Political money: what for?

National Review, Dec 31, 1997 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 28

The Center for the Study of Responsive Politics seeks to do by public analysis what all those congressional committees struggle to do with batteries of investigators and lawyers and subpoenas and press releases. What the American people are interested in, or should be, is the extent to which government policy is for sale. The headline on the Center's report (taken from the New York Times) tells us, "'96 Campaign Costs Set Record at $2.2 Billion." The median expenditure for a House seat is $559,807, for a Senate seat, $3.5 million.

The most useful perspective on the matter of government and campaign spending is derived from the question: What is it that the government has to give away? If in November of last year the Congress of the United States had been meeting for its very first session, with the injunction no more complicated than to implement the terms of the Constitution, there would be lobbies, but not very strong lobbies. The frontier states wanting extra protection against the Indians would appeal to Washington. The Federal Government would be subject, most materially, to quarrels over how high tariff barriers should be. Over the next two hundred years, we got new laws, and many of those laws begot regulations. The result is that you need federal benignity if you want to build a house, start a business, hire an employee, write an insurance policy, buy a car, use a telephone, plant corn, buy medicine, or sue for defamation of character.

So who was the top donor in 1996? Take two seconds to guess . . . Right: Philip Morris. The tobacco giant has the most to win/lose depending on what Congress does. Congress can, pace the Supreme Court, declare tobacco to be a drug and forbid its sale. At the tenderest end of the line, Congress can add one penny in tax per pack. Philip Morris invested $4.2 million in the campaign, of which 29 per cent was given to Democrat- ic candidates, 71 per cent to Republican candidates. Republicans are in power and deserve maximum stroking, and Republicans, who tend to be more permissive than Democrats, are more natural allies in libertarian goals.

The next-in-size givers, from second to ninth, were: unions, if loosely defined. They are Bolshevik-majority Democrats. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees gave 99 per cent to the Democrats; the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, 85; the National Education Association, 96; the Teamsters Union, 96; the Laborers Union, 93; the United Auto Workers, 99; the United Food and Commercial Workers, 99; and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 98.

Two points spring to mind. The first is: How do grownups think they can conceal the plunders told here? Forty-four per cent of organized labor voted for Ronald Reagan, and we are asked to believe that only 4 per cent of the Teamsters Union is pro-Republican?

But mostly the eye sensitive to democratic culture asks: Why is it so important to win federal favor for these groups? What do they want? The trial lawyers want no federal limits on tort awards. The labor unions want all those things that contribute to union power: forced membership, uncompetitive pricing of federal projects, the deep-sixing of the Beck decision (which requires individual union members' authorization of any expenditure of their dues for political ends), protective tariffs, and, depending on the union's leadership, a Left-ideological orientation of government.

Although the top givers are overwhelmingly Democratic in disposition, the largest sums of money raised were from corporations, by Republican-minded individuals and enterprises. The reasoning here is pretty obvious. A corporation has assets which are depreciated if the government engages in any of several activities: raising taxes, imposing fresh regulations, increasing the cost of labor. But of course the principal concern is the dependence of so many on the least whim of government.

What does Philip Morris expect, in return for its four million dollars distributed three-tenths to Democrats, seven-tenths to Republicans? It's not much money. Philip Morris probably spends more than that per year advertising in Playboy. What it wants is congressmen who will listen to its pleadings. This is fair enough, though in an ideal world you wouldn't need to contribute to a congressman's campaign in order to get a hearing.

From all of which one sadly deduces that one is not living in an ideal world.