Do we need a constitutional amendment to take money out of politics?

2014-09-07

Election day 2014 is fast approaching. At the end of the process, we will have spent over three hundred million dollars to decide if Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid will have a two vote margin.While there are many social, political and psychological reasons for our current state of political gridlock and polarization, money is certainly at the core.The next Presidential election could well cost over one and a quarter billion dollars. It costs ten million, at the very least, to become a US Senator and even House r...

Election day 2014 is fast approaching. At the end of the process, we will have spent over three hundred million dollars to decide if Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid will have a two vote margin.

While there are many social, political and psychological reasons for our current state of political gridlock and polarization, money is certainly at the core.

The next Presidential election could well cost over one and a quarter billion dollars. It costs ten million, at the very least, to become a US Senator and even House races cost millions.

We’ve long talked about the corrosive effect of money in politics, and Citizens United has only reinforced that. But both sides are raising and spending the money with equal alacrity, and the public shows no signs of being fed up enough, to do anything about it.

If it continues, what does it really mean for democracy has we have known it, what kind of government will it give us, and will there ever come a tipping point for an angry and disaffected public? Those are some of the question that Tim Kuhner raises in Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution.

My conversation with Tim Kuhner:

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