“All Voices Should Be Heard”: The Government Shutdown Shows Contribution Limits Are Needed More Than Ever
The Supreme Court must uphold the overall contribution limit in McCutcheon v. FEC, and certainly should not consider striking the base limits.
The Supreme Court has never struck down a federal contribution limit, maintaining that these limits are valid to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption. Right now, when confidence in Congress is at an all time low, it would be extremely unwise to toss aside that precedent.
The fact is, contribution limits are already too high. Candidates for office are over-reliant on donors with the capabilities to give the most and current federal limits are far higher than what the average American can afford to give. As evidence of this, one need not look further than the 2012 elections, in which House candidates raised 55 percent of their individual contributions in chunks of $1,000 or more from just .06 percent of the population and Senate candidates raked in 64 percent in contributions of that size from about 133,000 individuals.
Striking the aggregate limit would make that problem significantly worse. Only a small handful of individuals comes even close to the aggregate limit. In 2012 only 1,219 people came within 10 percent of the $117,000 limit, which is not at all surprising when you consider that this is more than twice what the average American household earns in a year.
Based on the behavior and the giving capability of those 1,219 donors, U.S. PIRG and Demos project in our new report that absent an overall limit those donors would increase their giving, pumping an estimated $1 billion dollars into the next four federal elections, making candidates more dependent on a small set of people for big money and minimizing the donations of everyday Americans. To play out what that would look like, we estimated that if the limit had not been in place in 2012, the 1,219 donors would likely have given about 150 percent of what President Obama and Governor Romney raised from over four million small donors.
Now in the second week of the shutdown, we are currently feeling the full effect of what happens when a handful of extreme individuals exerts disproportionate power in government. Lifting the overall limit, as McCutcheon is asking the Court to do, would give even more clout to a small set of very wealthy individuals. This is not only inherently anti-democratic but also has real world consequences. New research from Public Campaign shows that these big donors are highly partisan donors indicating that striking the limits would further exacerbate polarization in Washington.
In order for democracy to function every citizen should have meaningful opportunity to influence the actions of government and we must also have faith that our voices will be heard, regardless of whether or not we can afford to make a $9.9 million, $2,500, or even $200 political disbursement. The Supreme Court has long recognized this, emphasizing the importance of protecting against the appearance of corruption. However, it severely miscalculated the effect its decision in Citizens United would have in that arena.
Most Americans do not feel that our voices are being heard on Capitol Hill and who could blame us? In Citizens United the Supreme Court handed a giant megaphone to the wealthiest interests and on Tuesday it will consider turning up the volume even higher. It’s interesting that those who argue that limits threaten free speech seem unconcerned with the speaking ability of the majority of Americans who cannot afford to write a $50,000 check to a political party.
The last thing we need right now is to increase the giving of the donors with the deepest pockets. Rather, we should be increasing the breadth of Americans providing the funds needed to run campaigns. We need policies that encourage more everyday Americans to engage in politics by making small contributions to candidates and causes: low contribution limits, matching public funds, and a tax refund for small dollar gifts. We need the Supreme Court to respect longstanding precedent and to uphold the aggregate and the base contribution limits.
By: Blair Bowie, U. S. News and World Report Debate Club, October 8, 2013
“They Haven’t The Foggiest Idea”: The Hostage Takers Disagree Over The Ransom Note
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) said on Monday that he’s prepared to block a debt-ceiling increase, consequences be damned, unless Democrats give him “a full delay or defund of Obamacare.” Even if Democrats offered him changes to Social Security in exchange for nothing, the New Jersey Republican said, it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy him.
Just 24 hours later, Garrett appeared on CNN and said he’s prepared to block a debt-ceiling increase unless we “begin to address our entitlement problems.”
One lawmaker, one issue, two completely different positions.
Similarly, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — remember him? — has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, making his priorities clear.
The president is giving Congress the silent treatment. He’s refusing to talk, even though the federal government is about to hit the debt ceiling. That’s a shame—because this doesn’t have to be another crisis. It could be a breakthrough. We have an opportunity here to pay down the national debt and jump-start the economy, if we start talking, and talking specifics, now. To break the deadlock, both sides should agree to common-sense reforms of the country’s entitlement programs and tax code.
What does Ryan have to say about the Affordable Care Act? Nothing. In fact, the 1,000-word op-ed doesn’t mention the health care law at all.
Much to the chagrin of right-wing activists, Ryan apparently wants to change the ransom note. He’s comfortable with threatening deliberate harm to the nation unless Democrats meet Republican demands, but the Budget Committee chair wants to replace Tea Partiers’ priority (taking health care benefits away from working families) with his priority (tax reform and entitlement cuts).
Now, I have a hunch I know why Ryan ignores “Obamacare” in his preferred ransom note, and it’s not because he forgot about it. Republicans are reluctant to admit it, but the Affordable Care Act vastly improves the nation’s finances in the coming years, and repealing it would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt. Ryan can’t afford to destroy the health care law — he uses it in his own plan to balance the budget over the next decade.
More important, though, in the bigger picture, Republicans aren’t just flailing, they’re lost.
They shut the government down last week, and they’re prepared to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States next week. They freely admit they’re prepared to impose self-inflicted wounds on Americans, on purpose, unless their demands are met.
And what are those demands? Even now, after months of planning and fiascos of their own making, the party’s own leaders and members haven’t the foggiest idea.
Here’s a radical suggestion: maybe Republicans can reopen the government, agree to skip the sovereign debt crisis, get their act together, and get back to us?
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, October 9, 2013
“Disarming A Weapon Of Economic Destruction”: The Debt-Ceiling Crisis To End All Debt-Ceiling Crises
The most important fact about the shutdown crisis, which is soon to become the shutdown/debt-ceiling crisis, is that Democrats are not making any demands. The only thing they want is for the government to reopen and for the United States not to default. Since these are things Republicans also claim they want, they can’t be considered demands. Republicans, on the other hand, have lots of demands, even if they keep changing. That’s why the current Republican talking point—”Why won’t the Democrats negotiate?”—is fundamentally misleading. One way for this whole thing to end is for Republicans to give up their demands and admit they’ve lost. Unsurprisingly, they’re reluctant to do this. But what if Democrats started making a demand of their own?
Today, White House press secretary Jay Carney said something encouraging: that Barack Obama is never again going to negotiate over the debt ceiling. “Whether it’s today, or a number of weeks from now, or a number of months from now, or a number of years from now, it will always be Congress’s responsibility to raise our debt ceiling so that the United States can pay the bills that Congress has incurred,” Carney said. “It will always be, as long as he’s president, President Obama’s position that that responsibility is not negotiable. That there’s not a game of trading for political priorities or agenda items that Republicans have not been able to achieve through legislation or the ballot box.”
That’s a good start, but how about this. As part of the resolution to the crisis, Obama should demand that whatever agreement they come to include eliminating the debt ceiling. Not raise it, blast it to oblivion. The fact that we have a debt ceiling at all is ridiculous. It essentially requires Congress to approve every budget twice, once to spend the money, and once to pay the bills for the money they just spent. There’s only one other democracy in the world (Denmark) that has such a thing, and they set theirs high enough that it never matters. In the days before the Republican Party descended into madness, the debt ceiling was nothing more than an occasion for some harmless grandstanding by the opposition party, but now it has become a weapon of economic destruction that needs to be disarmed. So get rid of it. If Republicans don’t want the country to take on debt, they can try to put together a balanced budget and see if it can pass. But this insanity has to stop, and the way to do it is to take away the minority party’s ability to initiate what Bloomberg News calls “an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen.”
That’s what Obama ought to demand.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 7, 2013
“The GOP’s White Southern Republican Problem”: Following Similar Path Of “Massive Resistance” Taken After Brown V. Board Decision
In 1956, segregationist Southern Democrats outlined a policy of “massive resistance” in response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling desegregating public schools.
Today, the Republican Party, particularly in the South, is following a similar path of massive resistance when it comes to Obamacare and any other major policy initiative proposed by President Obama. According to The New York Times, twenty-six states—all-but-three controlled by the GOP—have declined the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, thereby denying health insurance coverage to 8 million Americans. “Every state in the Deep South, with the exception of Arkansas, has rejected the expansion,” writes the Times.
The GOP’s obsession with defunding Obamacare has caused them to shut down the government despite the public outcry. Many factors play into the shutdown, but a leading cause is the fact the Republican Party is whiter, more Southern and more conservative than ever before.
Writes Charlie Cook:
Between 2000 and 2010, the non-Hispanic white share of the population fell from 69 percent to 64 percent, closely tracking the 5-point drop in the white share of the electorate measured by exit polls between 2004 and 2012. But after the post-census redistricting and the 2012 elections, the non-Hispanic white share of the average Republican House district jumped from 73 percent to 75 percent, and the average Democratic House district declined from 52 percent white to 51 percent white. In other words, while the country continues to grow more racially diverse, the average Republican district continues to get even whiter.
As Congress has become more polarized along party lines, it’s become more racially polarized, too. In 2000, House Republicans represented 59 percent of all white U.S. residents and 40 percent of all nonwhite residents. But today, they represent 63 percent of all whites and just 38 percent of all nonwhites.
Even though House Republicans do not represent the changing face of the country, they have a huge structural advantage when it comes to the makeup of Congress, especially following the 2010 redistricting cycle, when the GOP controlled the process in twenty states compared to seven for Democrats. Writes Cook:
The number of strongly Democratic districts—those with a score of D+5 or greater at the presidential level—decreased from 144 before redistricting to 136 afterward. The number of strongly Republican districts—those with a score of R+5 or greater—increased from 175 to 183. When one party starts out with 47 more very strong districts than the other, the numbers suggest that the fix is in for any election featuring a fairly neutral environment. Republicans would need to mess up pretty badly to lose their House majority in the near future.
This phenomenon is most acute in the South, where the GOP systematically packed as many Democratic voters, particularly African-Americans, into as few districts as possible in order to ensure huge Republicans majorities across the region (see my story “How the GOP Is Resegregating the South”). Here’s the gist:
In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans—to protect and expand their gains in 2010—have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. “What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “The bigger picture is to ultimately make the Democratic Party in the South be represented only by people of color.” The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.
After the 1994 elections, white Southern Republicans accounted for sixty-two members of the 230-member House GOP majority. Today, white Southern Republicans account for ninety-seven members out of the 233-member House GOP majority. That’s a pretty remarkable shift and one that is not likely to end any time soon. “In all but one election since 1976, the proportion of Southerners in the House Republican caucus has gone up,” says Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.
Of the fifty-four members of the congressional Tea Party Caucus—which is most vociferously telling John Boehner not to compromise—33 are from Southern states. Of the eighty members of the so-called House GOP “suicide caucus” who urged Boehner to defund Obamacare, “half of these districts are concentrated in the South,” writes Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. As long as ultraconservative Southerners from lily-white districts hold the balance of power in the Congress, we shouldn’t be surprised that obstruction and dysfunction is the result.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, October 4, 2013
“The Party Making No Demands”: Republicans Just Can’t Seem To Recognize Reality
Charles Krauthammer sticks to his party’s script in his new column this morning, complaining about President Obama’s “refusal to compromise or even negotiate.” It got me thinking about how best to explain to conservatives why this makes so little sense.
Maybe it’s time to flip the script to better illustrate the point. After all, when it comes to funding the government and protecting the integrity of the full faith and credit of the United States, we’re describing an inherently cooperative process — the White House needs Congress to pass legislation, the Congress needs a president to sign the legislation. One without the other doesn’t work.
With this mind, imagine a hypothetical.
Let’s say President Obama, feeling good after winning re-election fairly easily, adopted an overly confident posture with lawmakers. He started boasting about the fact that his approval rating is four times higher than Congress’ approval rating; his policy agenda enjoys broader public support than Republicans’ policy agenda; and he decided it’s time they start rewarding him before he considered engaging in basic governance.
“Sure,” Obama said to Republicans in this imaginary scenario, “I’ll sign the spending measures to prevent a government shutdown, but first you have to raise taxes on the wealthy. And end the sequestration policy. And pass comprehensive immigration reform. And approve universal background checks. The American people are with me, so I expect you to compromise and negotiate with me on these matters.”
The president then said to GOP lawmakers, “And sure, I’ll sign a bill to raise the debt limit, paying the bills you already piled up, but I’m not ready to sign a ‘clean’ bill. Instead, I also expect Congress to pass a cap-and-trade bill, a public option for the health care system, universal pre-K, and billions in infrastructure investments. If you refuse, I’ll have no choice but to tell the public you refuse to compromise and negotiate.”
Much of the political establishment has come to accept a certain frame: the White House is going to have to accept some concessions to make congressional Republicans happy. Obama won’t like it, but voters did elect a House GOP majority.
What I’m suggesting is that this assumption is incomplete. No one seems to question, or even consider in passing, what Republicans will be asked to do to make the White House happy. Boehner & Co. won’t like it, but voters did elect a Democratic president.
Of course, the point of this apparently silly hypothetical is to help Krauthammer and others who share his ideology understand a basic truth: Obama isn’t making any demands. He’s offered no threats. There is no presidential wish list, filled with progressive goodies — unrelated to the budget or the debt ceiling — that Obama expects Congress to pass before the president fulfills his duties.
This notion that Obama “refuses to compromise or even negotiate” isn’t just deliberately misleading; it’s demonstrably silly. If the president was making extravagant demands, threatening to veto every bill lacking liberal treats, Republicans and their pundits would have a point.
But until then, can we at least try to recognize reality as it exists?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 4, 2013
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