Corporations allowed to donate to campaigns
Silke Mahardy, '13 | Staff Reporter
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: Opinion
A recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling overturned not only century-old restrictions on corporate campaign spending but granted corporations unprecedented rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Under this new ruling private, for-profit corporations have been granted the right to free speech, thereby allowing unlimited corporate campaign spending. "We the People" has now been amended to include, "We the Corporations." Surely this was not the intent of the Founding Fathers of this nation.
Before this historic ruling, corporations were forbidden by federal law to spend money from their vast coffers in direct support or opposition of a candidate. Now unlimited corporate spending on campaign ads, either for or against a candidate, as long as they do not work in conjunction with a candidate's campaign is allowed and they disclose their role in the process.
Major portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), commonly known as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act, which was passed in 2002 to regulate how political campaigns can be financed, declared constitutional by the court just six years ago, have been overturned.
Critics of the act believed that corporations should be allowed to spend money in the same way an individual can, and denying them that right is unconstitutional censorship. The high court concurred. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make…categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech."
Justice John Paul Stevens stated in his 90-page dissent, "While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."
Consider that in 2008 alone the profits from the top 100 U.S. corporations, including the largest Exxon-Mobil, were over $600 billion. Say they decided to spend a very small percentage of that on direct campaign financing; five percent would amount to $30 billion! That is 10 times the entire expenditure for the last campaign cycle including the presidential race according to Jamin B. Raskin, Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, DC.
Before this historic ruling, corporations were forbidden by federal law to spend money from their vast coffers in direct support or opposition of a candidate. Now unlimited corporate spending on campaign ads, either for or against a candidate, as long as they do not work in conjunction with a candidate's campaign is allowed and they disclose their role in the process.
Major portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), commonly known as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act, which was passed in 2002 to regulate how political campaigns can be financed, declared constitutional by the court just six years ago, have been overturned.
Critics of the act believed that corporations should be allowed to spend money in the same way an individual can, and denying them that right is unconstitutional censorship. The high court concurred. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make…categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech."
Justice John Paul Stevens stated in his 90-page dissent, "While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."
Consider that in 2008 alone the profits from the top 100 U.S. corporations, including the largest Exxon-Mobil, were over $600 billion. Say they decided to spend a very small percentage of that on direct campaign financing; five percent would amount to $30 billion! That is 10 times the entire expenditure for the last campaign cycle including the presidential race according to Jamin B. Raskin, Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, DC.