Rewriting the First Amendment :Chuck Schumer Thinks He Can Improve on James Madison
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A standard liberal talking point about the Tea Party is that its constitutional designs are “extremist.” But you will search in vain for any Tea Party proposal that is anywhere close to as radical as the current drive by mainstream Democrats to rewrite the Bill of Rights.
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unions and corporations to donate to independent political groups has driven liberals to such fits that they now want to amend the First Amendment. At a Senate Rules Committee meeting last week, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer announced a proposal to amend the Constitution to empower government to regulate political speech.
“The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections,” Mr. Schumer said. The Senate will vote this year on the amendment to “once and for all allow Congress to make laws to regulate our system, without the risk of them being eviscerated by a conservative Supreme Court.” He even rolled out retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to pronounce his unhappiness with freedom’s bedrock document.
According to the text of the proposed revision to James Madison’s 1791 handiwork, sponsored by New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, the states and federal government would have the power to regulate the “raising and spending of money” through a wide range of means “to advance the fundamental principle of political equality for all.”
The real guarantee would be political advantage for all incumbents, since it’s the sitting lawmakers who really benefit from any law limiting contributions to candidates or on their behalf. While Beltway boys like Messrs. Schumer and Udall have the name recognition to raise money in small increments, challengers often need the financial boost from a few individuals to get their message heard.
Mr. Schumer is conjuring the age of robber barons, but there were no general limits on what an individual could donate to a federal candidate in this country until as recently as 1974. Contrary to the outrage that greeted the Supreme Court’s recent decision ending aggregate limits to candidates and political party committees in McCutcheon v. FEC, at the time that ruling was issued 32 states already had no aggregate or similar limits on contributions to candidates. That fact was so uncontroversial that Mr. Udall may not even know that New Mexico was among the 32.
Mr. Udall’s amendment is careful to specify that nothing “should be construed to grant Congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press.” In case you don’t follow campaign finance, that is supposed to protect newspapers and TV networks, most of which embrace Democratic causes and candidates.
The real target will be the corporations Democrats have railed against since Citizens United. But why should Warren Buffett’s company enjoy free speech rights because he owns a handful of newspapers along with insurance companies, while Jeffrey Immelt’s is muzzled because GE makes jet turbines? For that matter, what’s to stop political groups from incorporating themselves as newspapers?
Once you’ve opened the First Amendment for revision by politicians, and reinterpretation by judges, anything can happen. We know liberal editors tend to lose their bearings when they write about money in politics, but is the problem so great that it’s worth letting, say, Senator Ted Cruz determine whether the New York Times Co. NYT -1.65% qualifies for protection under the First Amendment?
This prospect doesn’t seem to bother even the great totems of the legal left, who also see an amendment as the only way to end-run the Supreme Court. Amending the First Amendment is a “particularly worthy enterprise,” Harvard’s Laurence Tribe wrote on Slate.com in 2012 “given that the composition of the court prefigures little chance of a swift change in direction.” Who would have thought that the legal left considered rights of speech and association to be so easily tradeable for partisan gain?
Professor Tribe added that thanks to the rise of Super PACs, campaign donors are “invisible to the electorate, though they are all too visible to the candidates who benefit.” Think of the Koch brothers—or, as Mr. Tribe suggests, the “invisible” tycoon Sheldon Adelson, whose contributions to Newt Gingrich’s political action committee during the 2012 GOP primary “singlehandedly sustained a floundering presidential campaign.” These donors are so “invisible” that Mr. Tribe can put their names in an op-ed and his readers all know who they are.
A Constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate and ratification by 38 states, so it has scant chance of passing any time soon. Those ample checks against self-interested legislatures are another reason to thank the Founders. But who knows what might happen the next time Democrats get supermajorities in Congress, or find a Republican like John McCain willing to give their effort bipartisan cover?
The larger story here is how far the American left is willing to go to cripple their political opponents. They’re even willing to write a giant loophole into America’s founding charter so Congress can limit political speech. The Tea Party’s concerns about eroding liberty turn out to be more accurate than even its most devoted partisans imagined.
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