If the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and press had a primary purpose, it surely was to guarantee freedom to participate fully in political debate and in the process of electing candidates to office in our representative system. It’s hard to believe, but some people are trying to interfere with that primary right.
Many of the same liberals who would fight to the death to defend the right of pornographers to make money out of printed or electronic materials that degrade women for the pleasure of spectators are now trying to deny First Amendment rights to those who want to spend their own money to advocate electing a candidate to public office.
Of course, these double-standard liberals don’t express their goals just like that. What they say is, it’s terrible that Americans spend so much money on political campaigns.
It’s not terrible at all! Nobody forced anybody to spend one dollar; all that spending was completely voluntary. Most important, it was the personal money of private individuals. Since when don’t we have a right to spend our own money to exercise our rights of free speech and press in the political process?
Americans spend more money on alcohol and on tobacco than they do for political candidates. More money is spent on advertising pet food than on all Congressional campaigns. Should we spend more money discussing pet food than discussing who will lead our nation and write our nation’s laws?
Fortunately, nobody has yet set up a government bureau to determine how each of us should spend our own money. We enjoy the right to spend our money for purposes that other people may think are foolish.
It’s bad enough that some liberals want to prevent us from spending our own money to support and elect the candidates of our choice, but it is really intolerable that their effort is accompanied by a proposal that we be forced to spend our money for candidates who are not of our choosing.
Yet, that’s what they want to do by requiring taxpayer financing of Congressional elections. Instead of allowing Americans voluntarily to finance the political candidates whom they wish to support, with no compulsion of any kind, the liberals want to force the taxpayers (that’s all of us) to finance hundreds of candidates we don’t support.
The advocates of taxpayer financing argue that this will provide equal funding to candidates. But that is a plan to subsidize the candidate who doesn’t have very much voter support.
The funds a candidate can raise is a good measure of his popular support. Voters can put their money where their mouth is. In no way would it be fair to give equal taxpayer funding to a LaRouche candidate and a Reagan candidate.
Equal taxpayer funding to Congressional candidates would mean giving a half-million dollar advantage to every incumbent. Equal taxpayer funding would allow an incumbent Congressman to spend all his windfall allotment of tax dollars on media advertising, whereas his challenger would be compelled to spend a large part of his taxpayer funding on necessary activities of the sort a Congressman gets free because of his position of incumbency, such as franked mailings, official travel funds, paid staff, and complimentary media coverage.
Five taxpayer financing bills are currently in the Senate, and one sponsored by Senators Robert Byrd (D-WV) and David Boren (D-OK) has 42 co-sponsors. These bills have spawned a lot of sanctimonious posturing by those who really want the government to control elections.
If the Byrd-Boren bill were passed, it is estimated that Senate candidates would be able to draw about $92.5 million from the U.S. Treasury in the 1988 elections.
The Byrd-Boren bill would allow a Congressional candidate to draw funds from the U.S. Treasury after he raised $250,000 from individuals, with a maximum of $20,000 from the candidate or his family. The spending limits for Senate candidates would vary based on the population of the states from $5.4 million in California to $687,250 in Wyoming.
The Byrd-Boren bill would limit the money each candidate could accept from political action committees even if the candidate did not accept taxpayer funding. The bill would also limit individual political action committee contributions to $3,000 to each candidate instead of the current $5,000.
If there is anything our country does not need, it is some busybody politicians or bureaucrats telling us how much of our own money we can spend to advocate electing candidates to political office. It is a great thing for democracy that people are so willing to spend their own hard-earned after-tax dollars to take part in the process of self-government.
