Ethics of American Government Pac Contributions

Camden Keeling

Professor Williams

ENG-101-C

12 April 2016

Ethics of American Government PAC Contributions

        With the potential for an oligarchic system enveloping the once-pristine American democracy, campaign finance reform, Wall Street corruption, and the like have been center stage in the media, especially considering recent events in the Presidential campaigns. With my own interest in politics in mind, I began an examination of this problem in light of the current problematic presidential campaigns, and the recent accusations that the Clinton campaign has been ‘bought off’ by campaign finance contributions stemming from ‘big business’, Wall Street in particular, but with an endless list of corporations attempting to buy access to the potential President.  With this endless list of accusations came an endless supply of arguments about whether such accusations had any merit, or were simply propaganda intended to dissuade would-be voters from aligning themselves with such a ‘corrupt’ candidate. All three of the articles questioned whether politicians can actually be affected by campaign contributions, or if donors simply choose to support candidates that share their beliefs. Regardless of what solutions or questions were asked, one question remained evident throughout each article- are politicians truly affected by campaign donations, or do donors simply choose to support candidates who share ideological beliefs?

        The first article I found in my research is Stephen G. Bronars and John R. Lott’s “Do Campaign Donations Alter How a Politician Votes? Or, Do Donors Support Candidates Who Value the Same Things That They do?”. Bronars and Lott argue that that politicians’ votes cannot be bought from a simple donation (albeit a very sizable one). According to the article, it still remains very difficult to prove that a politician’s vote can truly be ‘bought’ in the sense that would lay implications that corruption is at hand.  Bronars et al. write that “. . . it is not possible to conclude that none of the congressmen ever sold their vote for donations . . . “ (Bronars et al. 346); additionally, there are other ways that a vote could be bought, besides simple campaign donations (post-political term job opportunities, preferential treatment for descendants/preferred, preferential treatment, etc.). However, according to other evidence, it still is difficult to make distinctions between preferential treatment given by the PAC to the candidate when they were in office and when they retire, making it increasingly difficult to track the full extent of their ‘donation’ to that politician’s life.

The second article, “Some Talk: Money in Politics. A (Partial) Review of the Literature” By Thomas Stratmann focuses on how campaign finance contributors have benefited from their contribution, and how the political campaigns’ themselves have benefited from their donations, financial or otherwise. This scholarly examination of potential corruption in politics, is an in depth analysis of how and why donors contribute to particular politicians, and if those politicians are chosen because of their ideological beliefs, or for their aversion to campaign finances. The same question is posed as was posed in the accompanying articles, about whether or not campaigns are funded to buy their votes, or whether the campaigns are funded because their beliefs are shared by the PAC’s and politicians. Stratmann claims that campaign financing, as well as other contributions from PAC’s, tend to either garner votes or other preferential treatment from governmental groups., but also claims that even though if there were an imbalance of financial support in the case of competition for a political position (potentially as a result of one candidate/politician being funded by PAC’s and corporations, and another candidate/politician not), it’s unlikely for that to make a major difference (150).