Every incoming president early in his (or this time around possibly her) first term invariably throws a sop to the base. In Bill Clinton’s first term it was “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. In George W. Bush’s it was tax cuts. In Barack Obama’s it was the “stimulus package”, actually handouts to favored individuals, organizations, and causes and healthcare reform, i.e. the Affordable Care Act, an embarrassment of riches.
Hillary Clinton has already telegraphed what her sop will be: overturning Citizens United v. FEC by constitutional amendment.
I’m fishing for opinions on what I should think about such a move. On the one hand the amendment process is long and cumbersome. Overturning Citizens United by constitutional amendment might just be a futile gesture. On the other I think I would actually be favorably disposed towards an amendment that granted the Congress the power to, say, limit political contributions to donors who are real living, breathing human beings and cap the size of those contributions at some reasonable level. I would oppose an amendment that allowed the Congress to pick and choose among the organizations with the right to make political contributions. Some of the animals should not be more equal than others.
In other words I’d need to see the amendment before I could render a judgment.
At any rate, what do you think?
She is pandering to voters. Proposing an amendment to resolve Citizens United sounds great but is apt to fail. But beyond the ploy of an amendment, what speaks loudly to me is that she, personally, is not rejecting the spending that Citizen United normalizes.
It takes no amendment for her to reject SuperPAC money. When she rejects the money, I’ll consider her support of the amendment sincere.
Not a bad idea, yet, money always finds a way, e.g non-partisan hmm, educational campaigns, etc. In addition, I would want to see a simple short amendment that does not require 12 opinions from 6 learned law professors to understand. Gravy would be a paragraph saying what happens when the amendment is violated.
Citizens United pointed to various disclosure laws that could address concerns raised by opponents, and when Democrats drafted the Disclose Act, it was full of special interest exemptions. Republicans opposed it, and probably would have opposed it without the exemptions, but the decision or inability to push a “clean bill” is telling.
There is no bi-partisan support for the amendment, but there appears to be strong Democratic support for laws that would allow Congress to favor perceived disadvantaged groups (like the NRA) over others. The inability to pass half-measures, leading to the call for the Hail Mary of amending the First Amendment, suggests this is all show.
Frankly, people who think we need better disclosure laws should probably oppose an Amendment as a distraction, for now.
My campaign finance reform proposal:
1) Anyone can give any amount they want to a candidate – just so long as they can vote for the candidate. None of this crap of guys in California giving money to races in Florida and vice versa.
2) The candidates cannot spend any of the money until it is publicly disclosed who gave it to them. I don’t mind that they get bought, because that’s going to happen. I’d just like to know who did it.
3) Only individuals running for office can run political ads within 8 weeks of an election.
4) No politician can run for any OTHER office while currently serving in government. If you’re a Senator, you can run for reelection to your Senate seat without giving up your seat, but it you want to run for Governor or President or some such, you need to resign before raising a dime. The same goes if you’re a janitor down at the State Department.
5) To further the fourth point, all donations to a politician must come with an explicit statement that the funds are intended for that candidate to run for a particular office. Those funds can’t be used by a pol to run for another office. If the hypothetical Senator in my fourth point resigns his seat to run for President, he has to return ALL of the money raised for running for Senate, including any funds already spent. In fact, for every dollar he has already spent running for office, he must pay the federal treasury TEN dollars before spending a dime on running for another office.
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I’d include the penalties for violation of these rules, but anyone here who knows my prior comments will understand that they’d be rather draconian.
As to this being Hillary’s sop to the base: It’s like most other things Hillary has done in government – inept. This is a horrible sop because it can’t happen until years after she’s elected, if it happens at all. Just plain ineptitude.
Ellipses: A little surprised you would support your 3). Basically, the only lies that can be told eight weeks before an election are by the professionals?
Not happening. We rarely pass Amendments and there is no public outcry for this.
PD- If #3 would just reduce the number of ads and stupid phone calls that alone would make it a good idea.
Steve
I’ve seen a few proposed amendments, and there are a few concepts I don’t like, but frankly I think any amendment would be hard to write and easy to have unintended consequences. I suppose if the Amendment said, we hereby adopt the dissenting opinion in Citizens United as the proper rule of interpretation, it would be quite understandable, but I guess that lacks the dignity of adopting a new principle and waiting to see what the Courts do with it.
1. Corporations have no rights. Not the view of the dissent in Citizens United and would undo a century of rulings about the nature and extent of corporate rights. Bat $4!T crazy IMHO.
2. Congress can pass reasonable laws. This is too deferential to Congress and probably eliminates most judicial review. I think Congress would likely use this power to its personal advantage and so its laws should be subject to heightened scrutiny.
3. Freedom of the Press. One of the fixes for concerns that Congress would start restricting popular media is to add a caveat that freedom of the press is not effected by the Amendment. The problem here is that the Courts have hardly ever premised decision on this freedom, instead relying upon free speech, or even broader the freedom of expression embedded in the First Amendment. This fix leads to the question of who is the “press” and what rights do they have that people don’t.
PD- If #3 would just reduce the number of ads and stupid phone calls that alone would make it a good idea.
yeah, let’s ban polling two months before an election. I’d include primaries as elections subject to these rules.
PD – the older I get the more it looks like none of them have any idea that there IS a truth. So cutting down on the sheer number of lies would be good.
I’m not really happy with three, but it’s the best I can think of for cutting down the influence of PACs.
My first point is intended to cut back on influence OUTSIDE of a district, and also to cut back on corporate influence. If a CEO wants to donate a million dollars to a candidate, fine, do it honestly, not through PACs, bundlers, lobbyists and so on. And also only do it in your own district.
I’m in a strange space in that I think Citizens United is essentially correct as far as a constitutional ruling, but that I don’t particularly care for it. The problem is that it is too damned hard to figure out who is lying and why at times, and the closer you get to an election the harder it gets to sort things out in time. Here I’m thinking of Lawton Chiles (anonymous) push polling against Jeb Bush back in the 1994 Florida gubernatorial race. It was a pretty slimy trick, the more so because people didn’t know what it was or who was really behind it. It probably secured Chiles the win, and incidentally helped lead to President W.
Now, if a PAC (in any of their many guises) wants to lay the groundwork for their candidate or their preferred policy choices, they can do that most of the rest of the time. I don’t have a problem with it (even when I disagree with the positions advocated) whether it be unions or the NRA. But close to an election, let the contestants fight it out.
Incidentally, I’d also prefer there be a national voter registry. We’ve got a lot of snowbirds that live and vote up north (often absentia), and also have homes and vote down here. I’d like to see such people get sent to a federal maximum security “pound-me-in-the-ass” prison for a five year stretch, no parole, no pardons allowed. Investigations into the 2000 election found determined that that was going on, but since it was almost 100% Democratic voters that was doing it, the news types stopped looking into it. Probably some of their rich bosses were culprits. A federal database would clear that up right quick.
It’s an incredibly stupid idea. Personally, I think she’s only doing it to get Sander’s votes. She knows how weak she is and I’m sure she’s aware of the polling that a lot of Sanders supporters would rather vote for Johnson or Stein than Clinton.
I think her actual sop to the base (once elected) will be some kind of guaranteed paid family and/or medical leave. She hasn’t been consistent on much, but this is a policy preference that’s been consistent, is part of her platform, appeals to the entirety of the Democratic base and, particularly, women voters. It’s also a helluva lot more achievable than a Constitutional amendment.
This is leaving aside the fact that most people don’t seem to understand what Citizen United was actually about – the currently narratives are pretty much wrong.
@andy, you mean that it is quite possible that people who don’t like the current campaign-finance system might still find it offensive that the government can stop someone from showing a pay-per-view movie that is critical of Hillary Clinton.
Should I be able to distribute a movie critical of Trump only in designated free speech time periods?
The problem with outlawing anonymous donations is that you can no longer be politically “in the closet”. The Netscape(? or other) CEO who was fired for donating to a cause not approved by the customers is one example, but negative job reviews, job application rejections, criminal and civil trial verdicts, etc. will be subject to a new dimension.
You will donate at the risk of your entire life and, possibly, your actual life.
PD, basically yes. I don’t trust the government as an arbiter of what constitutes legitimate political speech.