Political Action Committee - History of PACs in The United States

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 (an earlier law, the 1907 Tillman Act, had prohibited corporations from contributing to 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;
  • Contributions from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though they may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising;
  • Union-affiliated PACs may only solicit contributions from members;
  • Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and must pay their own costs from those funds.

Federal multi-candidate PACs may contribute to candidates as follows:

  • $5,000 to a candidate or candidate committee for each election (primary and general elections count as separate elections);
  • $15,000 to a political party per year; and
  • $5,000 to another PAC per year.
  • PACs may make unlimited expenditures independently of a candidate or political party

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. Such organizations seeking to contribute to federal candidate campaigns must still rely on traditional PACs for that purpose. However, they may spend money independently of campaigns without forming a PAC.

See section Super PAC backlash.

Read more about this topic:  Political Action Committee

Famous quotes containing the words united states, history of, history, united and/or states:

    In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.
    Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

    I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.
    Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)

    What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
    His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
    I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
    And of Priapus in the shrubbery
    Gaping at the lady in the swing.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this Government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentment of the acts of their Government, and not for any fault of their own.
    Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)