Introduction
A political action committee (PAC) is any organization in the United States that campaigns for or against political candidates, ballot initiatives or legislation. At the federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, according to the Federal Election Campaign Act. At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state's election laws.
In 2010, the United States Supreme Court held in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that laws prohibiting corporate and union political expenditures were unconstitutional. Citizens United made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures, but did not alter the prohibition on direct corporate or union contributions to federal campaigns; those are still prohibited.
History of PACs in the United States
In 1947, as part of the Taft-Hartley Act, the U.S. Congress prohibited labor unions or corporations from spending money to influence federal elections, and prohibited labor unions from contributing to candidate campaigns. Labor unions moved to work around these limitations by establishing political action committees, to which members could contribute. In 1971, Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). In 1974, Amendments to FECA defined how a PAC could operate and established the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce the nation's campaign finance laws. The FECA and the FEC's rules provide for the following: Individuals are limited to contributing $5,000 per year to Federal PACs; corporations and unions may not contribute directly to federal PACs, but can pay for the administrative costs of a PAC affiliated with the specific corporation or union; Corporate-affiliated PACs may only solicit contributions from executives, shareholders, and their families.
Categorization of PACs
Federal law allows for two types of PACs, connected and non-connected. Most of the 4,600 active, registered PACs are "connected PACs" established by businesses, labor unions, trade groups, or health organizations. These PACs receive and raise money from a "restricted class," generally consisting of managers and shareholders in the case of a corporation and members in the case of a union or other interest group. Groups with an ideological mission, single-issue groups, and members of Congress and other political leaders may form "non-connected PACs. " These organizations may accept funds from any individual, connected PAC, or organization.
Super PACs, officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees," may not make contributions to candidate campaigns or parties, but may engage in unlimited political spending independently of the campaigns. Also unlike traditional PACs, they can raise funds from corporations, unions and other groups, and from individuals, without legal limits. Super PACs may support particular candidacies. In the 2012 presidential election, super PACs have played a major role, spending more than the candidates' election campaigns in the Republican primaries. As of early April 2012, Restore Our Future—a Super PAC usually described as having been created to help Mitt Romney's presidential campaign—has spent $40 million . In the 2012 election campaign, most of the money given to super PACs has come not from corporations but from wealthy individuals. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the top 100 individual super PAC donors in 2011–2012 made up just 3.7% of contributors, but accounted for more than 80% of the total money raised, while less than 0.5% of the money given to "the most active Super PACs" was donated by publicly traded corporations.
Mitt Romney
Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts was the Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential election.
PAC Backlash
It was generally agreed in the 2012 campaign that the formation of a super PAC and the acceptance of large contributions was legal. However, a lingering question was whether super PACs are legal when examined on the basis of how they act. Two agreed-upon illegal actions were that a super PAC could not accept foreign funds and could not coordinate directly with a candidate. Super PACs were seen in the press as a possible means of allowing illegal donations from foreign entities – either individuals or companies – to be disguised. The concept of actions being illegal, when coordinated with a candidate, came out, in part, after a super PAC named American Crossroads requested permission to communicate to their favored candidate on an above-board basis.
International Comparison and Response
The leading democracies have different systems of campaign finance, and several have no institutions analogous to American PACs, in that there are no private contributions of large sums of money to individual candidates. This is true, for example in Germany, in France, and in Britain. In these countries, concerns about the influence of campaign contributions on political decisions are less prominent in public discussion.