Don't forget campaign finance reform
Cut them all off!
Hypocrisy’s foul odor hangs over the decisions by many corporate leaders to suspend or cancel political campaign contributions in the wake of the armed insurrection that sacked of the U.S. Capitol Building on 1/6.
Some corporate leaders aimed their displeasure exclusively at the 147 Republicans who voted against certifying the electoral college vote (a vote, history will record, taken after the insurrection). Others have gone so far as to end all campaign contributions, at least for the time being. It remains to be seen if this will hold up when the 2022 midterm election season rolls around a couple of months from now.
The list of converts to this temporary halt in campaign spending includes some of the most conservative corporate entities in America including Walmart and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Home Depot’s billionaire founder Ken Langone, who backed Trump throughout his term in office, whined on CNBC, “I feel betrayed.”
I won’t take credit for Charles Schwab & Co. changing its tune twice in the past week. (See my post “Do Something”). A few days after that appeared, the company announced it was “suspending” campaign contributions from its corporate political action committee (PAC) to politicians who voted against certification. But then, after a Twitter video from Lincoln Project (the never-Trump Republican group) appeared (see below), they extended the ban to all politicians from both political parties. I have to think hundreds if not thousands of Americans like me had begun moving their accounts out of Schwab.
It’s clear why these usually conservative bastions are taking these steps. Millions of Americans are looking for a way to express their outrage over what happened. They’ve turned to using their economic power to punish corporations that supported Trump and his minions. And, in turn, those corporations have called a temporary halt to their campaign contributions in the hope it will all soon blow over.
Our job is to make sure it never does. Anyone who cares about the future of our democracy should make it a high priority to pursue far-reaching election reform and campaign finance reform in the weeks and months ahead.
A good place to start is HR 1, passed by the House of Representatives on a straight party line vote March 8, 2019. It was the first legislation passed by Democrats after winning control of the House in the 2018 midterms.
The bill puts limits on states’ ability to restrict voting rights and requires states to establish nonpartisan commissions for Congressional redistricting. It also would expand disclosure of campaign contributions by billionaires and corporations to “dark money” groups and sets up a federal matching program for small political contributions.
Nothing to stop PACs
Notice that the proposed legislation does nothing to curb corporate America’s PACs, which are their primary tool for swaying elections and, as they like to put it, gaining “access” to politicians. Corporate PACs play a major role in financing both parties’ political campaigns, which all but guarantees Congress never passes legislation that poses a serious challenge to companies’ and trade groups’ economic interests.
By the numbers (for the 2018 election cycle; the just concluded cycle isn’t listed yet on the Center for Responsive Politics website): In the House, PACs accounted for 33% of Democratic contributions and 40% of Republican contributions; in the Senate, the numbers were 12% and 26%, respectively. This doesn’t include the vast sums poured by billionaires and corporations into dark money groups that flood television, radio, billboards and online platforms with false and derogatory statements about politicians they wish to defeat.
Loosening corporate America’s grip over the legislative process in the Biden era will require reforms, that, alas, cannot be achieved through legislation because of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. That 5-4 ruling (it would now be a lopsided vote in favor because of Trump’s three appointees to the high court) gave corporations and other organized groups that same freedom of speech rights as individual citizens, and then equated any limits on their campaign spending as limits on speech.
What is a concerned citizen to do? The time has come for every American interested in preserving our democracy to press every corporation we work for, every corporation we do business with, and every corporation we buy products from to end all their PAC contributions. Suspending them for a few months in the hope passions will subside is the campaign spending equivalent of corporate environmental greenwashing. Let’s call it for what it is: Campaign money rinsing.
In the spirit of bipartisan unity, we must press corporations to do more. We should demand they permanently end all PAC contributions to politicians from both political parties. They should stop giving money to party and leadership PACs, whose donations in turn are used to keep legislators in line rather than thinking and voting independently. So, no more PAC cash to Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Majority Committee PAC, and no more PAC cash to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s PAC to the Future.
Some of the healthcare organizations that I’ve covered closely over the past several decades were among the first to jump onto the money rinsing bandwagon. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association a few days after the insurrection issued a statement by CEO Kim Keck. “In light of this week’s violent, shocking assault on the U.S. Capitol, and the votes of some members of Congress to subvert the results of November’s election by challenging Electoral College results, BCBSA will suspend contributions to those lawmakers who voted to undermine our democracy,” she said.
That would include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, whose most recent campaign received and $10,000 from the BCBS PAC. Other major healthcare contributors to the most powerful Republican in the House, a man who repeatedly stoked the lie that President-elect Biden did not win the election, included DaVita ($17.5K), UnitedHealth Group ($20K), Abbott Labs ($20K) and the American Hospital Association ($15K).
Health industry PACs were also among the biggest givers to the campaigns of Rep. Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona who heads up the House’s ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, and fellow Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, a former dentist. According to press reports, both men were involved in organizing the rally that preceded the insurrection where Trump egged on the mob.
Major healthcare contributors to Biggs’ most recent campaign included the American Assn. of Nurse Anesthetists ($10k), the American Optometric Assn. ($5.5K), Cigna Corp. ($3.5K) and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons ($2.5K). Gosar’s campaign coffers included donations from the American Dental Assn. ($14K), the American College of Radiology ($10K), and the American Society of Anesthesiologists ($7.5K).
One can’t help but notice that many of the specialist societies donating to ultra-conservatives have lobbied the hardest against limits on drug prices and ending surprise billing. Those physician guilds have also fought most efforts to rein in unnecessary healthcare spending or shift resources into primary care and preventive medicine.
And therein lies the hypocrisy of the stampede toward corporations and trade groups “suspending” their donations. They know why they give money. What they fear in the current moment is exposure for having overlooked the obvious anti-democratic tendencies of the politicians who fought for their economic self-interest.
Our democracy was in peril long before the armed insurrectionists invaded the Capitol. Over the past 40 years, the campaign finance limits erected after Richard Nixon resigned from office have been systematically dismantled by corporations. The Swiss cheese simile no longer applies; it’s all hole, no cheese.
Total spending on Congressional races has nearly tripled since Barack Obama was first elected president in 2008. The flood of corporate donations not only poisons the airwaves during our ever-lengthening election seasons, it undermines Congress’ ability to engage in meaningful political debate.
A self-imposed ban on all PAC contributions would not prevent corporate interests from advancing their interests on Capitol Hill. Big business, in addition to its campaign contributions, spends billions each year lobbying Congress. It’s Washington’s biggest industry, the swamp that Trump put in power.
Most of the lobbyists they hire previously worked on Capitol Hill and come from both sides of the aisle. Those massive lobbying armies would not be limited if corporate PACs ended their campaign contributions. They’d just have to work a little harder since they would no longer have direct influence through the power of their very large campaign contributions.
Given the high court’s unwillingness to overturn its previous decision, and a Republican minority in the Senate most likely to filibuster any form of campaign finance reform, voluntary corporate action is the only path to change. Citizens can help push them in that direction by demanding all corporations end all donations in any form to all politicians from both political parties, and using the power of their purses to punish those corporations that refuse to go along.