Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-204) and index.

Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 What is the campaign finance problem? -- What is the disagreement between supporters and opponents of reform? -- How big a problem is quid pro quo corruption? -- Whether the problem is political corruption or political inequality, campaign finance is about paying for election campaigns. How much do they cost? -- Do elections cost a lot more now than they used to? -- Is it true that the candidate with the most money always wins? -- Where do candidates get the money to pay for their campaigns? -- What is the role of political parties? -- How has Congress regulated money in elections? -- What is the state of the Federal Election Campaign Act today? -- 2 Watergate and Buckley v. Valeo -- What was Watergate? -- What was the campaign finance part of Watergate? -- How did Congress change campaign finance law after Watergate? -- Who were Buckley and Valeo? -- Why did Senator Buckley and the other challengers think the 1974 reforms were unconstitutional? -- How did the circuit court decide Buckley v. Valeo? -- How did the Supreme Court decide Buckley v. Valeo? -- How did the challengers, the defenders, and the justices deal with the reform goals of curbing campaign costs, preventing corruption, and promoting equality? -- Why is Buckley v. Valeo still important today? -- 3 The rise and fall of public funding -- How does the Presidential Election Campaign Fund work? -- Did Congress come up with the idea of public funding in response to Watergate? -- What did reformers hope to accomplish by using public funds to pay for elections? -- Why was Senator Long's public funding bill so controversial? -- If the income tax checkoff was so controversial in the 1960s, how did it survive the political battles in Congress? -- What happened to the tax incentives for small contributions that Congress passed in 1971? -- Why did the public funding program pay for the party conventions as well as the elections? -- Why did Congress repeal public funding for party conventions? -- How does the public funding program treat minor parties? -- How does the public funding program treat independents? -- Did public funding meet its goal of bringing in new, small donors? -- Public funding is also supposed to bring in new candidates. Did the presidential program do that? -- But participation in the tax checkoff had dropped by 2012. Did the same thing happen with public opinion? -- What kinds of public funding programs are the states enacting? -- Which states subsidize election campaigns? -- Which cities have public funding programs? -- How does New York City's public funding program work? -- How well did the presidential public funding program work? -- 4 Disclosure and the federal election commission -- What does the FEC do? -- Why did Congress create the Federal Election Commission? -- How does the FEC work? Is it like other independent agencies? -- How well does the current disclosure law work? -- How does the FEC enforce other parts of the FECA? -- Why are there so many partisan deadlocks on the FEC? -- Why has disclosure become so controversial? -- What are the intimidation charges raised by opponents of disclosure? -- 5 Political action committees -- Why do we have PACS? Who created them and why? -- Why did corporations suddenly begin forming PACs in the late 1970s? -- Why did reformers try to curb PACs in the 1980s? -- Did politicians begin refusing PAC contributions in the 1980s? -- Were independent expenditures new? -- What is a connected PAC? -- How do the five categories of connected PACs differ from one another? -- Do business and labor PACs do different things with their money in elections? -- What are non-connected PACs? -- What do ideological PACs do? -- What do leadership PACs do? -- 6 Super PACs -- Where did the super PAC come from? -- What makes super PACs super? -- What is a hybrid PAC? -- Why is coordination between candidates and super PACs a problem? -- What did Congress do about independent expenditures after Watergate? -- How did Citizens United and SpeechNow make coordination between candidates and super PACs such a big problem? -- What are the rules against candidates coordinating with super PACs? -- How close did candidates and super PACs get in 2012? -- How did the super PAC change the way presidential candidates ran their campaigns? -- Stephen Colbert formed a super PAC on his Comedy Central TV show, The Colbert Report. What was that about? -- Jeb Bush's super PAC did not help him at all. And Hillary Clinton's super PAC did not help her fend off Bernie Sanders. So how big a deal are super PACs, really? -- 7 Billionaires -- There seem to be a lot of billionaire donors these days. Is this new? -- What is different about megadonors today? -- How did fundraising by presidential candidates in 2015 differ from previous elections? -- But Jeb Bush finished 2015 far behind candidates who raised less money. So were the billionaires really all that important? -- Were billionaires any more important in the Democrats' race? -- What is the Koch brothers' network? -- What did the Koch network do in the 2012 and 2014 elections? -- How are other conservative billionaires becoming active in elections? -- Are liberal billionaires doing anything similar to what the Koch brothers are doing? -- Are individual liberal billionaires building personal political operations, as rich conservatives are doing? -- 8 Outside money -- What was soft money? -- Did both parties raise soft money? -- How did the nature of soft money change after 1992? -- What was the McCain-Feingold Act? -- What is a 527? -- Did 527s just replace party soft money? -- What are 501(c) tax-exempt groups? -- What was Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC? -- Was there still a lot of outside money in the 2008 election? -- How did the FEC weaken disclosure rules for tax-exempt groups? -- What are 501(c)(4)s? -- How did Citizens United change the role of 501(c)s in election? -- What was the controversy over the IRS's scrutiny of applications to form social welfare groups? -- What did the American Bar Association recommend the IRS do about political activity by non-political groups? -- 9 Corporations, Unions, and Citizens United -- What can corporations do in elections now that they could not do before Citizens United? -- Did Citizens United overturn the Tillman Act's ban against political contributions? -- Did the Tillman Act work? Or did corporations keep making campaign contributions after it banned them? -- When did corporations and unions begin using their money to influence elections? -- How did conservatives try to limit labor participation in elections? -- Why did the Department of Justice challenge the legality of labor PACs in Pipefitters v. United States? -- What was the issue in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti? -- Why did the Supreme Court give First Amendment rights of political speech to corporations in Citizens United? -- How big a change did Citizens United make to the way campaigns are financed? -- What about corporate personhood? Did Citizens United say corporations are people? -- Did Citizens United release a flood of corporate money for independent expenditures? -- Citizens United also permitted unlimited spending by labor unions. Has that happened? -- Critics of Citizens United also said it would let foreign money into U.S. elections. Has that happened? -- Is the Republican party financed by business and the Democratic party by labor? -- What about corporate lobbying? Isn't that at least as big a problem as campaign finance? -- Is the Republican party financed by business and the Democratic party by labor? -- Conclusion What Next? -- Why does the future look bright for reform opponents? -- Is there is any chance for reviving public funding for presidential elections? -- What about public funding for state and city elections? Is that likely to continue? -- Will small-donor programs be able to counter the surge of rich donors and democratize campaign finance? -- Well-financed non-party groups seem to be more active than the parties in recent elections. Are the parties getting weaker? -- Can the FEC be made to work? -- Will disclosure survive? -- There seems to be a lot of support for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Is that likely to happen? -- Why are the prospects for reform so poor? -- The chances of curbing big money in elections would be a lot better if the 5-4 split on the Supreme Court went the other way. How likely is that? -- Timeline of campaign finance laws and Supreme Court decisions -- Glossary -- Notes -- Further Reading -- Index.