The result is that the deck is stacked, as Demos has shown in a series of reports with that name.
Our public policies are skewed towards top donors’ preferences, and away from working families and people of color as a whole.
Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens has demonstrated that when the preferences of the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans conflict with those of the rest of the population, the 10 percent trumps the 90 percent.
He concluded that “under most circumstances, the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt” and that “patterns of responsiveness...often correspond more closely to a plutocracy than to a democracy.”
This combination of disparate preferences and differential responsiveness creates a vicious cycle: the wealthy translate their economic might into political power; this allows them to write rules for our economy that keep them on top while working families struggle to stay afloat; which in turn allows the wealthiest few to pump even more money into politics each year. As we lather, rinse, and repeat in this vicious cycle, we take our democracy ever farther from the vision of political equality embodied in the principle of one person, one vote.
As senators, every member of this Committee has had to run for office in our big money system; so you know this problem better than most. You know, for example, that anyone wanting to run for a seat in the United States Senate needs to raise $3,300 every single day for six years just to match the median winner.
This equals the total income the average worker earns in a month.
I talked a lot more about carried interest inside of that call room than I did in the supermarket . . . [The people I’m calling] have fundamentally different problems than other people. And in Connecticut especially, you spend a lot of time on the phone with people who work in the financial markets. And so you’re hearing a lot about problems that bankers have and not a lot of problems that people who work at the mill in Thomaston, Conn., have. You certainly have to stop and check yourself.
Senator Murphy is not alone. In the 2012 elections, 64 percent of the money your Senate colleagues and their election opponents raised from individual donors came in contributions of at least $1,000, from just 0.04 percent of the population.
That doesn’t just skew your colleagues’ worldviews; it acts as a critical barrier to entry. Most Americans can’t hope to raise that much money from so few people—they just aren’t that well connected to the one percent of the one percent. This is one of the reasons the Senate has far fewer women than it should, and only 10 African Americans, Latinos, or Asian Americans.
The Supreme Court Distorts Our Democracy
This is certainly not the democracy our Constitution mandates, or the one the public wants or deserves. Rather, this is the distorted democracy that Supreme Court decisions have forced upon us—a broken system where the size of our wallets determines the strength of our voices.
Supreme Court rulings have played a central role in creating and sustaining the current crisis. The justices’ flawed approach to money in politics has shredded a series of common-sense protections against the power of special interests and wealthy individuals.
At the heart of this flawed approach is the misguided notion that the people and our representatives may limit political contributions or spending only to fight corruption or its appearance, narrowly defined as cash-for-votes exchanges.
Fighting corruption is important, but clean governance is not the only value at stake when concentrated wealth meets public power. There are also critical questions at play regarding the integrity of our democracy, full participation in our political system, and the relationship between economic might and political power.
Over several decades, the Court has struck down some of the most effective common-sense protections against big money, taking the following policy options off the table: limits on how much personal or family wealth candidates can spend on their own campaigns; limits on total candidate spending; limits on contributions to, or spending by, individuals or groups supposedly not connected to candidates’ campaigns; limits on contributions to ballot initiatives; bans on corporate spending on ballot initiatives; strict contribution limits set at levels that average Americans can afford to give; bans on corporate spending on candidate elections; providing additional “matching funds” to publicly financed candidates who face big money spending by opposing candidates or interest groups; and limits on the total amount one wealthy donor can contribute to candidates, parties, and political committees in an election cycle.
A recent Demos report called Court Cash: 2016 Election Money Resulting Directly From Supreme Court Rulings quantified the Court’s impact for the first time.
We found that Supreme Court rulings enabled more than $3 billion in 2016 election spending, including more than three-quarters of the money spent in the most competitive congressional races.
Judge Gorsuch’s Riddle concurrence is notable because he went out of his way to write an opinion to discuss a matter—the potential for strict scrutiny—that was not necessary to decide the case; and because he cited non-majority opinions by Justice Thomas and Chief Justice Burger suggesting that all contribution limits should be subject to this type of review.
Given the opportunity by Senator Klobuchar to clarify his perspective on the subject during this hearing, Judge Gorusch shed no meaningful light on his views.
Taken together, these opinions show that Judge Gorsuch would be receptive to the anticipated attacks on our few remaining democratic safeguards. Even a relatively narrow reading suggests he would vote to strike down the current bans on both soft money contributions to political parties and corporations contributing directly to candidates.
If confirmed, he could have the opportunity to do so in short order. The Supreme Court could hear a soft money challenge soon; and an ongoing case in Texas presents a challenge to the corporate ban.
Judge Gorsuch’s opinions also appear to take one more step towards applying “strict scrutiny” to all contribution limits. We could see jurisdictions required to supply an absurd level of evidence to justify common-sense limits—such as proving the going rate to bribe local politicians is $5,001 to support a $5,000 contribution limit. Ultimately, dozens of contribution limits could be wiped away, creating a Wild West atmosphere for donors and politicians.
In a world where Judge Gorsuch joins a majority bloc of pro-big money justices, the vicious cycle churns ever faster. Large corporations and wealthy individuals enjoy virtually unlimited ability to translate their economic might into political power. Our legislatures and other elected offices become even more skewed by race and class; policy becomes even more tilted towards the preferences of a donor class that is disproportionately male and largely excludes people of color; and working families and people of color across the nation continue to fall behind economically and be alienated politically.
In this world, we could return to the scandal-plagued days of unlimited soft money contributions to political parties.
We could see oil companies, Wall Street banks, and secret money groups giving directly to candidates—something that hasn’t happened since 1907.
And we could see contribution limits fall across the country, encouraging politicians to seek out only the views of the largest check-writers and ignore the middle and working classes.
Let’s not forget what life was like before we banned corporations from dominating our politics in the first place. Workers were run ragged in round-the-clock shifts with meager pay, and regularly died on the job.
The right of laborers to form a union was not protected by state or federal law, and union organizers often faced violence.
The massive gap between rich and poor Americans was especially apparent to labor organizer Mary Harris (“Mother”) Jones who noticed a breakout of Yellow Fever was killing predominantly poor and working class people, while wealthy individuals had the resources to avoid the disease or get proper treatment.
She described the conditions at the turn of the Twentieth Century that drove her organizing:
Hours of work down under ground were cruelly long. Fourteen hours a day was not uncommon, thirteen, twelve. The life or limb of the miner was unprotected by any laws. Families lived in company-owned shacks that were not fit for their pigs. Children died by the hundreds due to the ignorance and poverty of their parents.
It was against this backdrop of robber barons hoarding wealth at the expense of the poor and vulnerable that our longstanding history of limiting corporate political contributions emerged.
The Public is Demanding Change
The public is counting on this Committee, and the Senate as a whole, not to let this happen again. Americans are deeply concerned about the impact of concentrated wealth on our democracy and understand the role of the Court. Ninety-four percent of voters believe that the power of big money in politics is a problem, and 90 percent say that the Supreme Court plays an important role in setting the rules.
This is reflected in the fact that 110 members of Congress have taken the unusual step of writing to this Committee to request that its members press Judge Gorsuch on his record and views on money in politics.
This call was joined in a similar letter from 121 organizations representing millions of members concerned with democracy, civil rights, workers’ rights, environmental protection, faith values, and more.
Outside the Beltway, this is not a partisan issue at all. Ninety-one percent of President Trump’s own voters thought it was important that he appoint someone to the Supreme Court who is open to limiting big money.
Seventy percent of Republicans say that Congress should reject any nominee “who will help the wealthy and privileged wield too much power in our elections.”
In fact, 85% of Americans believe we need fundamental changes to our system for funding political campaigns.
The influence of special interest money is the biggest problem voters have with politicians.
The American people are demanding change to a political system that favors the already-wealthy and well-connected. Put simply, Judge Gorsuch has not shown sufficient commitment to our constitutional values of liberty, equality, and justice for all to earn Demos’ support, or yours. We urge you to vote against Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation, and tell your constituents that a key reason you did was to stand with them over big money. They will thank you.
