Limiting PAC donations WITHOUT a Constitutional Amendment?!

Big money in politics seems like an unpleasant reality we have to accept. Unless we change the makeup of the US Supreme Court overnight, or we amend the US Constitution to overrule the Citizens United ruling, we are stuck with billions in secret donations that is corrupting our politics today. Neither is a possibility.

But there maybe a third possibility that does not take this kind of wishful thinking. (Okay, it requires some wishful thinking, but a whole lot less than passing a constitutional amendment).

According to constitutional scholars Lawerence Tribe, Albert Alschuler and Lawrence Lessig, the Supreme Court never ruled in favor of unlimited PAC donations in Citizens United, but only ruled that if PACs acted independently from a campaign the PAC could spend an unlimited amount of money helping a candidate. But Citizens United said nothing about donations. It was three weeks later that the Washington DC Circuit of Appeals, using SCOTUS’s theory in Citizen United that PACs could spend unlimited amounts of money supporting a candidate would not create a quid pro quo, ruled PACs could accept unlimited donations without risking corruption. This ruling was followed by other federal circuits making the same ruling, but it never reached the Supreme Court for a definitive ruling.

But in the 1976 Buckley v Valeo decision, SCOTUS ruled that if there were even a risk of a donation creating a quid pro quo, then donations can be regulated. This explains the $3,200 limit on Congressional campaign donations per year because that amount is not large enough to induce criminal bribery. Certainly the $10 million donations that are regularly made to a candidates SuperPAC can risk a quid pro quo (to say the least).

So Professor Lessig has begun to push that big rock up the mountain to get a case before the Supreme Court to uphold Buckley v Valeo and allow Congress to regulate PAC donations. As part of this effort, Lessig’s group Equal Citizen had a contest to create a video that best explains the mistake the lower courts made and why the Supreme Court should rule to limit PAC donations.

On Sunday I previewed one video I did for this contest and today I’m previewing the video below that I think better explains the problem. (Sunday’s was more “creative” and funny. This one is shorter and more educational than “entertaining”). I’d appreciate any feedback in the comments. Do you understand what the mistake is?