I spent this past week complaining about government dysfunction — so I’d be remiss not to mention the Citizens United ruling. Of the many bad things that happened last week Citizens United is probably the most significant. The ruling will make our government worse. How much worse? It’s not clear — some argue that risk-averse corporations won’t be inclined to amp up political contributions, wasting share-holder money and damaging their brands; some say that the barriers between government and corporations are already so permeable that this ruling amounts to little — yet the point is, it will make things worse. The gap between legislators and their constituents (and the country they serve) will only widen, and the connection between corporations and the law will tighten.
Who can deny that? That an increase in corporate money means a decrease in legislator independence, in rational legislation, and in citizen trust in the system?
Specifically, I’d say there are two things we’re going to see more of: the rich buying elections, i.e. influencing who gets into congress through the link between corporate campaign contributions and voters’ opinions, and the rich buying votes, i.e. influencing what those congressmen do once they’re there through the link between campaign contributions and the politicians who benefit from receiving them.
Money of course should never be able to buy these things. Money is for buying cars and hotel tickets and (sure) prostitutes — but it cannot be for buying political power. The two spheres must be separate. That’s what equality demands: that a proclivity for making money does not translate into the power to make laws (just like the power to make laws doesn’t translate into the power to make money). Yet the merger of these two spheres, the economic and political, is already real. Consider the remarkable graph below, from Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels. He associates the votes of senators with the political opinions of their constituents, separated by income level:
This is a big subject. There are a whole lot of graphs to show and statistics to cite, but the point is commonsensical. There’s too much money in politics. It makes our laws worse, it’s inimical to justice, and it will, in the long run, undermine the institutional integrity of our legislative branch. Who knows what Citizens United will bring? But like I said: it will only make things worse.
Photo credit: Flickr stream of David Paul Ohmer