Mark Green - Selling Out: How Big Corporate Money Buys Elections, Rams Through Legislation, and Betrays Our Democracy

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This book is dedicated to Justices Sandra Day OConnor and Anthony Kennedy, whose opinions on democracy can revive democracy

CONTENTS

There are two things you need for success in politics.

Money... and I cant think of the other.

Senator Mark Hanna (ROH), 1903

Political action committees and moneyed interests are setting the nations political agenda.... Are we saying that only the rich have brains in this country? Or only people who have influential friends who have money can be in the Senate?

Senator Barry Goldwater (RAZ), 1988

The Enron scandal should launch a national movement to leash the corrupt power of money in politics so that legislators and regulators can serve the public interest.

The American Prospect, February 2002

R epresentative Jim Shannon, a Democrat from Bostons North Endhome to working-class families as far back as the 1848 potato faminewasnt happy. As a protg of Speaker Tip ONeill, and a member of the prestigious Ways and Means Committee, he thought hed learned all about the culture of Congress, about its blend of high-minded rhetoric and low-road cynicism. But now he was confronted with an overbearing business lobbyist, telling him that his client was disappointed with Shannons position on an important tax bill while reminding Shannon that this particular client makes good PAC contributions to the party. Shannon exploded. Im tired of hearing appeals based on money, he shouted. Looking pained, the lobbyist responded, You think I like this any more than you do?

How do you know when a democracy is in decline? When a bridge collapses, so does the reputation of its engineer. When a plane loses two engines, passengers suddenly lose their lives. A democracy, however, is more like a bather in water slowly getting hotter and hotter: its hard to notice the change in circumstances until its too late.

How do you know when a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind, when a democracy goes from warm to scalded?

when the 0.1 percent of Americans who contribute $ 1000 or more to political candidates have far more influence than the other 99.9 percent;

when, in an election year, its nearly more likely for an incumbent congressperson to die than to lose;

when senators from the ten largest states have to raise an average of over $34,000 a week, every week, for six years to stay in office;

when the cost of winning a House or Senate seat has risen tenfold in twenty-four years;

when its far easier for a working-class person to win a seat in the Russian congress than in the American one;

when legislatively interested PAC money goes 7 to 1 for incumbents over challengersand 98 percent of House incumbents win;

when most other democracies get a 70 to 80 percent turnout of eligible voters, while in the U.S. its half in presidential elections, a third in congressional elections, and often only a fifth in primaries;

when one senator and one mayor each spend more getting elected than all the legislative candidates in Great Britain combined.

Its true, as Vclav Havel wrote, that a genuine democracy is the equivalent of a distant horizon we can see but never reach. Still, at minimum a democracy requires that the people will participate in the process by which their lives are organized, as historian Lawrence Goodwin put it. But is it a democracy if 0.1 percent pay the piper, if 80 percent stay at home in primaries, if 98 percent of incumbents return to a permanent Congress?

Selling Out is a book about how big money is sabotaging our democracyand how to stop it. For despite occasional bursts of reform, the system of checks and balances we studied in high school has steadily evolved instead into a system of checks, checks, and more checks. Warren Beattys caricatured rants in Bulworth about how elected officials care more about their contributors than about their constituents are a far more accurate depiction of Washington and state capitals today than those heard in July 4th speeches.

Indeed, the corporate abuse in mid-2002 was the direct by-product of a corporate Washington filled with those paid to be what Kipling called shut-eyed sentries. In the view of Joan Claybrook, head of Public Citizen and a veteran of the campaign finance wars, ! political money from the Enrons and others bought loopholes, exemptions, lax law enforcement, underfunded regulatory agencies, and the presumption that corporate officials could buy anything they wanted with the shareholders money.

The basic problem is that candidates regard money as Mark Twain did bourbon: Too much is not enough. Because the press and public judge a candidacy by its treasury, and because no one can be sure how much will be enough, candidates feel the pressure to engage in financial overkill, just as the Soviets and Americans did with nuclear missiles in their arms race. And when the Supreme Court in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision struck down the Federal Election Campaign Acts spending ceilings, the alms race took off. Thenand nowthe skys the limit.

Yes, were weary of screeds about money in politics. Its an old story: from Plutarch writing about how money corrupted elections and ruined Rome... to the Standard Oil Trust in the 1890s, which, it was said, did everything to the Pennsylvania Legislature except refine it... to Lyndon Johnsons emergence as a major politician, according to biographer Robert A. Caro, only when he distributed large funds from Texas oil interests to congressional colleagues... to Richard Nixons $2 million contribution from milk interests in 1972, followed by his order to increase milk price supports and thereby milk prices to millions of American families... to Charles Keating, of Keating Five fame, who, when asked whether his substantial contributions influenced the policy makers receiving them, helpfully replied, I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so.

Weve been so periodically bombarded by small-bore corruption or Watergate-size scandals that money in politics has become like sex in Victorian Englanda subject of gossip, amusement, and ultimately indifference. They all do it, many citizens sigh, with a shrug.

Allow me to be skeptical about cynicism. While money has long been the lifeblood of the body politic, only recently has it metastasized into an authentic crisis due to its volume and impact. While in 1976 it cost an average of $87,000 to win a House seat and $609,000 a U.S. Senate seat, those amounts grew by 2000 like beanstalks to $842,000 for the House and $7.2 million for the Senatea tenfold leap (or more than threefold in current dollars). And more money brought with it intended leverage. Were all tainted by this corrupt system, concludes Senator John McCain (RAZ), a national leader for cleaner elections.

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