I would like to discuss a tricky topic today, which is campaign finance reform. Before I get into it, I’d like to give you a couple of facts about it. I’m not discussing individuals’ contributions to campaigns, but rather corporations and unions’ contributions.

Now, corporations are not allowed to give money directly to a candidate’s campaign. Instead, they have to give their money to what are known as Political Action Committees, or PACs. Currently, as ruled by the Supreme Court, PACs are able to spend an unlimited amount of money when supporting a campaign.

Recently, much talk has been going on about putting a cap on the corporate expenditures. I am here to tell you why putting a cap on these expenditures would be a bad option.

The first reason is that money equals speech. Without money, politicians wouldn’t be able to get ads out via television, Internet, radio, etc. We’re not worried about the equality of money spent on both sides but the fact that money allows them to get their word out at all.

It’s important to understand that the First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Just like the First Amendment protects peoples’ right to speak, it also protects their rights to fund that speech. A quote from Brittanica.com, “Free speech means very little if you cannot use your resources to promote your views. Real free speech must be able to be heard, and that takes money.”

The second reason is that putting a cap on corporate expenditures can create a chilling effect. The chilling effect is when speech can be restrained out of fear. By limiting corporate expenditures, the government would be limiting the amount of involvement corporations can have in the democracy. Limiting corporations’ involvement in the democratic process will inhibit the ability to let their voices be heard, therefore, limiting speech.

Limiting speech is a form of censorship. If the government is able to censor how much corporations are able to spend, then it will create a chilling effect. This will reduce the overall involvement in the political campaigns. If corporations know there is a cap, they will be reluctant to get involved.

The third reason is that putting a cap on corporate expenditures will lead to governmental corruption. A good way to think about this is with the following example: Imagine right now that the way campaign finance works is a free flowing river. Corporations are able to donate however much money they want, essentially allowing the river to flow freely. If a cap is put on expenditures, it is like putting dams in the river.

If a river backs up, it will overflow and find different channels or creeks to get to its destination. The caps creating dams in the free flowing campaign finance river will make it overflow, essentially leading to corporations taking illegal and corrupt channels to get their money where they want to get it to go. The easiest way to ensure governmental corruption is actually by placing limits on contributions to any sort of political action.

The fourth reason is a term known as bad speech-more speech. If candidate A says something about candidate B that candidate B doesn’t like, then candidate B needs to refute the message with more speech. It takes money to combat the bad speech with more speech. And, once again, limiting the amount of money corporations can spend in a candidate’s campaign is a direct violation of the first amendment.

But it’s not fair, you say? What if candidate B doesn’t have the money and support to combat the bad speech with more speech? Then that is candidate B’s problem. In the race for the presidential election, Rick Santorum was in this same boat. He didn’t have a lot of money or supporters, but by starting off small he got his word out to individuals (who can donate $2,500 per federal election), and candidates are allowed to spend as much of their own money on their campaign as they please. These factors allowed to popularity to rise. Eventually, this led to PACs supporting him and making him, for a time, be one of the front-runners of the Republican nomination.