How To End The Superpacs’ Massive Campaign Spending Spree

There is a constitutional way to dry up the tsunami of special-interest money that floods into House and Senate elections

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By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)

Unlimited Corporate Campaign Spending

After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision struck down the federal limits on corporate and union campaign spending, a tsunami of special-interest money began to pour into federal elections.

Unions, corporations, and the wealthy individuals who control them quickly saw funding federal candidates as a relatively cheap way to obtain legislation that either benefitted them or, more importantly, gave them the ability to block or neuter legislation that would erode their profits or increase their taxes.

Attempts To Stem This Massive Spending Have Failed

Today, people concerned about special interests’ control of Congress by funding candidates who will do their bidding have almost given up trying to find a mechanism that would insulate congressional candidates from the need to please their wealthy contributors in order to get elected.

Sadly, those interested in untainted elections have approached this problem from the wrong direction, namely, by trying to figure out some law that could constitutionally limit campaign spending.

Given the pro-corporate makeup of the majority on the Supreme Court this strategy is doomed to failure.

There Is A Constitutional Way To Turn Off The Money

But there is a constitutional solution to this problem. It lies not in restricting interest groups from spending as much as they want on their preferred candidates.

Instead Of Less Money For Candidate A, More Money For Candidate B

The solution is matching however much the superpacs spend on their pet Candidate A with an equal grant to A’s opponent, Candidate B.

Now, don’t get all upset just yet. Hear me out.

The Massive Spending Going On Today

In 2024 the total spent on congressional elections was $9.5 billion. An additional $5.3 billion was spent on the Presidential election.

$9.5 billion divided by 944 (34 Senate seats up for grabs) = $10 million average per candidate with much more being spent on the senate races.

In the 2024 Presidential election Elon Musk alone contributed over a quarter of a billion dollars to Donald Trump’s election campaign.

A Federal Sales Tax On Campaign Spending

What if we levied a federal sales tax of 10% on Congressional race contributions over $500? $9.5 billion X 10% = $950,000,000 that could go into a Federal Campaign Expenses Fund.

Sales Tax Grants To All Candidates

Let’s start with a federal grant from that fund in the amount of $250,000 to each of the top two candidates for each House seat — 438 X 2 X $250,000 = $219,000,000.

Generally there are 33 senate seats at stake so 66 candidates. Let’s give them $1 million each for a total of $285 million — only 3% of the $9.5 billion spent on federal congressional elections in 2024.

This leaves $665,000,000 remaining in the federal election fund.

Sales Tax Matching Grants To Each Candidate

Let’s say that in the contest for Congressional District XX the major candidates are incumbent Congressman Smith and Candidate Jones.

Smith and Jones each get $250,000 from the fund for their campaigns.

Let’s say that Smith raises an additional $300,000 in direct contributions and a superpac spends $500,000 on ads that benefit Smith — $800,000 total.

Jones collects $200,000 in contributions and no superpac money.

The federal campaign fund would offset that $600,000 imbalance in Smith’s favor with a $600,000 campaign grant to Jones.

But, wait.

The Availability Of These Matching Grants Ends Big Money

Knowing that this is what would happen, would the pacs and wealthy donors really have had much of an incentive to actually give Smith that $800,000 in the first place? No.

First, knowing that they couldn’t outspend Jones, the contributors’ motivation to invest more of their money in Smith would be massively reduced.

Second, and more importantly, giving Smith more money would be counter-productive because any additional money they gave to Smith would only serve to enrich Jones, giving him/er more money that s/he could use to amplify their Anti-Smith message.

Because the special interests would know that those contributions would be an exercise in futility they would not make most of them.

More Contributions Are Self Defeating

Again: Spending more on Smith would be self-defeating, actually harmful to Smith’s cause, because it would end up giving Jones more money to tell the electorate how bad Smith is.

We fix the problem of unions and corporations and massively wealthy individuals financially controlling members of congress by using a campaign-contribution sales taxes to fund equal campaign grants to the each of the two top candidates for House and Senate seats.

This will dry up a huge percentage of the superpac money in congressional elections because the superpacs will know that most of the contributions they might make will be both futile and self defeating.

Yes, we will need to figure out a way to apply this strategy to the primary elections, but that is too complicated a plan to get into in this column.

And, yes, we will need to have a mechanism to increase the sales tax percentage as may be necessary if the superpacs try to win by spending enough to bankrupt the fund.

The Fundamental Strategy

Right now, let’s concentrate on the fundamental strategy:

→>> Because unions and corporations and wealthy individuals will understand in advance that

• if you can’t outspend your candidate’s opponent, and
• if every dollar you give to your pet candidate will result in an additional dollar being added to the opponent’s campaign fund,
• it will be better for your candidate to have less money if that simultaneously keeps his/er opponent too poor to vigorously deliver their own message.

— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)

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