One class of spender. One federal ceiling. One scope.
- Contributions, in-kind benefits, and independent expenditures all count as the same thing for federal elections.
- The ceiling is 2,000 hours × the federal minimum wage × 10 — currently about $145,000 per year, across all federal races combined.
- A candidate's own federal campaign spending counts against the same ceiling.
The system.
Money in American politics is not one problem, it is a plumbing diagram. Corporations, unions, PACs, super PACs, 501(c)(4)s and self-funding candidates each enter the system through a different pipe, and every pipe was carved out by someone who benefited from carving it. Citizens United did not create the appetite; it removed the last meaningful valve. The biggest remaining valve is the fiction that money spent 'independently' of a campaign is different from money given to it. It is not different in effect, so it cannot be different in law.
The incentives.
Under the current design, a member of the House spends a genuinely absurd share of their working life dialing for dollars. That is not a character flaw, it is exactly what the system rewards. Whoever can deliver a large check in one phone call is worth more of an officeholder's time than a thousand constituents, so that is who gets the time. Change what a dollar can buy and you change what a calendar looks like. The same ceiling applying to a candidate's own wallet means the bar to enter office does not automatically favor people who already have the largest checkbooks or the most expensive friends.
The constraints.
The rule is deliberately written so that the hard part is the politics, not the arithmetic: one class of spender (a living person), one number, one period (a calendar year), one scope. That scope means we treat contributions, in-kind support like aircraft or facilities, independent expenditures, and a candidate's own money as the same kind of thing for the same purpose: they all buy influence in an election. Before Citizens United, the law recognized more of this continuum than it does now. The goal is to return to that spirit — not to regulate speech, but to keep elections from becoming contests of private wealth.
Where I'm still wrong.
The ten-times multiple is the number I am least attached to. It is a starting stake in the ground: it says an unusually wealthy citizen may speak ten times as loudly as a citizen working full-time for the legal minimum, and no louder. If you think the right multiple is five, or twenty, I would like to hear the reasoning — but the ratio has to be small enough that a person can hold it in their head.
The strongest objection.
Two, and they are good ones. First: you are not misunderstanding the independent-expenditure problem, but closing it is a heavier constitutional lift than capping direct contributions. It requires overturning not only Citizens United but the broader Buckley principle that spending money on political speech is itself protected speech. I think that is the right fight, but it is a fight, and the rule should not pretend otherwise. Second: the federal minimum wage has not moved since 2009, so a cap indexed to it shrinks in real terms every year Congress does nothing. I am keeping that coupling on purpose. If you want the ceiling on political money to rise, raise the floor under working people first. It is the rare case where the two arguments have to be made together.
Tell me where this is wrong.
No account needed. One short spam check, then your comment is public. Argue with the mechanism, not the person — that is the only house rule.
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