Is there too much money in politics? – with Larry Lessig and Brad Smith

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Follow the gist every weekday on YouTube wherever you get your podcasts. And tell them, you might be right, sing you. We've created a political system where the politicians are not dependent on the people alone.

They're first dependent on the funders.

And the funders, of course, are the rich within the poor. So it's complete inversion of the kind of system of dependence that was supposed to be our republic. I just don't think that empirically we see that connection between the idea that billionaires

give a bunch of money was going to be poorly governed, and we're going to be better governed if they don't. (upbeat music) - Welcome to You Might Be Right, a place for civil conversations about teftopics.

Husted by former Tennessee governors, Bill, Brett assume, and Bill Haslam. I'm Marian Wandamaker, Dean of the Baker School at the University of Tennessee. We're members of our producer circle,

make this show possible. To learn more about our work, visit you might be right.org. - Welcome back to another episode of You Might Be Right.

Phil, it's always good to be with you.

“And this is another topic that I think we both have”

some experience and lots to talk about. Lots of hot topics. This one with midterms coming is right on us. - That's great to be back with you again, Bill, as well. And as you pointed out, both run in our share of elections.

And we're glad we're not running in one right now. (laughing) - We had a lot of personal experience with money and politics, so I think the really is a question that goes through the part of our democratic process

and that who should be allowed to spend money on political campaigns, how much should they be able to spend? And the world has changed a lot since the Constitution was written and new threats I think have come to, the ability of people to get information.

And this is an important topic. - Yeah, so the issue is, how are we gonna finance our elections? Who can pay and how much can they give, who can give and how much can they give to influence elections? And you know, both of us, I think it's fair to say

when you run, what they say that money is the mother's milk of a campaign. You have to raise money. The amount of money that's involved in campaigns today is mind-boggling.

And when you have direct donations, which have a limit on them, you have super PAC, which don't have a limit. And then you also have what are called dark money groups, groups that can contribute in a way,

so you don't even know who gave the money before. It's a whole new world, and it involves not just who can give but also questions of free speech. - And, you know, and the question is free speech. I mean, really, really rise to the level of how our democracy works.

Having money to spend on things gives you a lot more free speech today than it did back in the days when newspapers did everything. The decline of a lot of the traditional journalism

“has made money much more important than it ever has been in politics.”

And, you know, it's something that, for me,

what I always was on comfort with was not the process

of raising money on the campaign. There's limits on it.

And so, it's just all this dark money that wanders around outside that's, you know, working supposedly on your behalf, sometimes against you.

“And that's a new feature of politics that I think”

has not been present before.

- We were on our end for mayor the first time.

And everybody was tracking, like who gave a thousand dollars to your campaign with the thought, though, they're going to be overly influential in your office. Now you have people literally who can give hundreds of millions of dollars and who have active businesses

that are going to be impacted. That's one thing that, you know, should maybe worry all of us. The flip side, like I said, is we do have free speech issues that we want to make, certainly protect. Two guests today, they're going to make two very different

perspectives. - I'm looking forward to this one. - Me too. Bill, our first guest is Lawrence Lessie. He's a Harvard Law School professor in one of the nation's

most prominent advocates for campaign finance reform. Professor Lessie can spend decades arguing to the influence of money and politics as creative to system where politicians become dependent on their funders rather than on their constituents.

He's the author of Republic Lost and they don't represent us. And he's considered his own run for office based on the principles he's been arguing for very welcome to our podcast. You might be right. - I appreciate you having me.

And we'll start it as two recovering politicians. The fact that you're considering running for office will give you some free counts. - You may need to talk with us about that, that's it. - Let me start for our listeners.

- Give us a view of the, I'll throw you kind of an overall broad question first. What is the role of money in politics today? We all know like here's how things you know, here's how people have to be supported, et cetera.

But give us your view. What's the role of money in politics today? - Well, you know, many people will say that they want to get money out of politics.

“I think that's completely naive and hopeless and wrong.”

I don't think there's any reason to aspire to getting money out of politics. The problem with money in politics today is the concentrated number of funders. And the kind of dependency that candidates for Congress

and members of Congress have on this extremely small number of funders. Now, that was bad enough before the rise of super PACS, which took off after 2010 in a decision called speech now from the DC circuit.

It was bad enough because members of Congress and candidates here at Congress were spending anywhere between 30 and 70% of their time, raising money, calling people begging for money, learning how to bend over backwards

to make those people happy. And of course, they weren't calling the average American. - Right. - They're calling a tiniest fraction of the one percent. But now with the rise of super PACS,

they are spending their time trying to inspire money from an even smaller number of people.

So the problem is not the money.

“It's the dependency on a tiny fraction of America”

that, of course, doesn't represent America at all. And so far, listeners, you have individual limits of what people can give individually to a campaign. Then you have super PACS, which typically have no limit at all.

And then there's also what we call dark money groups where you don't even know who the giver is are. So in super PACS, most of them will go into all the initials that the different funds are known by. But super PACS, you normally do know who the giver is.

But there are other groups, which you don't even, you have no idea who's put the money in. - Yeah, that's right. So there are two categories of spenders. So one category of spenders,

giving money to campaigns, or giving money to PACS, who also spend their money coordinator with campaigns. Those people are limited in the size of the contribution they can make. So there's a maximum amount we can give

to individual candidates. So maximum amount you can give to a PAC. Then there's another category of money, which is independent money. Money spent independently of a campaign.

And since buckly versus a leo, 1976, rich people have been free to spend unlimited amounts of money independently of a campaign. So Elon Musk could spend $250 million independently of a campaign since buckly versus a leo.

But then there's another category of money, which is money given to committees, that then spend the money independently of the campaign. Now they too are allowed since citizens united in 2010 to spend unlimited amounts of money.

But the critical difference is that people are allowed

to contribute unlimited amounts of money. Two of those can't, two of those independent political action committee super PACs. That's why they're called super PACs. Now the money that's contributed to them

needs to identify the contributor. So if I took $250 million, which of course I have sitting around here in my office, and I gave it to a super PAC, it would list Larry Lessig, contributor $250 million.

million to the super PAC, what I could do is give it to something

called a C4, which is another kind of political action committee. And then that political action committee could give money to the super PAC. Now while the political action committee,

then would be named Americans for a better America as a contributor of $200 million to that super PAC. There's no rule that requires the C4 to identify who's given money to it. So that would be a great way for me to launder my influence

through the C4. So the public wouldn't know that I'm the one that had given $200 million to supply that super PAC. But of course, the candidates would know. I mean, there's no secrecy from the candidate.

So that's the beginning of the opportunity

“for the kind of corruption that I think many people”

will now fear that our government is completely tied up

and endemic with. So do you think that if disclosure requirements were changed so that everyone knew exactly where money was coming from? Does that address the substance of the money and politics problem?

Or is that just one passive? It's nice to where you put it. It's exactly right. It's one facet. I think, of course, there should be transparency.

But if all there were where transparency, then we would just have open, quit pro quo, open kind of influence peddling. And people would be even more cynical about the way the political system was functioning.

So I think that it's not just that we need transparency. We also need to make sure that the size of contributions to these committees is also limited so that we essentially end super PAC. So that their opportunity for the kind of quit pro quo

corruption, which is the thing that Supreme Court has said, states are allowed to regulate for the last 50 years, can be taken away and people would not believe that somebody's selling their position on climate change or on oil regulation for a contribution of $5,600.

Well, I would push back a little bit just because somebody gives a lot of money. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're trying to benefit. They might just think that's the candidate. I think we'll be best.

Now, obviously, they're not necessarily saying, hey, if you do this, I'll change your position on climate change or I want you to benefit my company.

“They might just be doing, like, I think candidate X”

is the best candidate and I have the means to do it. I'm going to support that person. I think you're exactly right. And I think probably the vast majority of contributions are innocent in that way.

But the ground, the foundation for the right of the state, or the right of the federal government, to regulate the size of the contributions, is not based on the proportion of such large contributions that are actually motivated for quick pro quo reasons.

The basis, the foundation for the right to regulate, is whether there is a risk of quick pro quo corruption. Now, with independent spending, what the Supreme Court said is, there's no risk because if it is independent, that's a big if.

But if it is independent, meaning there's no coordination between the candidate and the spending, there's no opportunity for that kind of corruption. So that's why the Supreme Court has said that that kind of spending can't be limited.

But a contribution to a committee does not create the same independence.

“Like, I'm not allowed to coordinate with the spending,”

but there's nothing to stop me from coordinating with the candidate

before I send $250 million to this committee.

And so that means there is an opportunity for a corruption. And the whole point, the court has said is, if there's an opportunity for a corruption, the state is allowed to regulate it. If there's no opportunity for a corruption,

the state's not allowed to regulate it. And so even if you're right, in 90% of people, when they make large contributions are just doing it because they believe in the cause, that doesn't change the right of the state

to say that, well, the chance that we've got these 10% contributions that are for quick pro quo is a good enough reason for us to regulate because the public is going to be convinced. We just have a government that's being boxed

by the largest contributors. If you're like me and you enjoy podcasts that provide historical context to the day's news headlines, then check out the longstanding podcast called, "My History Can Beat Up Your Politics."

Each episode hosts Bruce Carlson uses history to make sense of today's politics, covering different areas of American history from the Reagan administration stance on foreign policy to Grover Cleveland's warnings about tariffs.

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Find my history can beat up your politics

The new Trump regime is taking a brick bat to norms the constitution and the law, seemingly saying to the US justice system, make me, will the courts hold? - What you're seeing right now is

a fundamental disregard of basic constitutional principles. - Join me, Dalia Lithwig, on Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts and the law to hear from the lawyers, judges, advocates and analysts who have the answers. - Search Amicus that's Am, I, C, U.S.,

wherever you listen to podcasts, because legal knowledge is power. - During my time in the political world, I don't actually think there's been a time

“when campaign finance reform has not been sort of a key issue”

that people wanted to talk about, at least a subset of people who want to talk about. If you had your, your routers, your routers, what changes would make the most difference in terms of cleaning up this system?

- Well, so number one, we've got to end superpacks. And we're, in fact, litigating the case right now, defending an initiative in Maine, that would do exactly that.

The Supreme Court has never considered

whether superpacks are constitutionally compelled or not. That's not what was decided in Citizens United. So we think there's an opportunity to give the court the chance to answer a question they've never answered, and if they apply their reasoning,

the way they've developed it, this should allow the state of Maine or the United States government to limit the size of contributions meeting ending superpacks.

That's number one.

“Number two, I would change the way we fund campaigns.”

So cities like Seattle have been experimenting with vouchers. So you basically give Citizens in the city vouchers like they get four vouchers each of them worth $25. And they then are allowed to give those vouchers

two different candidates. And those vouchers then become the way in which candidates fund their campaigns. Now, they're not required to take only vouchers because the Supreme Court wouldn't allow that

to be an exclusive requirement. But if you get the numbers right, what that means is that most candidates would be much more interested in taking the vouchers to fund their campaigns than spending 30 to 70% of their time

in a cubicle, calling rich people, begging rich people for that kind of money.

But we've always been time in those cubicles.

So we know you're not sure you have. Yeah, I feel sorry for you. Your service to America is recorded. But the point is, if you raised it like that, then candidates would be raising money from thousands,

tens of thousands of people, not from a tiny few. And so therefore, they would be more responsive to the people as opposed to being responsive to this tiny number of funders. My favorite quote from James Madison.

And there are a lot is in Federalist 52, where James Madison promised us a house that he said was going to be, quote, dependent on the people alone. And then in Federalist 57, he said, by the people he met, quote, not the rich more than the poor.

Well, we've created a political system where the politicians are not dependent on the people alone. They're first dependent on the funders. And the funders, of course, are the rich more than the poor. So it's a complete inversion of the kind of system

of dependence that was supposed to be our republic. And that would be changed, both by limiting the size of large contributions to get rid of superpacks, but also more importantly, changing the way of your fund campaigns.

You might be right, but I'll make one point. Mobs, one of Mobs, which politics is part of our polarization and hyper partisanship today is driven, actually, for the other reason, for thumb, from fundraising, which works, the more you can excite your base

and the more you can bring in $25 gifts, the more people do that. So I hear you, but I also think there's some danger to the fact that we've taken the parties really don't have the same kind of power and control they did. So people are out doing their own social media driven fund raising,

which is basically pushing the hottest button they can push. Yeah, and I would add to that, it goes the other way, too. I can't imagine I'm saying this, but when you have a system

in which there are people, maybe not $250 million,

but who are large funders, they also have acted as a break on some of the crazy, you're kind of candidates that are out there. If you can't raise money from these kind of people, it's difficult to get in the picture. I think we're built that, I mean, just from the inside,

it's very much the case that if I had to raise money through $25 contributions,

“but the only way I can do that is to have something”

which is, I mean, really excites a broad group of people and so on in a way that isn't necessarily healthy.

and I think it's really insightful, but it's not surprising given your experience with actually raising money. In fact, what the data shows is ambiguous about that,

but the critical point is I'm not talking about raising money

just from $25 contributions that individuals have of their own money, where it might be true that the people are giving their own money are more likely to be at the extremes.

“I think Michael Malvin's research shows that's not true,”

but might be true, but that's not the same dynamic that would exist if everybody had these vouchers, where if you know all that money is out there and you wanna go raise it, you're gonna be raising it, not from the 5% to the extreme,

but you wanna be raising it from the people in the middle, the people who are the much larger group of people. So you would be appealing to a different mix in that context, and you are in the current context where you're raising money from people just because

they want to spend their own money to support you. - Let me, the other kind of maybe slight pushback

I'd have is that the extreme funders don't always win.

You talk about Elon Musk, he put a lot of money in the Supreme Court races in Wisconsin and Laugh, so. - Thank you, Mike Booper. - I don't remember, but a whole lot of money

and his Democrat primary campaign. The big money doesn't always win, so thoughts on that. - Yeah, I think that's right.

“And that actually, I think that's part of the curing”

for big money. So one of the, you know, one of the people responses people have to the lawsuit that we're pursuing that we're litigating, that we think will end superpacks is that if we end superpacks,

that on its own won't stop people like Elon Musk and being able to spend hundreds of million dollars on his own. And that's true. That can't be changed unless the Supreme Court changes the very foundation of campaign finance law,

which is this case, Buckley versus Blaeo, 50 years ago. But as you say, turns out rich spenders, either spending on their own for their own campaign, like Michael Bloomberg, or giving large contributions,

like T-Boons Pickins, or George Soros, eventually tend to defeat their own purpose because people begin to identify the money coming from the super wealthy people as a reason, not to support the candidate who's receiving it.

So Elon Musk was pretty effective early on. I think that's true.

“But I think he's become much less effective.”

And I think that Wisconsin races are the perfect example of that, where the fact that it was Elon Musk money was a rallying point for the other side, and it turned out it wasn't worth very much money, very much to the candidate receive it.

We have-- this podcast is named after a Howard Baker

famous statement to just always remember

that the other person might be right. I'd like to ask you in your own experience. Do you have something you can think of in your own background, your own intellectual development, where some opinion you had was changed by listening

to somebody else who had a different one, maybe you ended up saying, I think I'm wrong on that. I think the other fellow was right. Well, I was the youngest member of a delegation at the 1980 Republican convention into Troy, Michigan.

And I had a whole slew of views back then. And I kind of feel like my whole life has been a constant process of discovering that my views turned out not to be right. Now, I would rationalize that and say that some of my views, I feel our core views about the importance of individual liberty

and the need to protect liberty and all those sorts of views. But I relish living in environments where people convinced me that what I thought was not true. I mean, I think that's the greatest thing about being an academic with tenure

is like you're allowed to confess error and move on and say that you no longer believe what you thought before. And I have the most respect for people who did that regularly. It's harder in some professions. It's harder as a politician, I think,

just because the opposition will use it as something to bludge in you with. But I think we need to develop a culture that encourages it, which is why I was eager to celebrate that with being on your podcast because I know that this is the way you frame

much of the challenge of modern politics. Larry, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate the discussion. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

(upbeat music) There is a lot and I mean a lot going on in the news around our government and our laws. And there's one question that we all hear or think about all the time.

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and tell them you might be right, shouldn't you? ♪ I'm just a bill, yes I only a bill ♪ We all remember this song. It made it all seem so simple and turns out it's not.

Who writes, influences and kills bills, it gets messy. I'm Scott Greenstone. And I'm Libby Dankman on sound politics. We tell that story. The inside track on how policy gets made

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- Phil, our second guest today is Brad Smith.

He's the former chair of the Federal Election Commission from 2000 to 2005. And now he's a law professor at Capital University. He's one of the most outspoken critics of campaign finance regulation America.

He's a founder of the Institute for Free Speech, an organization dedicated to protecting first amendment rights in the political arena, including by deregulating campaign finance, Brad. - Welcome to You Might Be Right.

- Thank you, it's who'd be here. - I'd like to just start off with a little bit of a general question. I mean, I was in the Lexington office for 16 years as my, as my bill was here. And during that time, I'm not sure a week ever went by

when there were not reasonable people who had respect for the first amendment and so on who expressed some concern about campaign finance and the role of money in politics and some of the inequities

they believe that it introduced into the political process. Let me just talk to you for a second about what is the role of money in politics? I mean, what is there something we should be worried about here or is all well?

- Well, money is always concerned

to Americans in me back to the earliest period of founding money in politics. People are concerned about its potential effects on our kind of political equality. Some people obviously can use that money to gain more influence

to speak more and people are concerned about the possibilities for corruption.

“In fact, I think a widespread belief in a large part”

of the public that politicians are. Show us a much more correct than they are that you look at the survey data and you'll find, you know, 25, 30% of the people think that legislators routinely sell their votes

for gifts of $10 or $20, that sort of thing that I think most people who've worked in the system say it's just not what it occurs. But having said that, money plays an extremely important role in communicating, is it's part of communication.

It's a study show consistently that people who the tire spending campaigns helps voters identify candidates on the political spectrum understand where they come from, what are their key issues? - Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, the concerns that I heard

have not been so much about money in politics. I mean, people understand that it costs money to go on television and communicate your message and all those things. But a system in which people can spend,

I mean, in terms of dark money, people can spend enormous amounts of money without even identifying where the money is coming from or whatever, seems to a lot of people, and to me, frankly, a little bit like a perversion of the system that, you know,

that it's designed to ensure that people who are in politics are responding to their constituents in a larger public and not simply not simply funders.

“- Well, I think ultimately, that's why we have elections”

to see the sure responding to your constituents and not to funders. We, that's what we're going to look at. And, you know, you mentioned, for example, dark money, given example of public misconceptions.

So-called dark money, that is money where we know how much is spent, and we know what it is spent on, we just don't know who perhaps gave the money to the people who are spending it. So the money goes to a group, let's say it's the Sierra Club.

So Sierra Club spends it, we don't know who their donors are. People call that dark money. That has been since the Citizens United decision 16 years ago. That has gone between about one and a half percent and six percent of total spending on politics.

In other words, the vast majority of spending in the United States is disclosed and the sources of the funds are disclosed. So it's one of those many cases where I think people sometimes just don't know the reality of what's going on.

And in the state and age of doxing and so on,

who don't want to be disclosed are the people we need to hear from. We need to hear from folks who have unpopular views or who might not want to, you know, state what they think is right about public policy

because they're afraid that the office holders may retaliate against them. And I don't think those kinds of things are idle concerns in the state and age. - Maybe following up on that, obviously your point is,

we stand to lose something if we restrict campaign finance. If we restrict that, what do we stand to lose? What's the downside to putting in place some sort of campaign finance limits? - Right.

Well, I mean, there's two ways to think about that. I would start by thinking about what are we likely to actually get, right? I'll throw out something like mentioning

that the original third election campaign act of 1974

restricted all these groups that most of us belong to and would feel very upset if, you know,

“if I told our listeners, what group do you belong to?”

And they told me I'd be long to, you know, whatever group be higher air or something. I said, okay, thousand dollars. So are you conspiring relative to a candidate? Relative to a candidate, which can mean talking

about issues, bills, almost anything, right? Most people would say, that's terrible. At least if they agreed with that group, if I asked the same thing of every time USA, a gun control group, they would say the same thing.

So you can't limit us our mind group to spending a thousand dollars. That's why I joined it. So at some level, that's what we lose. - Right. - I think it's fair to say that,

had we not had the decision of the Supreme Court in Buckleville, LAO, which was the 1976 case that struck down this law. We'd really have sort of a non-democracy today in which people could not campaign

or all campaigning would be filtered through the mainstream media, which, of course, nobody thinks the mainstream media has an agenda or is biased in any way, right? Of course, we, of course, we know it does too.

“And I think the American public has a right”

to participate directly in campaigns. - So in, in terms of direct contributions to campaigns, which both Bill and I have spent a lot of time seeking or over the years, there are definite limits there, $5,000 in state of Tennessee for state offices,

and obviously the 3800, I guess it is now for the federal elections and so on. Do you think those ought to go away?

Just that limit my first amendment, right,

to support Bill if I chose to? - Yeah, the contribution limits were generally analyzed by the court as less of a constraint on speech than on your right to association. And there the court says, it's not that big a right

on your right to association. You can still identify yourself with the campaign, put your yard sign up and so on. And you still have your speech right because you're allowed to go out and spend whatever you want

independently or give it to an organization, again, like one of the, you know, the American Bank because association or, you know, you know, public citizen or whatever kind of group you want to give it to.

So I don't think that contribution limits create the same concern as expenditure limits. That said, certainly if the limits are set to the, they've become very problematic. And you know, it can create a situation where a campaign

really can't get its message out to the public and that is very bad. So the Supreme Court has said in the book that you can't limit spending, but you can limit contributions directly to candidates.

And the reason you can do that is because that's where there's this opportunity for a sort of a quick pro quotes change. They can that it, you know, you say, I'll give you the campaign contribution provided. You take some particular road or official action on my behalf.

“And I think that's, you know, in my perfect world,”

I probably would say those laws are less beneficial than harmful. But I think that's a much more mixed picture. And I think we have to realize, again, that politics is often about compromise and then a lot of people think that those restrictions are very, are very needed.

And I think there are much more, let's say, much less damaging than the restrictions on spending that the Supreme Court did in fact strike down. So I understand where you're coming from, but I think most people would say, in today's world,

particularly say where you have somebody that's founded a high tech company. And that company is not only regulated by the federal government. They're also very often the federal government's a customer of that company.

In the thought that somebody could come in and give $300 million

to a campaign, maybe not as a quit pro quote, but just to influence the election in the direction I want because it matters that much to me and to my company. Somehow, I don't think that feels right to the average American that one person whose business is going to be

impacted by the government can come in and give $300 million. I agree with you. I don't think it feels right to most people. I don't think there's any doubt about that. In fact, in fact, overwhelmingly the American people

feel that way. Having said that, having recognized that,

One is you begin together by saying, this company is maybe being regulated by the federal government. It would seem to me an odd democracy indeed that said, if you're regulated by the federal government, we can limit your ability to lobby that government,

to petition that government for your trust, to speak to your fellow voters. But the argument gets stronger, as you say, what if their vendors to the government, that sort of thing? And I would come back, again, and simply say,

a lot depends on how you look at the first amendment. If you look at the first amendment as something that's intended to protect us from a law, like what was actually passed, they actually do,

just not limits you to spending a million or a hundred thousand,

or anything like that, but to very little numbers, I think we find that that's a danger.

“And again, that's why the first amendment exists.”

Now, related to what you've said is that a lot of people feel like it's not fair, obviously, somebody else has a lot more money, and therefore they can try to influence more voters, have more of a say in that way. The Supreme Court in the Buckley Decision says,

look, probably the most famous passage in the decision, it says, quote, the idea that government can limit the voice of some in order to enhance the voices of others is wholly foreign to the first amendment. And I think the court is basically right there.

It is disturbing to us. But on the other hand, do we really want the government to pick and choose who is spoken too much? Who is not spoken enough? If you work for a company, and you think a tariff policy,

whether it's higher tariffs or lower tariffs. But you think a tariff policy is going to drive that company out of business, and you're going to lose your job. I think you're pretty happy if the company goes out and spends money trying to convince voters,

that they should consider a different approach on the candidate who favors the person who's going to save that job.

“I think that's what democracy is all about.”

Now, ultimately, we as voters, we hear, we listen,

and we're the ones who cast the votes. Are there in terms of the current situation, which I think of a little bit as a wild west kind of situation? Are there any changes that you think should be made to protect the basic structure of how we elect people

and who has a voice? I mean, with the other campaign finance system, let me first, I hear a lot that phrase, it's kind of a wild west people can do anything. But I have a point out that actually the campaign finance

is a highly regulated industry. You've got a statute that the primary federal government statutes over 100 pages. You've got over 500 pages of federal regulations, and then you've got countless advisory opinions

relating from the Federal Election Commission. And then on top of that, you have state laws and many jurisdictions you have local laws. We, several of us who were former FEC Commissioners, filed a brief in the Citizens United case some years ago,

in which we went through all the combinations. And I don't remember the actual numbers, and I don't have them at front of me. But we as we went through, we realized that the FEC had separate regulations for something like,

you know, 32 different types of speakers, unions, and businesses in government contractors and individuals and packs and so on. And something like, you know, 28 different types of speech, and you could mix and match these into combos.

So it's actually is quite a highly regulated industry. Now, in terms of what we can or should do, I think one thing we should do, that I think most seriousness of us agree with, is that we should raise some of the very low thresholds

that exist. For example, as it stands now at the federal level, your contributions to candidates are disclosed publicly at $200 in many states, it's as low as $10, or in a few, even as a dollar.

And I don't think there's, you know, the idea that I'm going to, you know, be able to give that kind of money and that is somehow going to influence my senator. I'm going to get all these favors. It's just not realistic.

And it sure's no real purpose to have that kind of invasion in the people's political activities. I sometimes ask people, what would you think if the government had a database of your political activity and they kept it

and it was readily accessible to potential employers or potential creditors or potential college and missions officers and people terrible idea.

“And I put that's what campaign finance disclosure is.”

Now, I think there are benefits as we get up to a higher level of giving because, you know, then we're kind of monitoring who they're getting money from. But I think we definitely should raise those sorts of thresholds. I also think we should raise the thresholds on giving

to candidates, again, they haven't kept pace with inflation

since they were first put in at the federal level in the 1970s.

I think that we should also give consideration to loosening some of the restrictions on party activities. Parties are treated the same as any pack or pretty much. I mean, there are some differences.

But to a large extent, they're treated the same as in others,

Whereas parties tend to be broader, co-votional interest. And I don't see any reason why they should not be given a somewhat, I guess you would say favorable position within the system. So all of these are sort of deregulatory approaches.

“I think they would make the system function smoother.”

I think they would take out a lot of the infringements

on first amendment rights that are just insignificant

and fighting corruption or even promoting equality. And I think it would be helpful to us into making the remainder of the system work more efficiently. - Let me change tracks a little bit on you. There's a pending spring court case.

Our given authority has already been made back in December. What's a potential impact of that decision? - Right, so this case is National Republic and Centetorial Committee versus the Federal Election Commission. And in the case that the Republic and Centetorial wants to,

what's called coordinated spending with its own candidates. And there are argument as look. The money we get is a political party is limited. No, it's political party doesn't take unlimited contributions. It's subject to contribution limits.

And the candidate is subject to contribution limits. And they say candidates and parties that, I mean, we're really one and the same. Now, if somebody were to earmark our contribution, give it to the party with instructions

to spend it in a particular race, maybe that would be end running the contribution limit on what a candidate can accept. But when a person just gives money general to the party, the party should just be able to spend that on behalf

of its candidates as it sees fit. That's the argument that the NRC makes. And I think, again, if you believe us, I do that parties can play a good, you know, a mediurator real between special interests and office holders.

“I think that actually would probably be a good policy.”

- So, give us your best short answer. If I said, for all the folks who are out there worried that there's too much money impacting politics, a few very wealthy people have the ability to sway the argument in appropriate ways.

Give us your best short answer to them to say, here's why it's worth it to have a system that allows people to give, you know, whatever whatever they want to give. - Well, this is a great question.

It's always difficult because essentially this involves

telling people things that they don't like to hear, but at least this is what the empirical evidence tells us. The empirical evidence tells us the candidates rarely shift their votes in response to campaign contributions.

Rather than the campaign contributions, flow to people who are ready to tend to be likely to agree with them. - I actually agree with them. - I agree with them.

- Yep. - And the evidence also shows that actually the policy differences between the wealthy and the non-wealthy aren't as great as people sometimes think. You know, everybody wants good government at some level.

And you have billionaires who think, for example,

“the best way to improve schools is to plow more money in,”

give bonus pay to teachers, reduce class size. You have others who say it's to have vouchers more free market. And they're on both sides of the issue. There's not, I think, really that a good case

to be made that money is this big uniform blob that takes one position and dominates our politics. So I think more than that, it gets information out to voters. And again, ultimately, it assures that we remain the ability of people to spend money

to spend their own money to criticize politics, politicians assures us of having better governance that critics of government can make their voice heard, that they can point out corruption and government, that they can argue for good policies

that maybe aren't being discussed enough. And so I do think there's a trade-off in a loss. I know you asked for short answer, I have one more. You know, a few years ago, the poor charitable trust used to, they quit doing some years ago,

but they used to always do every other year

a survey, use the number of criteria to determine what were the best governance states in the country. And repeatedly, that survey showed that the best governance states in the country were states like Oregon, Utah, Virginia, which at the time all had no limits on contribution.

So I just don't think that empirically, we see that connection between the idea that billionaires give a bunch of money, we're going to be poorly governed, and we're going to be better governed if they don't. - We always ask our guests one kind of final question,

taking from Howard Baker, who's reminded us to always remember the other person might be right. Can you think of an example or case in your past where you realize I didn't exactly have that right. I'll see it very differently now.

- Well, you know, I hate to admit that I'm ever wrong, but that is good advice. (laughing) So let me give you an example, really in my career, I thought that Gerry Manning was particularly bad thing.

And at one point, just from a very simple conversation, I began to realize, you know, Gerry Manning, district is pretty much an inherently political process, and the idea that you can get politics out of districting is probably a flawed exercise

But then, obviously in the last year or two, you know, as we've seen more and more extreme Gerry Manners and more ability to use computer information to get down to single voters, I'm beginning to come back today

that probably is something that could be done there. So that's one where I've kind of swung one way and then back, as I think, you know, the evidence has just unfolded differently. I do think that's another tough issue

where it is inherently a political process, but there may be some useful limits that can be placed there. - This has been a great discussion. And I'm going to be interested in listeners' reactions to these two presentations of the issue.

It's something that there's just this, out there in the public, there's this amorphous feeling that there's something wrong, but they can't quite put their finger on exactly what it is or what the solution is.

- Yeah, I'd say more what the solution is.

So, by the way, we really appreciate you, you know, making your argument for your side of the case.

“I think it helps us think through the down,”

I mean, one of the things we want to make certain is with every decision, there is another side and there's consequences or ramifications and thank you for helping us do that. - Thank you very much, but a pleasure.

- Thanks so much. So Bill, did you, can you remind about anything? - Listen, I found neither side to be totally persuasive to be honest with you. I do have a deep unease with the fact

that somebody can come put hundreds of million dollars on the right people like it. It's a well, George Soros is pouring billions dollars into my race and the left, they're saying Elon Musk is doing it. So, I get the fear and into me.

Again, somebody who's had to go out and raise money and who's given a lot of money to campaigns, that doesn't feel right.

I don't know what the solution is,

you know, that does kind of protect the rights that the spring court has said people have in terms of expression. - I come down, I mean, the one thing that seems very clear to me and I think there's some good arguments

made on both sides, but the idea of being able

“to give money anonymously, I think bothers me a lot.”

You know, back in the heyday of newspapers, you'd have, certainly starting right here with the Tennessee and the banner and the Asheville, you know, you'd have letters to the editor, but you had to sign the letters. - Okay, but so let me stop you for a second.

But do you think like if you wanna give, as he said, like if you wanna give to the Sierra Club or the, you know, anti-abortion league, whatever it is, and then they're gonna go campaign, should all that, should you not be able to do that

or should they not be able to actively engage? - I think that if money is flowing into politics in that way and maybe there's some limit that there's some need for, there's some need for disclosure about who the Caribbean's are.

I mean, you know, I mean, when people are listening to arguments that are intended to be persuasive, there's a lot of ways in which you evaluate those and one of them is the credibility of the speaker. - Yeah.

- And not knowing who the speaker is in these cases,

“I think gives, you know, you lose a lot of information.”

I mean, if I hear an ad about something to do with, I don't know, it's drug, it makes a difference to me whether the person doing that is the president of a pharmaceutical company or something else. - So it's fair, but let's take the abortion issue, okay?

You have planned parenthood on one side, Susan B. Anthony, which is the anti-abortion group on the other, should all, and they're gonna actively engage on that issue, should all of the people who donate to them

have to be disclosed? - I would say, and again, these are complicated, I would put some limit on the thing. If I send $20 to plan parenthood, that's not an issue, but if I send a plan parenthood, you know, $50,000,

I mean, that to me is a meaningful piece of information that somebody should have to evaluate. - Well, you know, I think I come down on this, and again, I don't know how to work around the free speech issues that the Supreme Court has said.

There are, I think the limits that we have on individual donations to campaigns are a good thing. Hey, you know, I have too much of what's B. To be honest with you, even though it was a candidate, I hated dialing for dollars or having, you know,

calling asking people to come to events. It actually made me better, and I don't back to the point, I think you and I agreed on.

I never felt like the fact that somebody gave me money,

it was going to change my position on anything. You know, did they get to speak with me at a reception? Yes, but did I say, oh, wow, I got $5,000 from that person, therefore I'm going to do something totally against what I believe.

- Yeah, I mean, the realities of it are, but I mean, both you and I are an entrepreneur, and, you know, in the year before the election, we both had to raise something on the order of $150,000, to $200,000 a week, right?

I'm truly grateful for, you know, it doesn't rise

“to the level of I'm going to sell myself over,”

or change my vote forward or something like that. So, you know, I don't see that as an issue, and I do think that the limits on that make, they perfect the good sense. I guess it comes back to, you know,

for democracy to work, I think people have got to have confidence in the electoral process. I mean, you know, we've seen that. And if people feel that, you know, the whole thing is kind of, you know,

something that goes on in the dark behind the scenes of the way money flows, I think it undermines that confidence in the, you know, the whole process is about which you choose and like people, and that's a really dangerous thing,

because that belief in the electoral process is right at the heart of what makes it democracy work. - I think that's fair, the, I will make this point, and we know it from campaigning, there's a lot of different ways to influence a candidate

or somebody who's elected, and people will say, "Well, who gave them the most money?" I remember when I ran for mayor of Knoxville,

“I think there was like $1,000 contribution limit, okay?”

But we had some couple of firefighters who both showed up at our campaign headquarters every day, because they, if I put up the most signs, I'm gonna get to be the next fire chief, and there's a lot of different ways people look for influence.

So at the end of the day, it's really about who that candidate is and do you think like, well, if they're gonna be swayed by that financial gift or by that gift of volunteer hours, they're probably not who I want to elect. - Right, I also think, I mean, I also think there's a,

you know, there's a kind of a felt threat. I mean, when I was, you know, in office as you were, an underlying kind of rationale is, nobody's spending money now, but if I go down this road, I know it will call forth a lot of quiet money

in opposition to that.

- Hi, that issue, first, when I was mayor,

with something you had to do with the unions. - Right, basically, that if I did this thing with that, I knew it was gonna be just a lot of money coming home again, and I don't think that's necessarily healthy for the process.

- Well, hopefully we eliminate the issue. I'm not certain we're going to solve it on this show, but hopefully at least get people a chance to think through the opposite, the other side from what they, what they feel.

- It's a really interesting issue. I mean, it gets at, you know, the collision between, you know, a couple of fundamental rights. I have, you know, right to have fair elections

and, you know, first amendment rights to speak your piece.

“I think there'll probably be a lot more conversations”

about this this time, because I-- - And in my hope is that we have a country that continues to struggle over competing rights and does our best to wrestle through those and get to the best answer.

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