Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Didn't like MONEY in POLITICS? .. Get Ready! MORE MONEY COMING

Republicans plan to "drain the swamp" by gutting campaign finance laws

Updated by Jeff Stein Nov 17, 2016, 8:00am EST

A populist uprising in America has given Sen. Mitch McConnell a shot at fulfilling his long-held goal of gutting America’s remaining campaign finance laws.

Seeing the federal government slip into Republican hands is terrifying campaign finance experts, who are bracing for a wave of deregulation that could give millionaires and billionaires powerful new ways to influence American politics.

Top Republican leaders — most vocally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — have spent years advocating specific changes that would gut what’s left of an American campaign finance regime that’s already been crippled.

"We’re getting ready for a fight. We know that Republicans aren’t going to do anything about Citizens United and that they’re probably going to want to throw out what little is left of McCain-Feingold," says Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at the transparency nonprofit Public Citizen, referencing the bipartisan bill from 2002 that put some restrictions on campaign spending. (Many of the restrictions put in place by that bill were thrown out by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010.) "It's going to be a tough battle.”

With control of the House and Senate, congressional Republicans have the power to ram through a series of measures — including repealing limits on what political parties can get from individual donors — that are inscribed in the GOP’s official party platform.

The big problem in trying to game out what will happen is, as it is across multiple policy questions, the inscrutability of what Donald Trump really wants. Trump ran on an anti-corruption message by promising to throw the moneyed special interests out of government and free Washington from the grip of the “political establishment.”

But early moves by his transition team suggest he’s eager to staff his administration with lobbyists. He’s also notoriously inattentive to policy details — including around campaign finance reform. So it seems entirely possible that Trump will jettison his pledge to eradicate money’s grip on politics and instead allow congressional Republicans to strengthen it.

Letting billionaires directly bankroll entire political campaigns

There is really not all that much left to prevent big money from influencing American politics. Donors can already spend as much as they want on “independent” Super PACs that take out millions in political advertisements. Corporations can give as much as they want to these Super PACs, and they’re finding ways to do so entirely in secret. [ http://prospect.org/article/when-super-pacs-go-dark-llcs-fuel-secret-spending ]

But weakened though the current campaign finance regime might be, it hasn’t been totally toppled. Vital bulwarks really do remain that prevent politicians from engaging in some kinds of fundraising — at least for the time being.

The Republican Party platform has an array of plans for getting rid of those last bulwarks. One of the most extreme money-in-politics proposals that Republicans have considered would roll back or eliminate the limits on what individual donors can give directly to candidates. Here’s reporter Kate Ackley writing at Roll Call Monday about the key priorities for some Republicans around campaign finance (emphasis added):

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http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/17/13626082/republicans-campaign-finance