One Way Forward (6 page)

This was Abramoff’s general philosophy:

These “quid pro quos,” as Abramoff refers to them, were “one of the hallmarks of our lobbying efforts.”
³²
And completely ordinary. As he writes,

And while this dynamic didn’t bother Abramoff much while he was in the middle of it, on reflection (in a federal prison), he came to believe that

“Bribery,” whether legal or not. Part of a “system,” as Abramoff puts it, that “needs to be changed.” “[N]ot the current cast of characters running the system,”
³⁵
but
the system.
A system that leads 75 percent of Americans to believe that “campaign contributions buy results in Congress,”
³⁶
and a system that earns the confidence of no more than 11 percent of the American public.
³⁷

But the fundraising game is nothing compared with a new dynamic that the Supreme Court inspired through its obliviousness in
Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Commission
: the dynamic force of independent expenditures within this system.

Never have I heard that influence described better than by former senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) in response to a question put to him on a panel: John Samples, from the CATO Institute, had just suggested that the evidence was inconclusive about whether money bought results in Washington. Bayh was asked whether, based on his twelve years of experience in the Senate, he too was uncertain.

There was no uncertainty in his response. Indeed, if anything, he evinced a certain terror as he told his story. For, as he put it, the critical change that has happened to D.C. is the rise of independent expenditures through the effectively anonymous entities called super PACs. These super PACs have spread fear throughout the political system. The single most frightening prospect that an incumbent now faces is that, thirty days before an election, some anonymously funded super PAC will drop $500,000 to $1,000,000 in attack ads in the district. When that happens, the incumbent needs a way to respond. He can’t turn to his largest contributors—by definition, they have all maxed out and can’t, under the law, give any more. So the only protection he can buy is from super PACs on his own side.

That protection, however, must be secured in advance: a kind of insurance, the premium for which must be paid before a claim gets filed. And so how do you pay your premium to a super PAC on your side in advance? By conforming your behavior to the standards set by the super PAC. “We’d love to be there for you, Senator, but our charter requires that we only support people who have achieved an 80 percent or better grade on our Congressional Report Card.” And so the rational senator has a clear goal—80 percent or better—that he works to meet long before he actually needs anyone’s money. And thus, without even spending a dollar, the super PAC achieves its objective: bending congressmen to its program. It is a dynamic that would be obvious to Tony Soprano or Michael Corleone but that is sometimes obscure to political scientists: a protection racket that flourishes while our Republic burns.

This is corruption. With the system of campaign contributions and also with independent expenditures, we have allowed an economy to evolve in which our representatives are not “dependent upon the People alone” but are instead dependent upon the funders. Its source is obvious. And its consequences—from the financial crisis to the global warming crisis, from the bailouts to the health care debacle, from a tax system written by and for the lobbyists (and their clients) to a regulatory system that just can’t resist one more regulation (and hence one more target for congressional extortion)—are obvious as well.

What isn’t obvious is this: Why can’t we get the populist Left and the populist Right to focus on the obvious? Why can’t both sides recognize this common source? Why can’t they see that until the obvious is dealt with, nothing else will get done?

The Tea Party Right is often the clearest about recognizing this source. As Meckler and Martin put it,

The solution, however, as they see it, is not “some kind of campaign finance reform that will, invariably, either trample the First Amendment or further drive us into debt.” It is instead “the most effective form of campaign finance reform there is: a dramatic reduction in the federal budget.”

But you can’t simply assume away the hardest part of the problem: How would you get a “dramatic reduction in the federal budget” when the very system for funding campaigns depends upon more spending and more complicated taxes? The current system is biased in favor of large government and complex taxes not because liberals rule, but because complex taxes and invasive government are very efficient ways in which to inspire campaign contributions. The Right will have no fair shot at getting a smaller government or simpler taxes so long as the opposite is a surer path to funding congressional campaigns.

There should be no conflict between the Left and the Right on this: Both sides should favor reform that ends this corrupting influence.

We don’t need to destroy wealth. We need to destroy the ability of wealth to corrupt our politics.

We don’t need to kill capitalism. We need to kill that form of capitalism—crony capitalism—that uses its power to corrupt our politics.

We don’t need to hate success. We have to organize against those who think that their success entitles them to special benefits and privilege from those addicts to fundraising we call congressmen.

We don’t need to foment another fundamental revolution. We need only to end the corruption within the system that Jefferson’s revolution helped create.

Both the Left and the Right should be able to agree about this. Or, at least, the outsiders from both sides.

For until the giant recognizes that she has two hands, a Left and a Right, and two feet, a Left and a Right, and two sides of a brain, a Left and a Right, and that she needs both, the giant will do nothing more than flail—as every one of the waves of reform so far has. Drop the first
l
from flail and you have precisely what the you-pick-your-top-fraction-of-the-top-1-percent want: disorder and disrespect enough to justify the pepper spray and batons that now line American streets.

We don’t have time for these games anymore. The carnival was fun. Tens of thousands marching on beautiful fall days was inspirational. And thousands meeting in convention centers across the country to learn what Madison would have thought is genuinely amazing. But all of this energy is for naught if we don’t learn how to slay the dragon. And if you—Tea Partier, Occupier, citizen—aren’t in it to slay the dragon, then you—Tea Partier, Occupier, citizen—are the problem. You are this Republic’s only hope. And so long as you dawdle, you deserve what’s left when this Republic is lost.

So what would fix it? What change would end this debilitating dependence, this obvious corruption?

Understand the source and you understand the solution. The source of this corruption is a Congress that is responsive to its funders but whose funders are not the People. The remedy is to change that source by making the funders “the People.”

We can achieve that remedy by changing the way campaigns are funded.

We must move away from the world in which (a tiny slice of) the top 1 percent fund elections to a world in which practically all of us—let’s say, the 99 percent—fund elections. Until we do that, we will not have a republic “dependent upon the People alone.” We will instead have a government “dependent upon the funders primarily.”

The rules that would create this alternative are not hard to describe. At least in principle. The details require careful work. But for now, we can leave the details to another day. For now, focus on three changes to our current system that would produce a regime where the funders are “the People” and where no one could believe that “money is buying results in Congress.”

1. Public elections must be publicly funded.

We must first build a system to fund campaigns in which all of us, or at least the vast majority of us, become the effective funders. Not through a system that forces one side to subsidize the speech of the other, or that empowers Washington bureaucrats to decide how much money each side has to run its campaigns. That’s the awful connotation that typically comes with the term “publicly funded elections,” and it’s not what I mean here. Instead, through a system that incentivizes candidates to raise campaign funds from all of us, in small dollar chunks, and that effectively spreads its influence to all of us.

Here’s just one example: Imagine a system that rebated the first $50 of tax revenue paid by each of us, in the form of a voucher—call it a “democracy voucher.”
³⁹
Voters could allocate that voucher (or any part of it) to any candidate for Congress who agrees to fund his or her campaign only with “democracy vouchers” and contributions from citizens of up to $100 per election. Vouchers not used would get returned to the political party of the voter—or, if the voter is an independent or chooses differently, to some other democracy-supporting fund. At $50 per voter, this system would put at least $7 billion into elections each year, more than three times the total raised in congressional elections in 2010.

Call this the Grant and Franklin Project. As a system, it would easily and adequately fund congressional elections. But it would be us, not the you-pick-your-fraction-of-the-top-1-percent of Americans, who would be funding these elections. And, sure, the money to fund this system would be “the public’s”—in the sense that the Treasury would write the checks to back the democracy vouchers. But as with everything in the Treasury, the Treasury got this bit of the “public” from us first. This system just rebates what the people have given the government, in a form that allows the People to make Congress responsive to them.

2. Contributions to political campaigns must be encouraged, but limited.

Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign taught us a critical truth about modern campaigns: Participation is key. And one critical way in which citizens participate is through contributions. As law professor Spencer Overton puts it, the “participatory interest” in elections is crucial for motivating Americans to understand and engage their democracy.
⁴⁰

But we can feed this participatory interest without allowing unlimited contributions to candidates. Or even contributions anywhere close to the amount permitted under the existing system. In my view, we satisfy the participatory interest if citizens can contribute up to $100 in an election. Beyond that, with proper people funding, no one needs to go.

3. Political expenditures separate from a campaign (so-called “independent expenditures”), whether by individuals or corporations, should not be banned, but they should be limited.

The first two rules could be achieved without any change to our Constitution. Consistent with
Citizens United,
Congress could establish a voluntary system to fund federal elections in exactly the way that I’ve described. Contributions would be effectively capped not by legal mandate, but because candidates would choose to take no more than $100 (so as to qualify for the voucher). Candidates choosing to live under the old system would be free to continue to do so.

I used to believe that this change would be enough. But the dynamic that we’ve seen over the past two years with super PACs has convinced me that we need something more.

The government, in my view, should never have the power to ban the political speech of any individual or group, regardless of whether a citizen or not, or “a person” or not. Citizens, foreigners, corporations, and (someday, I hope) dolphins should be free to add their perspective to the political marketplace of ideas.

But the recent experience with super PACs has convinced me that there must be an ability to limit the amount of independent expenditures that can be made in a campaign, so as to assure that candidates don’t become just as dependent upon independent spenders as they are now dependent upon contributors.

Limit, but not ban. Congress should be free to set reasonable limits to avoid improper dependence. It should not be free to silence any one faction in a debate.