"Imagine how few people can afford to give that much. Imagine how grateful party leaders will be for those contributors." Imagine how much corruption will now follow!

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Big political donors score again: Our view
By The Editorial Board, USA Today, April 2, 2014

For decades, often after huge corruption scandals, state and federal lawmakers have tried to limit the dangerous effect of big money in politics. Now, one by one, the Supreme Court is dismantling those restrictions.

In 2010, the court's Citizens United decision allowed corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts to advocate for or against the election of individual candidates.

On Wednesday, it was individual contributors' turn. In a 5-4 decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, the court lifted the $123,200 "aggregate" limit on how much donors can give to federal candidates and party committees every two years.

If that doesn't sound worrisome, consider how much power and influence the ruling hands to a tiny number of people. In 2012, just 646 donors "maxed out" their federal contributions. The new limit for individual contributors who give to every possible candidate and committee will be $3.5 million every two years.

Imagine how few people can afford to give that much. Imagine how grateful party leaders will be for those contributors.

As troubling as that development is, the more important question is whether the court — after two decisions eroding post-Watergate reforms that the court had approved in a landmark 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo — is poised to wipe away limits entirely.

Wednesday's opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts crimped Buckley without reversing it. The court left intact a limit of $2,600 in donations to any individual candidate in a single election but, as in Citizens United, it seemed to retreat from the core principle Buckley established: that while the First Amendment protects people's right to support candidates and causes of their choice, the public is also free through its representatives to set limits to deter corruption.

Roberts and the conservative majority showed admirable respect for free speech but managed to convince themselves that corruption is not really much of a problem. The opinion declared that the only legitimate target for campaign-finance limits is direct, "quid pro quo" corruption in which a donor gives money to a politician to buy a specific outcome.

In the real world of contemporary politics, however, such explicit bribery is rarely necessary. Only the densest politicians or party leaders don't grasp what their biggest contributors' interests are, or what it takes to make sure those contributions continue.

The cumulative effect of the court's decisions is to give these big donors greater and greater influence. "If the court in Citizens United opened a door," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissent, "today's decision may well open a floodgate."

As the big money flows, maybe the inevitable excesses will anger citizens enough to make the available fixes — public financing of campaigns, or a constitutional amendment to limit the role of money in politics — more likely than they seem today.
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