Money in Politics

Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, the United States government has treated anonymous monetary contributions to political organizations as constitutionally protected free speech. Much has been made of the practical implications of Citizens United, especially in criticizing the potential for plutocracy inherent in the Court’s majority opinion. While I am generally sympathetic to such criticisms, I am writing this Money in Politics (MiP) series to evaluate a different premise of the Citizens United ruling: that independent expenditures are a form of constitutionally protected speech; simplistically, that money equals speech.

In fairness, the Court does not adhere to this premise directly. It cites the majority opinion from another case, Buckley v. Valeo, which reasons that money is a necessary prerequisite to political speech, therefore monetary outlays need protection in order to protect speech:  “A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money. The distribution of the humblest handbill or leaflet entails printing, paper, and circulation costs. Speeches and rallies generally necessitate hiring a hall and publicizing the event. The electorate’s increasing dependence on television, radio, and other mass media for news and information has made these expensive modes of communication indispensable instruments of effective political speech.” In other words, money is not speech per se, but because we live in a society that has privatized and commoditized major segments of the public forum, we should constitutionally protect persons’ ability to purchase space in such forums.

Its commission of the naturalism fallacy notwithstanding, the Court ignores substantial reasons to differentiate between monetary expenditures (a market transaction) and political speech (a political interaction). The very interests that the Court cites in establishing the historically contingent relation of money to speech – i.e., it’s ability to create broad, deep, and inclusive discussion of issues of public importance – are precisely those interests that no market transaction can achieve. In the three parts that follow, I will demonstrate the inadequacy of money in general, and anonymous contributions and dominant forms of mass media in particular, fail to obtain each of these three interests.

Part 1: Money and Speech discusses the nature of substantial political discourse and the differing capacities of independent campaign expenditures and actual political speech to add useful content to public discussions.

Part 2: Money and Citizenship discusses the role of the citizen in shaping political discussion and taking ownership of the political system generally and American democracy in particular, as well as how legal equivalence of money and speech erodes the traditional citizens’ ownership of democratic practices.

Part 3: Money and Spontaneity discusses the central role of political speech to the expression and achievement of human excellence, and how equating money with speech threatens the shared reality that forms the backdrop of the political realm as well as devalues the essentially creative nature of true political expression.

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(Photo courtesy of thevoterupdate.com)