Chapter 15

1)
The group's goal is to stop a bill which would cut Medicaid and benefits for seniors.

Such ads are meant to indirectly lobby a senator by encouraging voters to call him and voice
their opinions on a particular bill.

The success of the ad may be limited by his longer term and insulation from public opinion as a
senator. Whereas a member of the House of Representatives has short terms and bows to
public opinion, the senator's 6-year terms limits their reliance on opinion.

2)
The most common type of super PAC spending is ”against,” which refers to attack ads and
critiques of opposition candidates.

Super PAC spending far out paces that of traditional PACs largely because of the Citizens United
and McCutcheon rulings allowing unlimited political spending by corporations.

The higher spending on negative methods largely hurts Americans’ view of Congress as a whole.
When spending is focused on damaging candidates' reputations, everyone is brought down.

3)
Both Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and Citizens United v. FEC focus around
corporate spending in elections.

In Citizens United, the ruling was based on the idea that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
had limited their ability to speech with an undue burden. In Austin, the Court found that there
was no undue burden as the Chamber of Commerce had other ways to express their speech.
Essentially, the key difference in the cases which led to each ruling was the idea of speech being
limited with no other channel for expression.

Citizens United has allowed corporate influence in policymaking to expand greatly as they've
been able to donate and spend with far less oversight and with fewer limitations.

4) Do interest groups help achieve the representative democracy the founders envisioned?

Although some fear hyperpluralism, interest groups help us achieve the representative
democracy envisioned by the founders by securing free speech and lifting the voices of the
common man.

One of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is freedom of speech as found in the
First Amendment. This is the basic idea that American citizens have the right to voice their
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opinions and express themselves without interference. However, this idea is threatened when
large corporate donors are able to dominate the conversation and overrule the voices of
individuals. Interest groups remedy this issue by providing a megaphone for common people
and lifting individual voices as they work together on issues.

On that note, interest groups help ensure a plurality of voices as is described in

Federalist No. 10. The concept here is that in a republic, a wide variety of voices should be
heard on issues, and this will result in a consensus on the right course of action. Again, interest
groups can ensure this multiplicity of voices by amplifying the voices of their members and
ensuring that even those currently in the minority have a say on issues. Rather than a simple
majority-rule, interest groups help people from all areas give input.

Some, however, worry that this plurality of voices is taken too far by interest groups and
results in hyperplurality: too many groups pull in too many directions and result in a lack of
progress. In reality, we've seen little of this. In recent years Congress has succeeded in
enormous measures such as the American Rescue Plan and the Affordable Care Act which have
succeeded because of input from interest groups, and plans such as the American Health Care
Act were blocked after interest groups such as the American Medical Association voiced
doctors' opposition to it. The role of interest groups ensures that individuals work together on
issues and guarantees proper representative democracy.