The mid-term elections are upon us, and one of the glaring take-away messages from any political
election is the amount of money spent on passing or defeating propositions and
candidates. It’s been estimated that approximately $6-BILLION was spent on the last
presidential election alone. That kind of money could have gone a long way
to reducing the national debt or ending world hunger or cleaning up the
environment, etc. In addition, there’s no proof that the more you spend, the
better your chances of success.
Over the past 20+ years I’ve often thought that politicians
and lobbyists would do anything, including spending vast sums of money, to
accomplish their goals. I doubt they even thought about the consequences of
spending this kind of money. Then the elected officials are obligated to vote
according to the desires of the contributor.
While I’ve
continuously espoused the need for limits on campaign spending, I hadn’t really
looked into why something hadn’t been done about it. A couple months ago I began
doing some research on the subject.
I learned there are several reasons why, to date, we have
not installed any significant limitations on campaign spending. These reasons
were most succinctly reported by Steve Gillman (Huff Post Politics, “The Blog,”
10/23/12). As he summarized, we can’t significantly reduce the ridiculous
spending because:
- It’s a First Amendment right to speak our
minds and put
our money where our mouths are.
