that guarantees those in power stay in power. We spend less on campaigns in this country than we do on potato chips. If theres a class of people out there who wield enough influence to make our lives meaningful or miserable depending on what share of our potato chip budget we send their way, then maybe we should be looking at restricting what theyre selling and not those whom they compel to pay.

#### For Immediate Release 730 Words Carl Graham is CEO of the Montana Policy Institute, a nonprofit policy research and education center based in Bozeman. He can be reached at: 67 W. Kagy Blvd., Ste. B Bozeman, MT 59715 (406) 219-0508 cgraham@montanapolicy.org

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