{"id":1310158,"date":"2019-05-10T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T01:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/will-column-to-reduce-money-in-politics-reduce-politics-in-the-allocation-of-money\/"},"modified":"2019-05-10T19:48:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T01:48:00","slug":"will-column-to-reduce-money-in-politics-reduce-politics-in-the-allocation-of-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/will-column-to-reduce-money-in-politics-reduce-politics-in-the-allocation-of-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Will column: To reduce money in politics, reduce politics in the allocation of money"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u00ad\u2014 The progressive catechism teaches that there is \u201ctoo much money\u201d in politics. A codicil to this tenet, written in fine print, is that the term \u201cmoney\u201d does not apply to money from George Soros, government employees unions, private-sector unions, trial lawyers, Democratic-oriented private-equity firms and white-shoe law firms, Silicon Valley executives or entertainment celebrities.<\/p>\n

The catechism does not include the truism that the way to reduce the amount of money in politics is to reduce the amount of politics in the allocation of money and of opportunities for making it. This would eviscerate the progressive agenda, which involves government, aka politics, redistributing wealth, regulating the creation of it, and rescuing \u201cfairness\u201d from \u201cmarket failure,\u201d aka markets producing results that progressives dislike. Now comes a strange proposal from one of the stranger Democratic presidential campaigns, that of New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.<\/p>\n

As a congresswoman representing a moderate upstate district, she earned a 100% score from the NRA. She supported repeal of the District of Columbia\u2019s gun restrictions and said she kept two rifles under her bed. She also opposed driver\u2019s licenses for illegal immigrants, and was a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of occasionally conservative Democrats. When, however, in 2009 she was appointed to the Senate to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Gillibrand discovered her inner progressive, even opposing repeal of D.C.\u2019s gun-control regime.<\/p>\n

Arriving in the Senate, Gillibrand decided (as the most recent Democratic president did, and as six other Democratic senators have done this year) that she should take her talents 16 blocks west on Pennsylvania Avenue. Seeking a lane of her own in the Democrats\u2019 congested nomination scramble, her signature (because her only major) proposal is to purify politics using \u201cdemocracy dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every eligible voter could get these just by asking the government for up to 600 of them. For each federal race, the Federal Election Commission would provide $200 worth of vouchers that voters could contribute to House, Senate and presidential candidates, $100 in primaries and $100 in general elections. Voters could donate only to House and Senate races in their states.<\/p>\n

All campaign-finance laws are written by incumbent legislators, so they usually serve incumbent-protection. Gillibrand\u2019s proposal would require candidates accepting \u201cdemocracy dollars\u201d to accept no contributions larger than $200, a boon to incumbents who usually are better known than their challengers and have more ways of generating free media coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocracy dollar\u201d vouchers will be paid for by \u2014 wait for it \u2014 taxing the rich. Gillibrand wants to take more than $60 billion over 10 years from CEOs who make \u201cexcessive\u201d salaries, defined as more than 25 times the median salary of their employees, or more than $1 million, whichever is less.<\/p>\n

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Luke Wachob of the Institute for Free Speech calculates that if even 20 percent of the 137.5 million who voted in 2016 had used Gillibrand\u2019s vouchers, taxpayers would have given federal candidates more than $16 billion. Such candidates spent a total of $2.7 billion in the 2015-2016 cycle, amid lamentations about \u201ctoo much money\u201d in politics.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to electrify the electorate by talking about the political process: How often do people at your coffee shop discuss \u201csoft\u201d and \u201chard\u201d campaign money? Perhaps Gillibrand is talking about the process because her Democratic rivals have beaten her to the punch in promising voters oodles of free stuff.<\/p>\n

Voters, however, have repeatedly demonstrated opposition to politicians\u2019 proposals for funneling money to politicians. Indeed, this might be America\u2019s most frequently and reliably \u201cpolled\u201d policy:<\/p>\n

Since 1976 there has been the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. Every year, taxpayers can, by checking a box on their tax return, contribute ($1 until 1993, $3 since then) to the fund \u2014 without increasing their tax liability. Participation peaked in 1980, when 28.7% of taxpayers checked the box. By 2018, participation had withered to 3.9% (i.e., 96.1% \u201cvoting\u201d against it with their pencils). John McCain in 2008 was the last major party candidate to accept taxpayer funding (and consequent spending limits).<\/p>\n

The richest Americans can contribute only $5,600 to a candidate\u2019s campaigns ($2,800 in a primary, $2,800 in the general election). Large contributions to issue-advocacy PACs would be unaffected by Gillibrand\u2019s proposal. Still, she says \u201cdemocracy dollars\u201d will combat \u201ccorruption,\u201d meaning the corruption of others less admirable than she: Gillibrand does not say that she has been corrupted by any of the $58,508,025.68 she has received in contributions during her career.<\/p>\n

George Will\u2019s email address is georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u00ad\u2014 The progressive catechism teaches that there is \u201ctoo much money\u201d in politics. A codicil to this tenet, written in fine print, is that the term \u201cmoney\u201d does not apply to money from George Soros, government employees unions, private-sector unions, trial lawyers, Democratic-oriented private-equity firms and white-shoe law firms, Silicon Valley executives or entertainment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1310158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 05:22:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}