In US politics, big money gives you a much louder voice

Money talks, and with relaxed laws, donors are queuing up to give big to US presidential candidates, writes James Zogby.

I did my doctoral work at Temple University in Philadelphia, whose founder was Russell Conwell, a nineteenth-century Baptist preacher. Conwell was an accomplished writer, a captivating preacher and a visionary entrepreneur, but the theology he helped to popularise was, in a word, disturbing. It provided divine justification for the acquisition of money and legitimised the gap between extreme wealth and extreme poverty.

Conwell believed and taught that wealth was available to all men. Because opportunities to become rich are everywhere, all one needed to do to attain wealth was to work hard enough and be blessed by God.

Conwell wrote that it was a Christian’s duty to become rich: “Money is power, money is force ... Money printed your bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers. The man who gets the largest salary can do the most good with the power that has been furnished to him.”

I thought of Russell Conwell’s bizarre 19th-century glorification of wealth this week when the Supreme Court removed one of the last remaining limits on the amount of money that wealthy donors could spend in political campaigns. Before this week, the limit an individual donor could spend directly on campaigns was $117,000 (Dh429,750).

Building on its belief that “money is speech”, and that Congress has no right to pass laws that limit free speech, the court voted to end these spending limits.

After this new Supreme Court ruling, it is now possible for individuals to give as much $3.5 million to campaigns in a single election cycle.

This Supreme Court ruling comes on top of its 2010 “Citizen’s United” decision which took almost all limits off the amounts that wealthy individuals could spend independently to influence the outcome of elections. The wealthy have taken advantage of this ruling and have spent quite freely.

In 2012, it is estimated that the interlocking network of committees funded by just one group, the Koch brothers, spent almost $400 million in support of Republican candidates and causes.

Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate and advocate of hard-line Israeli policies who has a net worth of almost $38 billion, spent more than $90 million to support his favoured Republicans.

Overall, 61 big donors to independent efforts gave more money to influence the result of the 2012 presidential election than the nearly 3.7 million small donors who contributed directly to the Obama and Romney campaigns.

And so, thanks to the Supreme Court and to Conwell’s litany of “money is power, money is force”, we can now add that big money gives one a bigger voice.

This was on display this past week when Mr Adelson convened all of the Republican party’s 2016 presidential aspirants to his Las Vegas casino for the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The meeting was dubbed the “Adelson Primary” in the press.

With Mr Adelson and Israel’s ambassador to Washington in attendance, one by one the Republican hopefuls auditioned, hoping to win access to the magnate’s deep pockets to support their campaign.

Looking at the scene, I could only think of Russell Conwell’s quote. I thought of Conwell again this week when Paul Ryan, chairman of the House budget committee, released his newest budget proposal that would cut federal spending by over $5 trillion over the next 10 years. He would cut taxes for the rich to encourage economic growth and cut health care, food stamps and other anti-poverty programmes to end the “culture of dependency” and encourage hard work.

I believe that Conwell must be smiling at these displays of callousness, masking as righteousness, and at the craven quest for money and the role it has come to play in American politics.

James Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute

On Twitter: @aaiusa