Influence of Money in U.S Politics

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In her article “How Money Talks in the State Legislatures” political science expert, Lynda Powell, presents a very interesting point of view regarding political contributions in the United States. Powell argues that despite the well-known insight that political donations buy governmental influence, political science has failed to find proof to support this statement. However, she does not discard the fact that political contributions are methods in which powerful corporations and entities undertake to influence the individual choices lawmakers make. In addition, Powell states that the incentive structures within legislatures are the main cause as to why political figures spend so much time creating fundraising activities (Powell, 2013).

Matea Gold’s article “Big Money in Politics Emerges as a Rising Issue” concentrates on the direct correlation between politics and money. Gold points out that the U.S political system needs to be fixed through strong laws that limits the amount of political contributions. In her article, Gold questions Hillary Clinton’s words concerning political contributions. In the past, Hillary Clinton said her that her proposal for Democratic presidential nomination would be to reform a “dysfunctional” campaign finance system. However, Gold has little credibility in her statement, since Bill Clinton said the same thing when he was running for president and did nothing about it. With all things considered, Gold strongly recommends U.S citizens to be patient and persistent because nothing lasts forever (Gold, 2015).

The article “Will Influence of Big Money be Big Issue in 2016?” by Paul Waldman investigates the possible consequences of lobbying and unknowns contributions in 2016. The author argues that Democrats want more restrictive campaign finance rules, while Republicans want to loosen restrictions. However, he believes 2016 campaign will feature more outside money than ever before. Waldman points out that the major contributors are going to be millionaires and billionaires that are driven by greed to achieve more power. The author uses the Koch brothers as a great example that illustrates how greedy these billionaires are. According to Waldman, the Koch brothers plan to spend nearly a billion dollars with the help of other business partners. As a matter of fact, Waldman supports his arguments with Matea Gold’s article (Waldman, 2015).

In “Washington, Money Talks Louder than Ordinary Americans,” Lawrence Lessig argues that private funding of public campaigns harms and corrupts the U.S government. Lessig goes back in history to show how corrupted the U.S political system was since 1923. He claims the Democratic Party was once a “White Party” because black people could not vote in the general election. With a combination of accurate facts and irony, Lessig states that the United States does not have a “White Party” anymore, but it does have a “Green Primary.” However, the “Green Primary” was not a made by the Supreme Court, it was propelled by the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission in 2010, which allowed corporations to make unlimited amounts of contributions. Lessig’s thinks that the only possible solution to stop this influence is through public funding of political campaigns. U.S citizens should take action and do something about this issue because at the end, the lobbyists get richer, the communal interests that hire the lobbyists get richer, and eventually the congressmen who leave their political positions to become lobbyists get also richer. The only ones being affected in this corrupted political chain are the rest of the various segmented groups of citizens throughout the United States (Lessig, 2015).

Jay Cost’s article “What About Money in Politics” tries to find answers for many frequent asked questions by U.S citizens. In 2015, American voters opened their eyes a little bit more and realized that there is something going on behind the political fairy tale stories. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans have decided to act as if they were blind regarding the political system. These groups of citizens, which resemble a great chunk of America’s population, decided to blindly trust their political leaders for a long period now. Many political incidents in the past 5 years instigated American citizens to stop and think outside the box. With this being said, Cost blames the top political figures in the U.S for not creating more rules and amendments to stop the inflow of cash in political campaigns (Cost, 2015).

Jeffrey Milyo’s article “Corporate Influence and Political Corruption” studies the systematic and sophisticated ways in which corporations and political parties engage in unethical behaviors. According to the results of many polls and surveys done by Gallup (an American research-based company) the majority of U.S citizens view corporate political spending and lobbying with suspicion. These results show how American citizens feel about their own political system. There is no secret that U.S citizens are worried about the existence of political corruption in their country. In a survey done in 2008, more than 50 percent of the participants agreed that there is a presence of corruption in the government. As years passed, the results of these polls and surveys were even more shocking. For example, in a survey done in 2011, in which three thousand U.S citizens participated, 75 percent of them agreed that there needs to be an intervention to stop corporate political funding. At the end of his article, Milyo argues that political corruption refers to all the illegal actions that implicate subornment and peddling (Milyo, 2014).

In his article “Tragic influence of money keeps maturing in it bullying boldness” Lewis Diuguid discusses about the maturing and “bullying” influence of the 2010 Citizens United Court ruling, which basically allowed powerful people to influence elections. Big contributor groups, such as Political Actions Committees, no longer have the responsibility to reveal the source of political contributions, consequently, dark money spending has rise steeply. This all has to do with the 2010 Citizens United Case, where the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that it was illegal to limit contributions by corporations or organizations. In addition, political officers in this case allowed political donors to make their contributions secretly. With this in mind, the Court reasoned that political funding is a type of political speech, and to constraint it is the same as to deprive corporations of their first amendment privileges. Diuguid argues that this court ruling has been a nightmare to rest of the U.S voting population because it has diminished the power of their vote. According to Diuguid, there is no place for “ordinary”