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02/11/12
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December
22, 2003 The Court has upheld by a 5–4 vote the McCain-Feingold law, which among other things prohibits political parties from raising unregulated “soft money” and restricts “issue” advertising on television 60 days before a general election and 30 days before a primary. This is no minor matter. Five members of the Supreme Court (including the “liberals”) are willing to accept limits on free speech because in their view it will help avoid the appearance of corrupt access to government favor-peddlers. Since it won’t actually do that — as even the majority admitted — that flimsy excuse to violate natural and First Amendment rights has no legs to stand on. One wonders whether the advocates of such controls are dealing in good faith. They complain that previous restrictions have not worked; eventually everyone found a way to evade them. So now they try again. Do they seriously think the new rules won’t be gotten around? (No, they don’t.) What then? More restrictions on Americans’ freedom? This is where it is headed. The logic is relentless: Once the government’s authority to transfer wealth from one person to another is declared nonnegotiable, liberty becomes highly negotiable. Let’s state plainly what the champions of campaign-finance laws refuse to acknowledge. Government today is mostly a wealth-transfer machine. This takes roughly two forms: taxation and regulation. Through taxation politicians loot productive people and give the proceeds to favored constituencies, rich and poor. For example, when government subsidizes a business or a person, it first has to take the money from someone else without consent. Through regulation government can accomplish much the same goal. A regulation imposing quotas on imported clothing will raise the price of clothing in the American market and benefit domestic producers who otherwise would have lost out to foreigner competitors. The regulation is equivalent to a cash subsidy procured by taxation. Since government has the muscle to bestow wealth in these ways, it is no surprise that people lobby to become beneficiaries. The prospective rewards are so great that those aiming for them are willing to spend considerable sums in the effort. What better way to get a piece of the action than to contribute money to elect or reelect friendly candidates? Money isn’t spent only to obtain the unearned. Sometimes those threatened with taxation or regulation do it to protect themselves from state encroachment. They too have an interest in finding sympathetic candidates. When government has life-and-death power over business and other areas of life, we should expect to see such defensive activities. The second group of people is more honorable than the first, although campaign-finance reformers regard both as equally corrupt. But notice that the surest way to end that corruption is to prohibit government from engaging in favor-peddling in the first place. If government has nothing to sell, no one will try to buy. Unfortunately, it’s a rare politician who would deny himself the power to hand out booty. That’s how one wins votes and makes a career of politics. The Court didn’t take its own reasoning seriously enough. If it really wanted to remove the appearance of corrupt access to government, it would have voided the entire distributive state. There’s a simple way to keep money away from politics: keep politics away from money.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of Ideas on Liberty magazine. The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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