Lobbyists and the wealthy have a firm hold on most lawmakers for a simple reason: they bought it. Gift giving and large campaign contributions are legal because well paid lawyers have successfully argued in the courts that such largess is an exercise of First Amendment rights to Free Speech. With all deference to those judges who bought this hokum, I heartily disagree.
The First Amendment protects citizens from arrest and prosecution for expressing their sincerely held convictions regardless of viewpoint. What it insures is an equal right to public expression for all on the basis that this is in the best interests of the public good.
However, the intent of gifts and large campaign contributions is to provide special, private, direct access to the lawmaking process; access that is unrelated to the value, integrity or persuasive value of the donors’ beliefs or intents and access that diminishes the value of the free speech of ordinary citizens. Any campaign contribution in money or in kind in excess of 0.1 % of any lawmaker’s (or judge’s) campaign funds, or personal gifts of any amount should be treated as attempted bribery; because that’s what it is.
These bribes are all the more potent because we pay our lawmakers miserly salaries and then expect them not to be manipulated by far better paid lobbyists― while we culturally accept that relative compensation denotes relative competence and respect. Furthermore, we force them to beg for campaign war chests, making them dependent on party hacks with access to eccentric wealth so that they can make it through party primaries and lengthy campaigns. It’s a wonder that there are any reasonably honorable and reasonably moderate lawmakers in public service.
What we need to do is: 1) pay lawmakers at wage and benefit levels equivalent to those of executive management in medium sized organizations. 2) Limit legal campaign contributions from any source―including aggregators―to less than 0.1% of a candidate’s total. (3) Stop gerrymandering safe districts which give party extremists excessive representation ―I’ll discuss this one in a later post.
And to those three obvious suggestions I’ll add a third (somewhat tongue in cheek): 4) limit the total allowable compensation of any registered lobbyist to less than 80% of that of the lawmaker he/she is lobbying. This will keep lawmakers from being overawed by the lobbyists, and by the prospect of becoming a lobbyist as the key to retirement.
Were these rules in place today we could solve things like Healthcare Reform in a civilized manner rather than having to endure purchased lies and deception by corrupted Senators and Congressmen, including those like Dick Armey of FreedomWorks who are now paid lobbyists.
In the end, we have only ourselves, the electorate, to blame because we have been too uninvolved and too unrealistic to maintain a healthy democratic system. The good news is that we still have the power to improve things.
Related Post: Supreme Court may hasten our democracy’s strangulation by deregulating corporate contributions
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