Since Citizen’s United became law, we’ve seen a new type of political action committee emerge called Super PACs. A fancy way of saying Super Political Action Committee. Super PACs are a tool that allows for the ultra-rich to individually donate hundreds of millions every political cycle. A few wealthy individuals have a greater influence on elections with their money than millions of us combined. We just aren’t all billionaires. This has undermined the core principle of American democracy, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all [people] are created equal.” What’s more, the same wealthy individuals can use these Super PACs to bribe politicians to take a stance against the interests of The People. All in, Super PACs lacking contribution limits have created gridlock in Washington.
How Super PACs work
With unrestricted donations, any ultra-rich family can give unlimited money to Political Action Committees. My call-time sheets are rife with political donors who give tens and hundreds of millions of dollars per election cycle. Which beg’s the question, how can the super-rich people be giving hundreds of millions of dollars if campaigns have contribution limits?
Politico recently published the re-emergence of Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson. Writing that, “Despite her husband’s death, Adelson plans to dole out big checks and be an influential player shaping the future of the party, which over the past decade has reaped more than a half-billion dollars of the family’s fortune.”
And while I’m citing a Republican mega-donor, this is something that has accelerated on all sides of the political aisle. So you may be asking, given that it’s happening on all sides, and it’s legal, what’s wrong with it?
Donate $1 for Democracy to Elect Tim
Then invite three of your friends to do the same. When the people unite, we can put an end to unlimited contributions and the corrosive influence of money in politics. And we must demand that candidates and politicians do the same.
The Problem With Super PACs
I’m so glad you asked. Since the Supreme Court made Citizen’s United law, American politics exploded into a maelstrom of finger-pointing, brinksmanship, outrage, and hate. With Donald Trump, we saw the damage of combining the structural problem of unlimited money in politics with fear.
Sadly, the lesson all sides have taken is to utilize that fear in a quest to raise more and more money with no end in sight. That’s what’s driving the brinksmanship and the choice of each partisan group to lean into our respective base. If we can provoke enough outrage with our core constiuents, then we can raise more grassroots dollars and take the message to our people that our side alone can save America.
We’re in a race to the bottom, and the way to end it isn’t through winning more power for our team by leveraging the instrument that’s driving us all apart as Americans. It’s to level with you that Super PACs opened a pandora’s box that has brought us to the brink of civil war, and the only way we’re going to end it, is to put contribution limits on them and contain the outrage machine and outright bribery that followed suit.
How to Correct Super PACs
On the campaign trail, I get asked over and ever again how we can save America from tipping into an Autocracy or from becoming more and more like a Russian-style oligarchy or medieval feudalism. The answer is shockingly simple, we have to put contribution limits on Super PACs.
The fact of the matter is that the ultra-rich will use their wealth to purchase influence in our elections regardless of whether they disclose who they are. Dark money is bad, but it’s a distraction from our core problem. As long as we allow unlimited donations from the world’s wealthiest few, our democracy is at risk. Partisanship is at an all-time high, families are under intense stress, and neighbors are looking at each other as fundamentally un-American.
All of this is being driven by the fuel of the ultra-rich holding onto the status quo and vying for outsized representation in a nation that is supposed to be equally governed by all of us. We need to immediately push for contribution limits at Super PACs that limit the amount of influence they can buy and we need to ensure that we actually enforce.
Join Our Movement to Restore American Democracy
Join me as we seek to reclaim the Senate and most importantly, our democracy. Safeguard representation for every American and join our movement to demand that your representative and candidates pledge to call out Super PACs until we get contribution limits back in place. Watch how you can act to save our democracy.
Donate $1 for Democracy to Elect Tim
Then invite three of your friends to do the same. When the people unite, we can put an end to unlimited contributions and the corrosive influence of money in politics. And we must demand that candidates and politicians do the same.
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