After Theodore Roosevelt was victorious in his presidential election of 1904, charges were made against him regarding the acceptance of corporate contributions to his campaign. Roosevelt retorted in 1905, by suggesting that "all contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law". Following these statements, congress passed the Tillman act and it was signed by President Roosevelt on January 26, 1907. The Tillman act made it illegal for corporations to contribute money to any campaign connected to a political election. However, by the end of 1907, Roosevelt was already questioning the bill's effectiveness. In his seventh annual address to congress he listed some of the dangers or consequences of the Tillman act as it was written. For one, it would be hard to enforce and would become "a penalty upon honest men". Second, it would not stop "an unscrupulous man of unlimited means from buying his own way into office". So instead of forbidding, corporate contributions, Roosevelt suggesting public financing and a fixed upper limit on the amount that could be received from any particular subscriber or donor.
Here are the full words on the subject from Theodore Roosevelt's 1907 address to congress:
"Under our form of government voting is not merely a right but a duty, and, moreover, a fundamental and necessary duty if a man is to be a good citizen. It is well to provide that corporations shall not contribute to Presidential or National campaigns, and furthermore to provide for the publication of both contributions and expenditures. There is, however, always danger in laws of this kind, which from their very nature are difficult of enforcement; the danger being lest they be obeyed only by the honest, and disobeyed by the unscrupulous, so as to act only as a penalty upon honest men. Moreover, no such law would hamper an unscrupulous man of unlimited means from buying his own way into office. There is a very radical measure which would, I believe, work a substantial improvement in our system of conducting a campaign, although I am well aware that it will take some time for people so to familiarize themselves with such a proposal as to be willing to consider its adoption. The need for collecting large campaign funds would vanish if Congress provided an appropriation for the proper and legitimate expenses of each of the great national parties, an appropriation ample enough to meet the necessity for thorough organization and machinery, which requires a large expenditure of money. Then the stipulation should be made that no party receiving campaign funds from the Treasury should accept more than a fixed amount from any individual subscriber or donor; and the necessary publicity for receipts and expenditures could without difficulty be provided."
Additional attempts on campaign finance reform occurred again in 1910, 1925 and many years after that. It really wasn't until the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1972, that campaign contributions were disclosed and regulated. Then, in 1974 the law was amended to do as Roosevelt suggested and limit the donations that both an individual and political action committee could make. Also in 1974, the FECA established the system and spending limits for publicly financed presidential elections, 70 years later after Roosevelt suggested it. Corporate limitations held until 2010, when the supreme court ruled that corporations and unions could not be constitutionally prohibited from promoting the election of one candidate over another candidate.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29548
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillman_Act_of_1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States
http://progparty.org/cfr_rip.jpg
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