In politics there are four keys to every successful political campaign: the candidate, the campaign organization, the issues, and the money to keep everything running. With no money, none of the other three keys to a successful campaign could exist. This all important political money flows into campaigns by the millions and is a multi-billion dollar industry annually. Dealing with all of this money there is a very important question that arises. Where is all of this money coming from? Now that is not an easy question to answer as there are multiple answers this question. In the 2012 election cycle, 28 per cent of all disclosed political contributions came from just 31,385 people. In a nation of 313.85 million, these donors represent the 1% of the 1% of our nation's population (Drutman). This may sound like the playing field is not level for all citizens in America but what is the best way to reform our political campaign funding system to create a balanced and level playing field for all candidates? The answer to this very important question in our society is to increase the amount of money that an individual can donate while adding increased regulations to organizations that are not directly affiliated to one particular candidate. What is the right amount of speech to give to citizens in politics? The answer to that is not as straightforward.

Six billion dollars were spent on political campaigns in the 2008 election year. To split this money into two separate categories there is what is called "hard money" and "soft money." Hard money is money that is directly donated to a single candidate by an individual citizen and is currently heavily regulated and limited by the federal government. Soft money is money which, by definition and law, is not supposed to be part of our federal campaign finance system. It is precisely the kind of money which federal law and policy have tried to exclude from national campaigns (Common Cause Soft money). Soft money is exactly the money that is being spent behind doors without regulations of limits. Most of this "soft money" is being spent and organized through "independent-expenditure only"  Political Action Committees, commonly known as "Super PACs." These Super PACs are allowed to indirectly fund political campaigns through political ads, media, and other means of promotion for a candidate. While the hard money that is donated directly to the presidential candidates is limited and regulated, the soft money raised by huge multi corporational Super PACs has no limits on the amount of money allowed to be donated or spent. This limitless amount of money allowed to be spent through soft money Super PACs basically gives a select few people unlimited power in a political campaign without ever having to be directly affiliated with a candidate. Some people argue that this goes against our constitutional amendments. Soft money does give the wealthier and more powerful the upper hand, but I don't think there should be a ban on soft money, just a limit or restriction. 

On the opposite side of the spectrum of soft money there is the hard money aspect of political campaign finance. Money that is directly given to an individual candidate by a citizen is limited to $2,700 (FEC). Unlike soft money, these direct donations that are over $200 are also made public record for all voters to see. All political campaigns are required to fully disclose where and how their hard money donations are being spent and used but there are no such requirements for Super PACs do any disclosing of where their spending is going. All of these rules and regulations are relatively brand new after the two decisions by the 2010 US Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United v. FEC and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in SpeechNow.org v. FEC. These two court decisions are widely considered the most drastic changes in political campaign laws since the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) in 1972 (Blackburn and Wachob).

All of this political polarization between the average citizen and the elite class in America stems from the 1972 the US Supreme Court passed Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) which caps the amount that candidates can receive from each contributor. In Scott Blackburn and Luke Wachob's research on political campaign length they found that there was steep increase in presidential campaign length after the landmark decision in the FECA (Blackburn and Wachob). Blackburn and Wachob argue that due to this cap on direct money there has been race in every campaign to collect as much money as possible (Blackburn and Wachob). This has created an environment where presidential candidates are forced to announce their campaign much earlier in past years. According to Blackburn and Wachob, the average date of presidential campaign announcements post contribution limits now occur over 69% earlier than campaign announcements pre contribution limits (Blackburn and Wachob)1. These early announced presidential campaigns have shifted the focus of the candidates from the issues to money. Presidential candidates are now forced to announce their campaigns months before having the chance to listen to what the people truly want.

Campaigns in the U.S. basically are never ending as candidates are constantly scrabbling for donor dollars. This is apparent when you compare the length of United States campaigns to other countries political campaigns around the world. The first presidential candidacy announcement for the 2016 election occurred 596 days before the election date while Mexico's was 147 days, the U.K's was 139, Canada's was 78 and Japan's by law is only 12 days long (Kurtzleben). How do so many other countries keep their campaigns so short while the U.S. drags on so long? The simple answer is that many countries have laws dictating how long a campaign period is, while the U.S. doesn't. This drives political campaigns to be all about the money and not the issues. Changes in our campaign finance laws would easily reverse the problems that current campaign finance reform has caused. On John Oliver's, Last Week Tonight, he brought to light just how much time our politicians spend on fundraising money when he stated that "... members spend any where from 25 percent up to 50 percent ...  of their time fundraising ... " (Oliver). Oliver did not stop there. He also had an example where "a ...  senator spends two-thirds of the last two years of their time raising money" (Oliver). This is alarming especially when considering that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee suggests "four hours of call time per day" (Oliver). This constant push for politicians to continually fundraise money is an urgent problem that must be addressed. WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM?

This disconnect between money and the public's interests have created an environment where candidates enter a campaign with only minimal knowledge of what best suits the people. Candidates now spend a large majority of their time and interests in collecting money and not listening to the people creating a toxic and polarized political environment driving our country apart. This is in large part caused by the rise of power through soft money. In 1979, the Federal Election Committee (FEC) ruled that political parties could spend unregulated or "soft" money for non-federal administrative and party building activities. This gave the wealthy elite their path to funnel money into campaigns unregulated.

Our political system is too important to have the amount of unregulated soft money flowing in from the 1% of the 1%. With caps on spending due to campaign finance reform laws, politicians now need more individual donors, thus making them spend more time on fundraising, instead of focusing on the the issues themselves. The very idea of limiting private campaign donations is an infringement upon our first amendment right of free speech. By trying to limit the influence through money that the wealthy elite have with campaign finance reform, we have in turn gave them even more power while limiting the average citizen's ability to be heard. If a working class man wants to donate $10,000 of his hard earned money to a candidate that he truly believes in, why should his first amendment rights to free speech be suppressed or(and) limited. The problem with campaign finance reform is that it does not only limit our ability to voice our opinions, it also increases the government's role in each and every election making for a potentially corrupt political system. When those who are in the government limit the political expression of those not involved in the government that situation becomes very dangerous.

Our right to freedom of speech, that we have thanks to the First Amendment, should not be taken away, piece by piece. This is critical as the first amendment was a key building block of our nation. Campaign Finance Reform laws that greatly restrict the amount of money that citizens give to politicians would undoubtedly limit our population's political free speech. Political campaign reform is necessary to some extent, but a system where citizens are limited in their ability to donate while the wealthy elite can make limitless donations of unregulated money is not the solution. We as a people, when it comes to such important topics as this, should decide through democracy what the right amount of limitation should be instead of having politicians decide our "correct amount of limited speech."

Campaign finance reform corrupts the very political system it presumes to save from corruption. In 1968, the late Senator Eugene McCarthy, based off of his opposition against the Vietnam War, challenged the powerful incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson for the democratic presidential nomination. McCarthy's challenge against Lyndon B. Johnson was only made possible by five wealthy liberal donors who also opposed the Vietnam War. This group of five wealthy donors enabled McCarthy to raise $11 million or $75 million in today's money (PragerUniversity & George Will). McCarthy did not win the nomination but changed Johnson's mind on running for a second term and in turn changed the the presidential election outcome and gave the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, the presidency. The democratic party establishment was furious that a challenger was able to change their easy route to the presidency. To combat this problem, the democratic establishment called for government regulation of political speech. Thus, from the McCarthy's rise led to the birth of campaign finance reform. (PragerUniversity & George Will)

No matter what politicians say is their intentions, campaign finance laws do not protect the public's voice in politics. In truth it does the exact opposite that it's stated intentions are for. Campaign finance reform laws have been written to protect incumbents from any start up challenger attempting to throw an incumbent off their path to an easy reelection. One problem with campaign finance reform laws is that they have all been, or will be written by incumbents. In the 2012 election cycle, incumbent candidates of the House of Representatives were able to raise on average $1,606,177 while challenger candidates were only able to muster up a measly $268,107 (OpenSecrets.org). That is a nearly six times advantage in terms of money raised on average by incumbent candidates compared to challengers. Of course some of this imbalance will be due to increased popularity of incumbents compared to challengers (Times). This theory of popularity difference cannot account for a six fold difference in money raised though.

To bring all of this into perspective let's take a look at our political system compared to countries around the world like ours. I have decided to focus on the 34 member nations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, since the OECD are the countries that we consider most comparable to our own. Of these 34 countries, only the U.S. and Finland have contribution limits but no campaign spending limits (Waldman). The majority of countries in the OECD totaling to twelve countries, have neither limits on contributions nor limits on campaign spending (Waldman). Instead, these no limit countries often enforce laws where "candidates are either forbidden from advertising on television or given free TV time." (Waldman). One example that Josephine Simmons points out in her article Campaign Financing: Can the US Follow Europe's Example?, is that Hungary has a policy where they "have banned paid campaign ads in commercial media, and have allocated free and equal access to both public and private media networks to all eligible candidates" (Simmons). In my opinion I believe that the United States should take a play out of Europe's playbook and begin to regulate campaign spending, TV advertisements, and campaign length. This in turn would create a political environment where even if it were legal to contribute tons of money to a candidate it would not be worthwhile as the playing field will be leveled and rely much more on the issues at hand rather than relying  heavily on huge sums of money. This would work because if television spending was regulated that would regulate the number one single largest expense for most American congressional candidates. 

Money is what gets the best of people, media, ads, transportation, and most importantly votes. That is why most of these candidates, corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals will do anything and everything to raise money because they want the candidate that is going to do the most for them to win, at any cost. Soft money does give the wealthier and more powerful the upper hand, but I don't think there should be a ban on soft money, just a limit or restriction. Hard money on the other hand gives each and every citizen a direct path to support their candidate of choice. In our current political system soft money dominates while hard money takes a backseat. For our political system to get on the back track and thrive again we must switch the roles of soft and hard money in order to better have the voices of the people heard and rejuvenate our country's optimism for the future.

Garrett: I actually think this paper is quite good. You  need to make sure to add your works cited page (with all 10 sources that you cite in the body of your essay). I also think you should add some work with John Oliver's recent congressional campaign video. It illustrates the problem with the fundraising model we have because politicians spend more time begging for donations than actually passing legislation/doing things that matter. You did a good job adding the bit about EU policies. B+

