After Republican Congressional candidate Scott Rigell trailed Rep. Glenn Nye by about a million bucks in cash-on-hand in the latest campaign finance reports, Rigell simply gave an Alfred E. Neuman, said “What, me worry?” and wrote himself a $500,000 check.
Since the lockdown on campaign fundraising limiting individual contributions to $1,000 and later reforms that raised those limits to current $2400 levels, guess who the political parties have gravitated to?
Millionaires.
Currently, 44% of all of Congress and specifically 48% of the Senate are millionaires. That compares with the general public, of whom millionaires are only a whopping 1%.
The next time a federal legislator attacks the wealthy, hold up a mirror for him.
But that’s what a system that limits donations for multi-million dollar campaigns to a few thousand will give you – a legislature full of millionaires and worse, full of millionaires who are motivated to spend giant chunks of it to be in office.
Parties love millionaire candidates, because it’s near impossible in the few short months of a Congressional or Senatorial election for non-millionaires to rack up millions at $2400 per person. Either you have to fund yourself for the most part, or have a thousand friends with 2 grand sitting around for you. And since Party soft money became a no-no in 2002, that need for the self-funding candidate just became greater.
I’ve long ridiculed the whiners who sob, sniff and cry about there being too much money in politics. Adding up every campaign from your local City Councilman to President of the United States, campaigns cost about as much as Americans spend on potato chips.
Anyone proposing a potato chip finance reform act? Is Frito-Lay “too big to fail?”
Instead, we have “the people’s house” having 44 times the share of millionaires that the rest of America has.
The Supreme Court says millionaires can spend as much as they want on their own campaigns, and I agree. Free speech is free speech. But it’s bad policy to tell the politically-motivated wealthy that the only way they can fund a campaign is by being the candidate. If a millionaire wants to fund the next Ronald Reagan, I’m finding it very difficult to understand why he shouldn’t be able to.
And anyone who thinks the answer to this all is government-controlled and mainstream media-dominated public financing, welfare for politicians, they need a serious headsoaking in some very cold water.
The results are clear. The more we restrict donations to political candidates, the less Congress will look, act and be like the rest of us.
