Is it Time for a Campaign Spending Tax
How feasible is it for working people to seek elected office? Earlier this year our Pennsylvania Primary ballot was loaded with candidates from both parties with robust financial statements. All four candidates running for Governor in the Democratic and Republican primaries and at least a few of the candidates for Lieutenant Governor personally possess, or were from families possessing, a net worth that ranged from millions to multi-millions. In a field filled with millionaires, it makes it very difficult for candidates of less modest means to compete in the absence of spending limits or some form of public financing.
Being a candidate of extreme wealth provides advantages that go beyond the ability to hire staff, retain pricey consultants and saturate the airwaves with :30 second TV ads. Well-healed candidates often can campaign full-time because they are not burdened with the day-to-day responsibilities many of us shoulder including showing up to work every day for an eight to ten-hour shift, serving as the family Uber driver transporting active kids to can’t-miss encounters with their friends or spending a few hours at home each week cooking, cleaning and mediating sibling disputes. Furthermore, some financially overly-secure candidates are in a position to seek political advantage and the favor of voters by promising to donate their salaries to charity, not take public pensions or not claim reimbursements for expenses incurred in the course of doing their jobs.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not begrudge the success of wealthy people. Certainly, many of them have much to offer in public life and voters can benefit from the knowledge they have accrued in business, finance and other endeavors. What I object to is the significantly unfair advantage self-funders have over very good candidates of lesser means. Think of it as having a jury without any of your peers. It makes sense to me that candidates and elected officials with the same or similar economic perspective that 99% of us share, maybe the best suited to solve the problems that 99% of us face.
What can we do about it? The courts have ruled that limiting campaign spending is equal to limiting speech and is unconstitutional. Public financing of campaigns has proved ineffective and prohibitively expensive. In recent years, candidates for President have rejected accepting public finance dollars because they did not want to comply with the associated spending limits. We need an outside- the-box solution.
One approach I have been thinking about for a few years wouldn’t limit campaign spending or free speech but could act as a significant disincentive to excessive spending. I call it a campaign spending tax. It would work something like this: a campaign spending commission would establish a formula to set a spending ceiling for a given office; candidates would be free to spend above the spending ceiling but would pay a dollar for dollar tax on every dollar they spent over the ceiling while all spending under the ceiling would be untaxed; the taxes generated from the excessive spending would go into a public campaign financing pot, from which the over-spending candidate’s opponent could draw public funds.
Ideas sometimes are seeds we plant to grow the roots and shoots of public debate and public policy. I am going to use the forum I have as a candidate to pitch or further a few. Perhaps one or two may even take root and grow.