What does corruption require?
The consensus among those in Washington seems to be “quite a bit.” In their much talked about decision in Citizens United, the conservative Supreme Court majority held that money spent independently of campaigns toward political advertising is not corrupting, regardless of amount. (Interestingly, Anthony Kennedy ruled the opposite way in another opinion he wrote, in Caperton v. Massey Coal. That case applied to money spent in judicial elections, however).
Last week, the House ethics committee cleared 7 members accused of contributor kickbacks:
Simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor does not, on these two facts alone, support a claim that a member’s actions are being influenced by campaign contributions.
It’s not surprising that a panel of politicians found this permissible, as the practice of rewarding campaign contributors is quite common to all in Congress. This is like having a hedge fund regulate itself. But it’s frustrating for this reason: One would have to be incredibly naive to believe that there isn’t some sort of relationship between bankrolling a campaign and getting benefits in return (what other reason to corporate PACs and trade associations have for throwing large sums at elected officials?), but it’s also difficult, given the kind of standard we’re setting, to prove corruption in these cases.
In other words, we all know this is “pay to play,” but we simply can’t prove it to anyone’s satisfaction unless we have Blagojevich-like phone calls of the members promising rewards. On the other hand, should we automatically disqualify campaign donors from receiving federal contracts? If not, I suppose the House panel couldn’t have ruled any other way.
- Colin
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- Avoiding the appearance of corruption
- Wrangling over ethics
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- Death panels and democracy
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