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By The Hill Editors
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Posted: 06/26/07 06:34 PM [ET] |
What nonsense the nation’s campaign finance laws are.
The Supreme Court yesterday struck down (or at least opened a loophole in) the ban on corporations and labor unions buying TV ads in the run-up to elections.
Writing for the 5-4 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that “discussion of issues cannot be suppressed simply because the issues also may be pertinent in an election. Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor.”
Justice David Souter, for the minority, countered, “what is called a ‘ban’ on speech is a limit on the financing of electioneering broadcasts by entities ... that insist on acting as conduits from the campaign war chests of business corporations.”
It will take further test cases to discover where the court draws the line, if at all; Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito did not go so far as Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, who suggested an open season for labor and corporate money.
Most people cannot square the First Amendment ban on Congress “abridging the freedom of speech” with a law that prohibits specified categories of people — corporations and unions are bodies of people — from participating in pre-election debate. True, most people are laymen in constitutional analysis, but in this case, the laymen have it right.
Incumbents have a vested interest in protecting themselves from criticism come election season, but the nation and its citizens do not.
So far, so commonplace.
Beyond welcoming the decision, however, it is interesting to note that it will probably make little difference to the campaign finance law’s effectiveness in achieving its ostensible aim, which was to expunge from the democratic process what lawmakers thought to be the undue influence of big money.
No one — least of all Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an author of the law whose presidential fundraising is lagging — could have looked at the American political scene a day before the Supreme Court decision and concluded that money had been sidelined. There is more of it campaigning now than ever before.
All that the legislated restrictions appear to have done was force those raising and spending money to jump through accounting hoops. Corporate and union money has been spent on ads up until 60 days before an election, and then spent on getting out the vote, etc., after the deadline. Money from individuals has been carefully saved so it could be spent on TV ads after the 60-day cut-off.
The court’s decision yesterday, if it heralds more decisions widening the latitude of corporate and labor money, will make this sort of busywork-bookkeeping unnecessary and campaigning less subject to the variables of budgeting. It will probably also mean a little more business and labor money being spent on elections — but only a little.
The decision will probably mean above all that campaigns can dispense with the need to employ someone to enforce unnecessary restrictions that oblige this dollar to be spent now and that identical dollar to be saved until later.
We’re a little closer to common sense. For this small mercy, much thanks.
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