Richard Hasen:	I want to start with a story, one which I think has great resonance for people who think there's too much money in American politics but one which I think teaches us the wrong lesson.
	In the spring of 2014, a group of Republican presidential hopefuls, including Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, converged on the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas to speak before the Republican Jewish coalition and its key board member, the billionaire casino mogul and Venetian Hotel owner, Sheldon Adelson. It was a big moment for Christie, who's trying to get past the controversy known as Bridgegate over the closing of the lanes on the George Washington Bridge, allegedly in retaliation against Fort Lee's mayor, a Democrat who does not support Christie's re-election bid for governor.
	The speakers at the conference, the former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio governor John Kasich, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and Christie, fell over themselves to flatter Adelson and to announce their support for a continued strong relationship between the United States and Israel, Adelson's signature issue. Walker, according to the New York Times' story, brought up his father's trip to Israel. Said he put some Menorah candle next to his Christmas tree, said that his son, the name of his son Matthew actually comes from the Hebrew.
	But Christie stepped in it. In a speech to the group, he [inaudible 00:01:26] trip he took with his family to Israel, calling it an extraordinary personal experience, but he set off disapproving whispers from the crowd when he described flying over the "occupied territories" where the Palestinians live. To conservative parts of Israel who believe Israel has the right of sovereignty over these lands captured during the Six-Day War, it was a faux pas to call them occupied territories.
	Christie quickly apologized in a private meeting with Adelson. Progressives denounced the line to kiss Sheldon Adelson's boots, or perhaps a bit higher. The candidates seeking Adelson's stamp of approval and his cash, and Christie's apology to Adelson for describing a disputed region with a term regularly used by US presidents and the US government.
	But who could blame Christie for participating in the Sheldon primary and from his obsequiousness? Adelson and his wife had contributed an astounding 98 million to 150 million dollars during the 2012 elections. Thanks to holes in our disclosure laws, we're not sure exactly how much. To help elect Republican candidates during the 2012, including giving more than 15 million dollars to a super PAC called Winning Our Future that seems to single-handedly allow former house speaker Newt Gingrich to remain in the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination.
	The Adelsons later gave tens of millions more to support Mitt Romney's bid for president against Barack Obama, and in 2016, presidential hopefuls wanted Adelson's support. But, more importantly, they wanted his money. But if the lesson that progressives drew from the Chris Christie story is that big money is simply buying elections, that claim was off the mark.
	Instead, Adelson's money bought Gingrich's 2012 presidential campaign only a second and a third and a fourth vote from Republican primary voters but they ultimately rejected him. Romney beat Gingrich in the primary, but then, even with support, significant support from Adelson, Romney lost to Obama in a campaign where each sides spent about a billion dollars.
	So we could begin our [inaudible 00:03:44] money in American politics by rejecting the crass, liberal refrain that money simply buys elections. The eBay entrepreneur Meg Whitman's 140 million dollars in self-financed cash did not allow her to beat Jerry Brown to become California's governor in 2010. It seems the more that she spent on her election ads, the less Californians liked her. Similarly, environmentalist Tom Steyer's efforts to keep a Democratic majority in the US senate in 2014 failed, despite his spending nearly 74 million dollars on the effort.
	And in an electoral earthquake in 2014, David Brat, an unknown college professor with two full-time staffers, beat Eric Cantor, the house majority leader in a Virginia congressional primary. Cantor's campaign literally spent more on dinners in steakhouses than his opponent Brat spends in his entire campaign. And as Jeb Bush shows us, the relationship between money and politics is more complicated than mere vote-buying. Despite 110 million dollars spent, Bush got nowhere. Money can't buy you a Jeb.
	We can also reject the claim that progressives sometimes make that money bribes politicians. Take the group United Republic Represent Us. The group backs the American Anti-Corruption Act. The website's supported legislations is headed, "Get money out of politics. Stop lobbyist bribery, and secret money in power voters." It's first point for why the legislation is necessary: stop politicians from taking bribes.
	But as Harvard professor and campaign reformer Larry Lessig explains, most members of Congress are not taking bribes, and cash-for-vote corruption is about as rare as it has ever been in Congress. Sure, there'd be the occasional stories. Republican representative Randy Duke Cunningham of California went to jail for getting a yacht and other goodies from defense contractors while he sat on the house defense committee, and Democrat William Jefferson of Louisiana was caught in an FBI bribery sting when he was arrested with 10,000 dollars of literally cold cash in his freezer.
	But neither man was bribed by legal campaign contributions. Federal candidates legally can take no more than 5,400 dollars every two years from an individual. Who in Congress can be bought so cheap? super PACs, such as the one supporting Gingrich, cannot give their large sums directly to candidates but they can raise unlimited funds, so long as they do not violate the weak federal rules against coordination with candidates.
	The few members of Congress who are taking bribes are not taking them primarily through legal campaign contributions. At least not yet. But reformers and reform groups like Common Cause talk the language of corruption all the time. Lessig, for example, talks about the problem of what he calls dependence corruption, in which the system is corrupted by politicians that depend upon campaign funders to remain in office, rather than being dependent upon the people alone.
	It's hard for reformers to avoid the corruption talk. To begin with, corruption resonates with the general public. A poll commissioned by the group Represent Us found support for a campaign reform jumped from 60% to 72% when [inaudible 00:07:09] package as an anti-corruption measure. Using the term broadly, corruption can mean lots of things, including just a deviation from a perfect state of nature. But there's another, stronger reason why everyone in the election reform business talks about corruption all the time, and that reason has distorted Americans' thinking for the last 40 years, and it's the Supreme Court of the United States.
	In 1976, the Supreme Court decided a case called Buckley v. Valeo, which upheld some parts of the 1974 federal campaign finance law and struck down others. Finding some parts of the law violated the United States Constitution's First Amendment, which, among other things, guarantees freedom of speech and association. Buckley said that a limit on money in politics could be justified only by the government's interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption, and just as importantly, the court rejected the idea that the government had limited money in politics to promote political equality, an idea which the court in Buckley called "wholly foreign to the First Amendment."
	This singular focus on corruption explains the Supreme Court's constantly shifting approach to the constitutionality of campaign laws. Liberal justices read the term corruption broadly and vote to uphold many campaign finance limits. Conservatives read the term narrowly and vote to strike down just about everything. Witness the current era of skepticism that we are in now. This is why a host of reformers and academics are trying to shoehorn all kinds of ideas under the label corruption.
	Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court in 2010 in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, explained that when large donors and spenders ingratiate themselves with elected officials to secure assets for them, this is not corruption. Ingratiation access, Justice Kennedy assured us, or the appearance of ingratiation access provide no reason for limiting money in politics. Such money will not cause the public to lose confidence in the fairness of the electoral process, he told us. Citizens United, a five to four decision, pitting the court's conservatives against the court's liberals, opened up a new era of spending in federal elections and fueled the emergence of super PACs and other outside groups.
	In a 2014 case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Chief Justice John Roberts went even further, celebrating the idea of politicians responding to the wishes of big donors and spenders. Not only are ingratiation of access not corruption, Roberts told us, donors, Roberts explained, "Embody a central feature of democracy. That constituents support candidates who share their beliefs and interests, and candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to their concerns."
	So let's unpack this for a second. Roberts is saying that in democracy, we should want politicians to be most responsive to the highest bidders. The new Citizens United era is not full of corrupt politicians taking bribes, or of elections going to whoever spends the most money. To claim that's the problem puts the public's spotlight in the wrong place, looking for elected officials to take large amounts of money for private gain.
	That's not the problem. The more central problem of money and politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see. It's a system in which economic inequalities, inevitable in our free market economy, are transformed [inaudible 00:11:06] equalities that affect both election outcomes and political outcomes. Without a single politician taking a single bribe, wealth has an increasingly disproportionate influence on our politics.
	While we can talk about that as a problem of corruption, this pushes the limits of the word too far. Certainly too far for the Supreme Court, which is starting to read corruption to mean quid pro quo briber, and it obscures the fundamental unfairness of a political system moving towards plutocracy. The political power of the wealthy is especially troubling in our current period of rising economic inequality when those with the greatest economic clout are using their increased political power to protect their privileged economic position.
	Most of the important money in politics action happens not in the glare of the television cameras at the Venetian in Las Vegas but in steakhouses and golf courses all around Washington DC where lobbyists, often former senators, member of Congress, or staffers due their ingratiation and secure their assets. There's a reason big business pays lobbyists so well, and it's not because lobbyists are information specialists who helped create sound public policy.
	For every one dollar in lobbying spent by consumers, 34 dollars is spent by business centers. Lobbyists secure access both by bundling campaign contributions and using personal connections. It should be no surprise that half of retiring senators have become lobbyists. Many with seven-figure salaries, and that lobbyists who used to work for a senator see their income fall immediately by a quarter when that senator that they used to work for retire.
	Money works especially well in the shadows. Lobbyists, like mushrooms, thrive in low light. The New York Times reported how lobbyists for Wall Street gaming interests convinced Senator Harry Reid of Nevada to add 54 words to a must pass, 2,000-page omnibus spending bill. Those 54 words saved the lobbyists' clients over one billion dollars in taxes. The company of one of Reid's top donors admits to being among those involved in the discussion with congressional staff members of the insertion of those 54 words into this 2,000-page bill.
	Money couldn't stop the passage of the Dodd-Frank Bill, which regulated the securities industry against the industry's wishes. Public outrage over the 2008 financial crisis was just too great to overcome, but once public attention faded, money of interest could work their magic, using influence to water down implementing legislation and regulations and stalling or stopping much of what Dodd-Frank promised to achieve.
	In this new era of super PACs and non-disclosing, social welfare groups spending millions of dollars on elections, it's no longer just the access that matters. Money's potentiality alone is enough to get someone to shift their priorities. A point that former senators, or less often current ones, publicly acknowledge. The result is that money systematically skews public policy, even if it does not buy elections.
	As Professor Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin [Page 00:14:20] of George Washington have shown, public policy across a wide range of issues regularly skews towards the interests of the wealthy and the well-organized and against the poor and the disorganized. With the new wave of campaign financing regulation, given the wealthy more chances to leverage their influence. There is every reason to believe this trend will accelerate.
	Well, just how concentrated is the wealth funding our elections? A recent New York Times study by Nick Confessore noted about 120 million households in the United States. 120 million. But then 158 families contributed to nearly half the money funding the 2016 presidential elections. 158 of 120 million. The largest super PAC supporting Hilary Clinton saw a situation where 33 donors gave 90% of the money to support that super PAC.
	So who are these people funding our elections? This one percent of one percenters are not like the rest of us. A study by Page [inaudible 00:15:28] found that these people are not only better connected than the rest of us, with most of them reporting having personally contacted a senator or representative. Their views are also much different than that of most Americans. The wealthy are much less likely to support higher taxes on the rich, what a surprise, a decent social security safety net, and a minimum wage which is high enough to keep people out of poverty.
	In the electoral realm, money matters, even though it does not dictate the outcome of elections. As we saw, Newt Gingrich got a second and a third and a fourth chance to be the Republican presidential nominee, not because that's what many Republican voters wanted but because that's what Sheldon Adelson wanted. Meg Whitman got her chance to run against Jerry Brown and convince Californians that she'd be a better governor, not because she had better ideas than thousands of other Californians who were convinced they'd be a great governor of California, but because she had a 140 million dollars to burn on the chance. Someone said she could have bought a small island for that amount.
	Furthermore, advertising alone does not necessarily sway voters who were engaged in and have strong political opinions. In a close election, it could sway enough swing voters, generally the least informed and the most easily persuadable votes to affect [inaudible 00:16:48]. Lessig is exactly right. That politicians depend on the funders, and not only the people, for their jobs. There's a reason political scientists refer to the money primary, which occurs before the actual primary as politicians seek to raise money in living rooms in certain zip codes.
	This raises a concern though, not about corruption but about the wealthy donors' disproportionate influence over elections and policy. So why not simply limit money and politics to promote a level playing field? Leveling the ability to contribute and spend money on politics would not create perfect equality, we probably wouldn't want to achieve perfect equality even if we could get it, but it would be a reasonable step in that direction.
	Yet, depending upon how society writes and implements such laws, they can have profoundly bad effects. Censoring political activity, entrenching incumbents over challengers, and getting special treatments in media corporations. These are not trivial concerns and any argument to talk about that is going to be serious about limiting money in politics cannot simply sweep that aside. Courts grappled with these issues when opponents of regulation challenge these laws as violating the First Amendment, which as we've seen, provides that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.
	The words of the First Amendment are not self-defining, and ever since Buckley, the Supreme Court is fascinated over how to strike this balance between individual rights and society's interests. In the past, it is sometimes upheld when it's on corporate running elections essentially not politically quality grounds, although dressed up as in hyper-arching arguments.
	These days, however, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court over the strenuous objection of the more liberal justices, has embraced the First Amendment attack on campaign finance. The First Amendment critique is serious, yet many Democrats ignored. In 2014, 43 Democratic senators co-sponsored a proposed constitutional amendment to "overturn Citizens United." The amendment's text raised concerns about free speech and political competition that Democrats dismissed without making a serious response.
	Mostly Democrats pay lip service to reform. The former senator Charlie Reid or Harry Reid has repeatedly attacked the Koch Brothers and their network of supporters for funding hundreds and millions of dollars to the federal state and local elections, much of it without disclosure. Reid has claimed that Republicans are "addicted to Koch" and there's merit to his claim that Republicans increasingly depend on large donors for their campaigns.
	If you thought that the Adelson 100 million dollars is a lot of money, the Koch Brothers last year and their network of 400 people have pledged to spend about 900 million dollars on the 2016 elections. They've since backed away from this pledge, because they don't like Donald Trump, but they've been pouring tens of millions of dollars into advertising and voter registration efforts in an effort to keep the senate Republican. Many of the ads you see on television in the senate race supporting Pat Toomey are being backed by Koch Brothers money. This is an effort which, whether the Koch Brothers like it or not, will help Donald Trump. Get people registered, get Republicans to the polls.
	So there's much to be concerned about it, but Reid is a Koch addict too. He uses the brothers as a political tool to raise funds for Democrats. In any case, Democrats also are increasingly dependent on large money, and money skews their priorities as well. Witness the Democrats' great support protecting the interest of Wall Street. Although Democrats in office tend to rail against Citizens United in the Supreme Court, some Democratic lawyers are simply ecstatic about the brave new world of campaign finance that the Supreme Court has unleashed.
	In the close 2014 race for control of the US Senate, Democratic-leaning super PACs out-raised their Republican counterparts. Democrats in 2014, not Republicans, were the ones who engineer a secret congressional deal to vastly increase the contributions political parties could accept. I don't know if you saw the story in yesterday's New York Times on Hilary Clinton's fundraising. You want to get into the fundraiser? You must write, not raise, at least 100,000 dollars.
	President Obama has been a master of hypocrisy, castigating the Supreme Court for the opening up the floodgates of money but undermining the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He was the first campaign to the [inaudible 00:21:21] public money in the general election, perhaps a reasonable choice in time, given the inevitability of the program's collapse. But he reneged on his promise to fix this for the future. Indeed, he became the first president to transform his presidential campaign committee into a five-in-one C4 social welfare group that can now take unlimited and secret donations for his agenda.
	The group Napa Organizing for America is voluntarily disclosing the names of donors giving at least 250 dollars. Don't expect the next president to be so generous. While Democrats try to have it both ways on campaign finance, Republicans have united behind the de-regulatory agenda. The John McCains of the party, who used to be leaders supporting bipartisan reform efforts, have gone silent, while the Mitch McConnell, who have long fought limits and called for a full and easy disclosure, now fight the very disclosure laws that he used to support. 
	As with most debates in Washington, the debate lacks nuance, and even on the merits, its been hampered by the Supreme Court's insistence that any justification for limits be framed in anti-corruption terms, and the willingness of activists and scholars to go along with this unhelpful framing. We must consider the potential for campaign finance laws to promote and preserve political equality. First Amendment critics are right that limiting money in elections raises the risk of censorship, incumbency protection, and unfair preferential treatment of the media.
	The difficult essential task is to develop a plan that both protects robust political speech of elections and guards against the rise of a plutocratic class that has too much influence over both election outcomes and what elected officials do once they're in office. Promoting political equality is a compelling interest that can justify some measures to limit money in politics but that do not squelch too much political competition.
	So how do we do it? Let's start by putting campaign finance vouchers in the hands of all voters to democratize our elections. A voucher is supposed to limit the program and get each voter a hundred dollars. In each two-year election cycle, to donate to candidates, to parties, and to interest groups. Think [inaudible 00:23:37] the NRA or Planned Parenthood were planning federal elections. Vouchers will give everyone a steak and a say in funding our elections, helping to ensure that campaign funding reflects actual public support. Vouchers will be coupled with limits. No individual contributing annually more than 20 or spend in the aggregate of more than 25,000 dollars for a single federal election or 500,000 on all federal elections in a two-year cycle.
	Other rules would limit the campaign finance hats in these lobbyists. Now, for most people, these limits present no impediments at all. I'm told that I can't spend more than 500,000. It's not going to stop me [inaudible 00:24:18]. But statue limits do stop the Adelsons, the Kochs, and the [inaudible 00:24:21] and other countries in the world from spending all they want on political speech and so the question is why is this unconstitutional censorship in violation of the First Amendment under Buckley and Citizens United? For that, I want to turn to one more story.
	Benjamin Bluman had hardly seem like a threat to American democracy, but a lawsuit he filed with another plaintiff in 2011, Bluman v. Federal Election Commission, could have allowed the Chinese government, a large Russian corporation, or Mexican billionaires to spend millions of dollars to get some of the [inaudible 00:24:58] for the presidency.
	Bluman is a Canadian citizen. Went to law school in the United States on a student visa, and then worked as an associate at New York City law firm on a temporary work visa. In 2011, he wanted to contribute to three Democratic candidates, including President Obama. Truth fliers supporting Obama's re-election bid and distribute the fliers in Central Park. These days, he's a lawyer in Vancouver.
	Under federal laws, limiting the campaign finance activities for our individuals, corporations, and governments, Bluman could not contribute or spend in US elections. Congressmen tidied up those laws after finding evidence that foreign citizens and the Chinese government had made donations on the 1996 campaign. Under current law, the only foreign individuals who have permanent residency status are the ones who are allowed to have the same rights as American citizens to contribute or spend in American elections.
	The Bluman lawsuit asking for permission to engage in spending was the brainchild of [inaudible 00:26:00] a Canadian lawyer and Harvard law school class made of [inaudible 00:26:03]. Would work for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and then went to work at Jones Day, one of the top law firms in Washington DC. The law firm, by the way, that's now representing Donald Trump.
	The suit followed both the playbook and the legal reason of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United case, but without the same results. The playbook? Find a sympathetic, small potatoes plaintiff to mount a First Amendment challenge to a major federal campaign finance law. A challenge that, if successful, would open the door for much bigger actors. Bluman had told the press, "It seems nonsensical to me that I am allowed to go to Central Park and tell every person I see why I think they should vote for Obama, but if I go to Kinko's and I spend 50 cents to print out on a piece of paper the words Vote Obama and then show it to one person, I've committed a federal crime punishable by up to 10,000 and fines or five years in prison."
	Of course, campaign reformers are not really concerned about this Canadian lawsuit and his fliers in Central Park and his 50 cents of spending at Kinko's. They were worried if he won this case, it would allow outside forces to spend millions of dollars to turn the results of US elections. With so much at stake, one didn't have to be a xenophobe to distrust foreign influence over US elections.
	The suit argued that under Citizens United, spending money on ads independent over candidate cannot corrupt the candidate. Therefore, under the First Amendment, the government cannot limit such spending. What's good for the corporation, Bluman argued, is good for me. But Bluman failed. A three-judge panel of the federal district court in Washington DC, an opinion by court of appeals judge and likely Republican Supreme Court short lister Brett Kavanaugh rejected the plaintiff's arguments and upheld the [inaudible 00:27:55] foreign spending.
	The case went up to the Supreme Court under an obscure statutory provision that all but guaranteed the court would give the case a full hearing. But the justices did not bite. Without argument or discussion, the court simply affirmed the lower court's ruling. And we printed for you the entire text of the Supreme Court's ruling. Leading First Amendment zealots surprisingly do not disagree with Bluman's total ban on foreign money. Floyd Abrams, the country's leading First Amendment lawyer, has been an admirable defender on popular speakers and causes, yet when I debate him at the University of Michigan in March, 2012, I asked him his view on Benjamin Bluman and the ban on foreign money elections.
	Why would Bluman spending on campaigns if the Supreme Court was right in Citizens United that the identity of the speaker doesn't matter? More speech is always better. Abram's response was unconvincing. I do think that foreign influence is different than American influence. Maybe it's a question begging to say it, but I do think that different considerations come into play when you're talking about whether we as a nation choose to have foreign nations to play in our elections.
	Bradley Smith is also a strong free speech supporter, whose book Unfree Speech is perhaps the most influential book length argument against the campaign finance regulation. A professor at Capital University Law School and a high performing chair at the Federal Election Commission, he's the brains behind the Center for Competitive Politics, a public interest group in Washington that brought us super PACs. Yet despite his agitation for campaign finance de-regulation, Smith was not at all bothered by the total ban on Benjamin Bluman passing out his cheap fliers in Central Park.
	After the Supreme Court upheld the ban without even issuing an opinion, Smith wrote on his center's website that, "Well known locking principles about the nature of political communities suggest that different rules might apply to persons who are not members of the political community. Persons who are mere temporary residents." Smith supports the government's ability to strip a human being, Benjamin Bluman, of his right to spend a penny to support a federal candidate based on a judgment made by self-inducing legislators that Bluman is not sufficiently part of our political community. So to have the right to speak on American elections.
	But Smith derides a censorship and incumbency protection, a federal law that limits but does not fully deny the ability of non-human corporations to spend money on federal elections. Corporations, legal fiction that exist only by grace of the state are entitled to infinitely more political speech as Smith measures it, than an actual human being living in New York. Self-inducing legislators can decide that different rules might apply to foreign individuals, but in Smith's view, they cannot make that same judgment about artificial entities such as corporations. Endowed by their creator with nothing like a human spirit.
	The Indiana attorney Jim Bopp has probably filed more suits against campaign finance laws than anyone else in the United States. He was the brains behind Citizens United and many other challenges to campaign finance limits. A strong opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage, Bopp is one of those no law means no law First Amendment absolutist when it comes to campaign finance, with one big exception.
	When the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the Bluman case, Bopp defended him. It's perfectly consistent for the Supreme Court to hold that there's no compelling interest in preventing corporate [inaudible 00:31:29] speech but there is a compelling interest prohibiting foreign interest from contributing to candidates in the US elections. I for one agree that the red Chinese army, the Iranian government, and Hamas can be prohibited from contributing. What's most ironic about Bopp's comments is that they support the foreign money ban, even though the ban's not, to use a First Amendment phrase, viewpoint neutral. Bopp wants to shut up Hamas, the Chinese army, and the Iranian government, presumably because of what they might say and where they might spend their money.
	So let's stop with all the talk about censorship and start talking about sensible limits on money in campaigns. We all agree that some limits make sense. The question is which ones. Preferential treatment of the press remains the hardest argument on the reform side. Why limit what Google or Warren Buffett or [inaudible 00:32:21] spend but the not New York Times or Fox News? The question on how to treat the media is for the reform community what the foreign money question is to the regulationist community. Saying there should be an exception and you run the risk of inconsistency or outright hypocrisy. Saying there should not be an exception and you're considered too extreme.
	I've learned this lesson first hand, when I wrote an article for the Texas Law Review in 1999 called Campaign Finance Laws and the Rupert Murdoch Problem. For short hand, I sometimes call this article, "The reason I will never get a federal judge." In the article, I argue that if we ever seriously moved to a system of accepting political equality as a rational for campaign finance regulation, then any newspaper, there were still newspapers back then, any newspaper wanting to endorse a candidate on his editorial page would have to form a PAC and pay for that space the way any other corporation would have.
	Since then I've changed my position, for reasons I will explain. But the article was not well-received. First Amendment scholar Scott Poe wrote an overview response titled Boiling Blood. When I presented the paper, many of the American [inaudible 00:33:34] Science Association, my mentor and colleague Dan Lostein of UCLA half-jokingly described it as [inaudible 00:33:41]. We have to.
	In 2001, when the senate was debating the McCain [inaudible 00:33:44] laws, Senator McConnell places the record on national journal a column by Steward Taylor criticizing my article. McConnell introduces it by saying that Taylor "cautions the media to reconsider its hypocrisy in so zealously attacking the First Amendment freedom of every other participant in the political process." Even a First Amendment scholar who privately told me I was right to reject the media exemption for endorsements of candidates as a matter of principle, would not say so publicly.
	The media question is difficult and most reformers simply ignore it or quickly gloss over it. It's the third [inaudible 00:34:23] campaign finance debate for good reason. Everyone from ardent reformers to restricting regulations values a free press. On the other hand, the media are very powerful. How can a campaign finance system rein in the most powerful groups and interests but leave Rupert Murdoch's media empire New York Times and Comcast, NBC Universal untouched? This was the point Floyd Abrams pivoted to when I pressed him on how to treat the foreign campaign money question in our 2012 debate. 
	Further, if you believe as many conservatives do that this is a liberal media bias that [inaudible 00:34:53] everyone but the press for unlimited spending will skew the public debate towards left-leaning candidates. Following the accepting old, institutional media, sometimes derisively referred to as the mainstream media from but not nearly yet from the limits could unfairly benefit certain established groups. It raises the question of how do you define who is the media today.
	In the end, though, press exception doesn't make sense. It is a cliché but still true to refer to the press as the fourth branch of government, providing an important check on government abuse. Remember it's two Washington Post reporters who broke the story of Watergate. You think it's a [inaudible 00:35:34] to many scandals involving government officials. Freedom of the press remains sacrosanct, in both the league of popular culture for good reason. The press deserves special protection because it serves educational and investigative functions than more [inaudible 00:35:51] other political actors.
	Furthermore, with the rise of the internet and social media, claims of liberal media bias or an inability to receive different points of view ring especially hollow. We should read the explicit mention of the press in the First Amendment as embracing these special protections. Not all constitutional scholars agree. Professors Eugene [Volett 00:36:09] and Michael McConnell have made arguments that the original intent of the constitutional protection for the press was to protect the technology of the printing press and not to protect the profession of journalists. McConnell says that the reason that the Supreme Court was right in Citizens United is that everyone gets the press exemption whenever they spend money on elections. 
	Whether or not [Volett 00:36:33] and McConnell have actively captured the framer's original intent and on that question there's reason to have some doubts, saying that we are all the press is to say that no one is the press. The end of press exceptions would have terrible repercussions, potentially eliminating press shield laws and media access to police investigations.
	When the Supreme Court recently revamped its media policy to deal with controversy over media access to its hearings by the indispensable website [Skohslaw 00:37:04], it was able to craft a text distinguishing the press from everyone else, even in the era of social media. If the court could do it for its own purposes, it certainly could define the press for constitutional purposes as well.
	Concern over censorship and preferential press treatments do not doom the equality case for campaign finance reform. It's a careful balancing act but vouchers and limits is both constitutionally defensible and essential to fair elections as the one person [inaudible 00:37:37] which says that no eligible voter should have much more voting power than another. The 25,000 individual limit that I proposed is a big compromise on political equality. It still gives a wealthy person much more influence than the rest of us who may have nothing more than a hundred dollars in vouchers to spend, but this generous limit helps promote robust speech and ensures competitive elections and multiple paths for challenging incumbents.
	So finally, how can we move beyond corruption and toward acceptance of political equality? So limit money in politics, give them the Supreme Court and give them political gridlock. A constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United is the most prominent wrong way that's been proposed to fix the problem. Even if its supporters were not often engaged only in political theater. Such an amendment would be either too damaging to robust political speech or too full opposed to be effective. Consider the Democrats proposed constitutional amendment, which at first protected the press when Congress regulated campaign finance but not when the state's regulated campaign finance.
	Or consider the move to amend proposed amendment, which would deprive all corporations of all constitutional rights, including apparently the New York Times. State of New York wants to shut down the New York Times? Pass the law. No problem. When Democrats were pressed on free speech issues as to their amendments, they amended their amendments to allow for only "reasonable restrictions" on campaign money, a rule which would put the issue right back before the Supreme Court, which would have to define what a reasonable limit is.
	Nor should progressives simply give up on reform at a belief that the role of money in politics is not so bad. It is so bad. Instead, the answer to the problem of money in politics is political change. It turns out it's much easier to change the constitution by changing the Supreme Court than it is to change the constitution through our constitutional amendments. For the last two decades, all of the important campaign finance takes that the Supreme Court has decided were decided on five to four votes on a [inaudible 00:39:51] strike them down as inconsistent with the First Amendment.
	We need a Supreme Court that would accept political equalities and compelling interests that justifies reasonable regulations and build the jurisprudence necessary for a new progressive Supreme Court. That court cannot come until after there is additional change opening up the possibility of a new progressive majority. The 2016 election presents the window for change. When the next president of the United States assumes office on January 20th, 2017, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be nearly 84, Anthony Kennedy will be over 80, and Stephen Breyer will be 78. Justice Scalia's seat might still be open, filled either by President Obama or the next president.
	Although many justices have served on according to their 80s and beyond, the average age in which a justice has left the court since 1960 is 79 years old. The next president will have the chance to make likely a chance to make multiple appointments to the Supreme Court. What will happen when the next justice comes on the court? My project is about trying to show these new justices that the time has come to rethink the last 40 years and to accept political equality as a reason for limiting money in politics. Overturning Buckley and that part of Buckley that says that the idea that you could promote political equality on limited campaign money is only foreign to the First Amendment.
	But this could only happen if it can be shown that a program such as vouchers plus limits will actually protect for a robust political speech and political competition, so we need to move beyond the partisan world in which Chris Christie bows before Sheldon Adelson and which Democrats propose feudal amendments to overturn Citizens United while engaging in essentially the same fundraising practices as Republicans. We should think through these issues before American democracy is too far skewed to the interest of the wealthy in the hope that some future Supreme Court will be willing to accept reasonable limits on money in politics.
	Only a focus on America's tradition of political equality can help us to resolve the inevitable tension between our commitment to free economic markets and to voter equality. Otherwise, the plutocrats stand to gain ever greater influence over our democracy. Thank you very much.