Doctorate in Political Science from the university of california at berkeley. Welcome back to cato, ray. Thank you for having me. What can i say about the impact of Citizens United . Likable academic, i will say its too soon to tell and we need more research. Bob said as much. When this is done, i will speculate. Im worried about what is happening to Party Organizations. Its not entirely the fault of Citizens United but that in combination with speech now has made it far much worse for parties. I the more money should flow through Political Parties and civic groups because at least in theory parties are more accountable and tend to use their money to help challenges and are less inclined to support extremist, which is no small matter in todays polarized environment. Here we go. Thank you. Here are some trends i see and how citizen as united plays into them. It did not cause them but it greases the wheels, especially since 2000 to when Congress Passed the Bipartisan Campaign reform act. There is a redistribution of money away from cant attend candidates and toward groups. Candidates are chiefly responsible but more is spent by others and for a while was Political Parties but it is nonparty groups and Citizens United cracked up this dynamic. Ratches up this dynamic. There are strong incentives for collective action by partisans. National Politics Today is about highstakes elections. Both parties have a chance to control government and have very different views about what should be done. Because of this, parses want to organize and coordinate but Campaign Finance laws but restraint of that. The laws were designed during canadacentered elections and parties to an answer that much. Candidatecentered elections and parties did not matter that much. We did it matter that much. We knew where the money was coming from. Now we have superpacs and there is a severe mismatch between a high stakes system an Old Fashioned laws that force money outside the regulated system and things will only get worse as every member of Congress Wants their own superpac and were going to have an arms race. I dont see it becoming evidence that Citizens United will have an impact on this. Let me start with redistribution. Total spending did not explode like many said. At least it doesnt seem that way from initial estimates. Total spending was about the same or slightly less compared to 2008 based on estimates by the center for responsive politics. Re close to the previous election and it includes all spending. Same is true for congressional elections. Total spending seems to have declined by 300 million. This makes sense because the house was not in play the way it was in 2010. Here is the redistribution im talking about. The president ial general election shows redistribution from Party Organizations to nonparty groups. He shows a pattern which cannot be attributed to Citizens United. Citizens united made it more stark. Interest groups finance less than 10 . You can see the shift when party starts losing soft money and after Citizens United, just 6 of that are funded by parties compared to 36 from other groups. The Party Committees still out advertise other groups. Nonparty groups are increasing their advertising. This illustrates two points. This reflects my argument that collective organizing was increasingly important with majority stakes government and polarized parties. Parties but a key role in the played a key role in the 1990s. This is being challenged by non party groups. Starting in 2004, it flattens. In 2002, it searches thanks to surged thanks to its Citizens United. It is far easier to support supertax. Superpacs. When people ask me why supertax, i say dont blame it sheldon adelson. Why superpacs. The party system has outgrown the campaign system. We talk about how parties help solve these collective action problems, but here is the problem a Campaign Finance system makes it tougher because a contrarian it constrains the party so much. It started with the federal Election Campaign act. The logical thing is candid its candidates control their own campaigns. Individuals alternately there is a great system for incumbents. John made this point in his book. They build a huge war chest and vastly else than challengers. But in the party system changed in the 1990s with intense competition. That fec promoted an inefficient Distribution System of money. The parties were treated marginally better than interest groups. The response was to use soft money to help more candidates and more close races. When the soft money was shot off, the parties turned to independent spending. Then came Citizens United. Sadly, some of the surgeons of surge in soft money could have been avoided if the federal Election Campaign act had been adjusted for inflation. If the 20,000 limit was adjusted for inflation, the parties could receive 94,000 per year or close to 200,000 per election cycle. 8 did a study of the 199 election that shows just 1 of soft money contributions greater than 100,000. Simply making these inflationary adjustments might have solved the soft money problem. 99 would have been acceptable except for some source monday. We actually made it even worse and put the vice tighter on parties that the original federal Election Campaign that which was not too kind to parties. The value of a contribution in 1,974 was just 5,000. 1974 dollars was just 5,000. This is after people who promoted it said this is good for parties that we are raising what about in terms of the value of that money back in 74 . So where you go . You go to superpacs. What i am trying to show collecting collective action is going on. It is more than just the parties. What these charts show is clusters of donors compared with 20 years ago. The out lyres are those who outliers spend dagon select groups of candidates. Targeted, coordinated strategies. Rectangles are clusters with incumbents. Diamonds have nonincumbents. The ellipses have mostly challenges. In the 1990s, you see evidence groups are targeting non incumbents on the republican side. But mostly its in the middle pursuing similar strategies, supporting incumbents. With get 2010. Look at 2010. There are unique allies with groups like club for growth and the nra with highly the median amount coming from these groups is much larger today and this gets to brads point because it includes independent spending, unlike 1990. If you know all this, but the larger conceptual point is parties are clearly relying more on allied interests groups to do with Party Organizations typically do and that is to find their challengers. Fund their challengers. Its a doubleedged sword. These challengers are better supported that never. Maybe there is more competition, but they are supported by groups i would argue have rather narrow political agendas and this dynamic is probably a source of polarization. Citizens united will probably give more electoral influence to these groups. But here is the puzzle. Can i have a glass of water . Heres the puzzle. Its not clear Citizens United is having much influence at all. Im not even sure all of the spending is making a difference. Bob alluded to this. It might just be an arms race. The was the basic analysis of the 2012 elections at northwestern and they found no impact of total outside spending on chair and house races. Millions spent had a tiny a fact, tiiny affect, these races. Republicans clearly have a financial advantage. But if you look at the blue dots to the right of the line, they lost a lot of these races. Theres no correlation. All of these republicans had extra spending. Look at all the blue dots. Another way of looking at this is a way to see its going on in the american states. We look at states that put in place corporate spending bands and union spending bands since the 1960s. This is before service and united. Before Citizens United. We look at Election Outcomes and want to know if democrats did better if corporate banks helped them. Any deviation from the middle line you can see the coefficients are really small, almost zero. Often the opposite of what we expected. Republicans benefited in kentucky, so go figure. We also look at whether they did better and found no evidence its having any effect. Been over all, i would say Citizens United has accelerated the flow of money to groups but its not clear how much difference it made in Election Outcomes. Nonetheless, candidates may perceive this Money Matters and guess what, perception often matters. These groups are going to get attention from candidates because they fear the more they want their support. The parties are a much weaker position and i see that continuing. Incumbents in both parties are anxious about this spending they cannot control. They might try to ease the laws on parties and bring back some form of soft money. I doubt thats going to happen. More than likely, every member of congress will aspire to have their own superpac. Then we are truly in a Campaign Environment with parallel worlds. This is the matrix. One world is heavily regulated and one that is not. Side by side. I will stop there and take questions. [applause] great stuff. I am reminded of his colleagues and former teacher he said to me recently at the time of mccainfine gold, we thai we tried to tell reformers of the pass if you pass this, youre going to weaken the partys. But i want to get to questions and answers. All lot of people have come in since we started. Many luminaries of Campaign Finance and the Washington Area are here today. Just raise your hand that till the please wait microphone arrives. Then identify yourself and disclosure is voluntary. You can say who you are affiliated with if you want to or not. Please indicate if you want to direct your question to one panelist or the other or all three. Also have your question in the form of a question. Lets start with the gentleman down front here. Im curious if mr. Bauer wants to respond to the point that was made about the effects on the parties of these trends. I dont think you talked a lot about that. The other speakers mentioned that as a major trend and possible concern and whether you see it as a concern or something that should be dealt with . Setting aside the question of what can be done about, that raises a very interesting academic for a theoretical question about the extent to which Political Party development is shaped or affected by legal regulation, whether the law can actually build a successful Political Party. On the other hand, a lot can affect the availability of resources. Without any question, i dont think this is even something anybody spends need to spend time arguing about. Its one of the few points that could be removed from the typical contention from the Campaign Finance debate. Parties were shut off from certain resources to the Bipartisan Campaign reform act, mccainfine gold. Those are available to other actors and the political process and theres no question parties have been dealt a significant blow in the financing available to them through legislative developments in recent years. Party financing could be restored at or what is defined as hard money could be redefined. Limits could be increased further. But its not clear if there is any move in that direction. Any other questions . The gentleman in the back. On with the Friends Committee on national legislation. Do the speakers Seat Congress taking up the these issues in the next two years . Some people are closer than i am but i dont see this coming in at all. The president has an agenda that doesnt seem to include this as far as i can tell. The legislators are so far apart on this issue that they cant even agree on basic transparency laws. I get the sense republicans thet to increase money for parties. Democrats strategically seem to do pretty well working with outside groups. Maybe it is from their legacy of working with unions. I dont see them doing that. Im curious to know whether there will be further deregulation. But its Unlikely Congress will do anything for the reasons that ray has mentioned. There are a couple of issues. One is the insistence of a pro Regulatory Community is that nothing has changed. They have offered the same solutions that offer for 30 years. More limits, more restrictions, grind everybody down, and thats a nonstarter. Its not going to go anyplace. The well has largely been poisoned even on Something Like basic disclosure. It is going is to have to be realistic in recognizing we dont need to be disclosing every 300 or 500 donor. There are reasons why people might want to protect their anonymity. But quite frankly, Chuck Schumer poisoned the well on this two years ago. When they introduced the disk disclose was that as a rapidly partisan act that would have prohibited a lot of speech that was legal before Citizens United. He said, the deterrent effect shouldnt be underestimated. I dontuve done that, see theres going to be anything that would come before that, otherwise there might be a chance for some reform regulation on disclosure. That would do away with what we would call junk disclosure or serves no real public purpose at all. I would only be guessing, but there has been a Significant Development in the back in the Campaign Finance reform debate. The conflict over the disclose act many of those skeptical about regulation in the past have argued at many of them are to be found in the Republican Party, even if there are significant risks to expenditure limits and contribution limits, that the answer lay in disclosure. That argument has radically shift on the republican side in a way that is quite alarming to the proponents of transparency in the sense that rather than beating transparency as maybe the core appropriate measure the government can take in Campaign Finance regulation, its viewed as the means by which the government smokes out its enemies are partisans and the government spoke out their enemies so they can either intimidate them or take further action against them. It has shifted the debate on transparency dramatically from one where there was some bipartisan consensus to one or bipartisan consensus is a appearing to collapse. Having said that, there is a view, and i dont want to overstate this, that some measure of transparency is necessary and there are concerns were headed into a direction where we are going to see less of it. Brad says, and have no reason to doubt him, that there is an overstatement republic debate about this rick this electionrelated advertising. Itbe its not explicit but is intended to influence elections. He believes there is less of this undisclosed spending than people imagine, but as i said earlier, one would have to be worried about a trend. One would have to worry what were seeing now may or may not be an indicator of what we would see in the not too distant future. I think there will be an active debate at some point, but i dont know when. As a larger question whether congress would take any substantive action, given the Legal Environment in which we are operating, theres a lot of uncertainty about what to do. Exactly what ways to shore up the bottle, and i think thats one of Citizens United legacies, to underscore the resistance the federal judiciary is putting up to some of the steps that congress would have to take to strengthen the Campaign Finance regulation regime. In d. C. , we always tend to focus on congress but there is likely to be more action in the states. We see a number of states doing different things, including states talking about doing some of the things that have been suggested, liberalizing the regime for parties or raising contribution limits substantially while others are still trying to figure out ways that if we could just crack down on the staff, all of their problems would go away. The states are more likely where we will see action. Clearly the most important person now as to whether anything will happen is senator mitch mcconnell. We dont know whats going to happen to the filibuster in the next few days but it seems unlikely he will be totally deprived of it. His views are a matter of public record, including a speech back in the spring and im told also senator mcconnell, people who purport to know his views, feels on the been like feels on Something Like disclosure that he has this extreme slippery slope idea. Any kind of movement on things that would seem to have support, he is worried about it but he believes with mccainfine colt that he wasnt forthcoming. Mccainfine gold, that he was forthcoming. In doing that, he ultimately got rolled down the hill. His strategy was to simply say no. That would suggest it is the case, and i dont have any real insight that would suggest there is not a broad scope for doing anything. But it is because of what