Reducing the Power of Money in Politics

Recently, while reading some comments on an article on the Patch, I saw a comment by a reader who wanted to limit corporate money in politics. I see two possible motivations for this.

One, would be to gain more power for Democrats. Or two, to limit corrupt decisions by government. If the motivation is the first, then limiting corporate money would be successful by limiting money which goes to both parties, but over time would slightly favor the GOP. Then union money that goes 90 percent or more to Democrats would be far more powerful. 

However, if the motivation is the second issue of reducing the corruption of politcal decisions, it would not make much difference.

First, it would leave public employee unions more powerful making it much harder for states to solve their issues. Second, it would require an amendment to the constitution to even hope to be successful. I think there are better ideas that would have a better chance to make an impact, without limiting free speech rights. 

One idea proposed by another commenter was term limits. This may or may not be a good idea for other reasons, but I am not confident it will lead to less corruption. Many politicians will be looking for their next job and will still need to “make good” for the party so the party gets money, and the party will help them after they leave office.

Many Democrats voted for Obamacare knowing they would likely lose, and that it has pushed our country in a far worse position. It would have been even easier to do the wrong thing if there were large numbers of “Lame Duck” congressman. I can think of three ways to reduce the power of money in politics. First, the changes made in Act 10 are a great start to limiting corruption caused by money in state spending. Secondly, we need to reduce the size and influence of government. Lastly, we need to be more informed about the issues on our own.

The first question I ask to anyone who wants to limit corporate money, is if they also want to limit union money. If they say no, then I ignore what they think or say, since they are not serious on limiting corruption in politics. These people just want to ensure left wing big-government people will be in charge and lead us to results like California and Illinois at the state level. Or, lead us to a debt crisis at some point on the federal level.

Scott Walker’s budget repair bill, by limiting collective bargaining power, will reduce the corrupt influence of union money in state politics, assuming the unions are not able to get a public union owned governor. Long term, this will force Democrats to care about something else besides public employee unions as they have put this lobby ahead of education, jobs (mining bill), other state services, and private union members. On many of these issues the GOP has been the better choice. Certainly this is true for education and jobs.

If we look at experience from history, larger government leads to larger corruption. A good example is the transcontinental railroad, which is usually pointed to as a great example of why we need big government. Because of incentives that paid per mile of track and tripled the payment in mountain terrain, railroads laid as much track as possible in bad terrain and built as cheap as possible.

It took five years to repair the track from the shoddy construction after completion. James J. Hill completed the Great Northern Railway without public money and without the waste and poor construction. At the same time, as the building of the first transcontinental railroad we had the Credit Mobilier scandal. The point is, the more power an influence the government has, the more money will be spent to get that power or money.

We need to push for smaller government to reduce corruption. We should push for massive reductions in spending. We also should push more decisions to the state level. If transportation money was block granted to states, I don’t think you would see insane spending like Tom Barrett’s trolley, if the state could use the money on the best use.  Energy spending has led to some large disasters with wasteful pet projects like ethanol, wind power, and solar energy (Solyndra). We should eliminate all of that spending.

Another way to reduce power is to simplify the tax code. Deductions and credits are a great way to give gifts to supporters. We should cut corporate tax rates in half and eliminate special deductions and credits. In personal tax codes we need reform that lowers the top rate and eliminates special credits like $8,000 to buy electric cars.

All of these ideas will go further to reducing the corrupt influence of money, than limiting free speech rights. But to make them happen we have to inform ourselves on candidates and help friends to understand. Unfortunately, most media is supportive of Democrats and big government so they fail to be useful to inform people of truth. In addition, most media either left outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC, or CBS , or right-of-center outlets like FOX fail to understand or explain free market principles.

Most media is lazy and will parrot talking points without any serious investigative reporting. In reality the lazy, ignorant, and biased nature of our major media, is major obstacle to solving our issues.

Money will always be a part of politics. We need to support candidates like Scott Walker who have shown the courage to make truly reformative changes to reduce corrupting influence of money on the largest controllable cost for the state. You can’t support the recall effort, and honestly claim you want politicians with the courage to take on the issue of special interest money. If we want to reduce corruption at the federal level, we need to work together to fight for a limited central government like our founders intended. Finally we must inform others who can be reasoned with, about the facts.