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Campaigns cost too much

The United States Supreme Court made an unprecedented ruling in the case of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which allowed unlimited political campaign spending from corporations and unions.

This exacerbated a problem with American politics that has been steadily growing since the 1970s. Campaign spending, particularly during an election year, has risen over the past four decades. Within the past four years, the sums of money thrown into the presidential fray have reached exorbitant levels.

The current election cycle has only just begun to heat up and already there has been a total of $600 million donated to the various presidential candidates. With no incumbent president in the running during the 2008 elections, there were many more prospective candidates aiming for the highest office. By the end of the race, the candidates had raised and spent a combined total of more than $1.6 billion.

It doesn’t matter which politician or party you relate to, even an average person can see how much money is being wasted on what has essentially become a popularity contest, especially considering the fact that this country is in the midst of a financial crises, a war overseas, an aging infrastructure and a decaying education system. Everyone knows that these problems will need financial capital to fix, but the underlying question is always, “Where to get the money?” No one wants to pay more taxes, yet many of the same people throw money at politicians as if they were topless dancers.

Over the last decade, the naïve mentality that all we need is the right politician to come to the rescue and save us has evolved. This is all a microcosm of the fierce partisanship that has defined American politics.

Unfortunately, it seems that most people today would prefer to spend their time and energy blaming others, as opposed to making efforts to fix the problem. Even if a mere 50-cent donation out of every dollar spent politically was given the Red Cross, the Texas Children’s Hospital, or even a local school district, we would all benefit, and we might just reduce some of the problems that we can only hope Washington will fix for us.

Matt Story is a kinesiology senior and may be reached at [email protected].

2 Comments

  • http://www.researchamerica.org/research_cents

    Americans throw away $100 billion in edible food each year.
    Sources: Timothy Jones, PhD, “Using Contemporary Archaeology and Applied Anthropology to Understand Food Loss in the American Food System,” 2003; NIH FY08

    Americans spent $3 billion on potato chips in 2007.
    Sources: BBC News 2008; NIH FY 2009

    Americans spend more than $1.4 billion on over-the-counter teeth-whitening products each year.
    Sources: MSNBC “Blindingly white: teeth bleaching gone too far;” NIH FY 2010

    In 2006, Americans spent $83.6 billion on cigarettes.
    Sources: CDC 2006; NHLBI FY 2010

    Americans spent more than $8.8 billion on Super Bowl game-related merchandise, apparel and snacks in 2010.
    Sources: Retail Advertising and Marketing Association; NIH Disease Funding Table

    The energy drink market was estimated at $4.8 billion in 2007.
    Sources: Mintel Market Research 2008; NIDCR FY08

    kind of makes a 2 or 3 billion investment in our democracy every four years seem worth while eh?

  • Want to get corporate influence out of politics? You need to start with getting government influence out of the economy. Simply making it illegal for corporations to fund campaigns and political offices merely makes it harder for smaller businesses to influence legislation and gives the largest of firms a monopoly on political agendas, seeing as how some, if not most, of the country’s largest firms do not necessarily follow the law anyway. Corporate money will ALWAYS find its way into DC, whether it be illegal or not, so long as corporations have an incentive to do it. When the federal government has the influence to pick winners and losers in our economy, the incentive is just too large to pass up; and they, the largest of corporations, prefer it that way.

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