Restrict Government, Not Campaign Funds

Presidential candidates John McCain and Bill Bradley have said they would unite in an unusual cross-party joint appearance in support of campaign finance reform. The appearance will generate publicity, build up an issue they both plan to use against the primary favorites and give both a patina of bipartisanship.

But the entire idea of generating “good government” by changing campaign finance rules misses a central point. Trying to more tightly control those who might contribute “too much” money to their causes and candidates will not fix what ails our government, because those failings are rooted in what our government is allowed to do, not in how much candidates’ supporters can spend promoting them.

America’s central governance problem is that long-standing constitutional constraints have been eroded so that government power has turned from protecting the property rights of citizens against violations by others to being itself a pervasive violator of those rights on behalf of political supporters. The resulting expansion of our representatives’ ability to help their political friends at others’ expense has led to widespread government abuse.

Regardless of who pays and how much they pay for campaigns, unless we take those constitutional restraints seriously again, no massive improvement in the quality of our government will result. For example, the Constitution grants Congress the power to levy “uniform taxes” to provide for the “general welfare.” Yet today’s tax code is riddled with discriminatory taxes that burden particular groups, and a large share of government expenditures benefit other groups at taxpayer expense.

The 5th Amendment states that private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation; it is reinforced by the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “due process of law.” While this prevents the government from physically taking one’s entire property without payment, current court interpretations let the government take, through regulations, large chunks of property value to benefit particular special interests. Nothing in the Constitution authorizes the use of tax revenue or federal regulatory power to provide such special interest benefits as a legitimate government function, but such policies are now considered not only acceptable, but also commendable.

These concerns and the political resources they represent dominate what our government does today. Similar reinterpretations have befallen other parts of the Constitution, such as the contracts and commerce clauses, which have been transformed from barriers against government intrusion to open invitations under almost any pretext. In fact, the commerce clause is now commonly termed “the everything clause” in law school, because its original meaning has been twisted 180 degrees to justify innumerable federal restrictions in any area that might conceivably have any effect on interstate commerce. Again, the effect has been to expand the power of legislators and bureaucrats into areas our Founding Fathers tried to put beyond their reach.

The result of such changes in constitutional interpretation has been an increase in the power of government officials to do what our Constitution formerly ruled out. This--not citizens’ ability to contribute to the candidates, parties and issues of their choice--is the central source of government abuse. And this is beyond fixing by restrictions on political contributions.

Unless constitutional restrictions on government powers are taken more seriously again, campaign funding limitations will do little to produce a more responsible government. In fact, this is the only reform radical enough to substantially reduce government abuse.