Late Stage Capitalism

I mean, I'd point you to Steve Balmer and the scandal with the Clippers in the NBA right now if you want to talk about ways to evade spending limits.

The fundamental problem with "getting money out of politics" is that you're dealing with a multi-trillion dollar annual budget running out of a country that prints the global reserve currency (for now). You cannot do politics in this country without moving around enormous volumes of money. It's comically easy for that kind of money to spill into your back pocket, either directly (self-dealing) or through kickbacks and bribes or through insider trading or through second or third order machinations (Dick Cheney getting rich off a ballooning Halliburton stock price because he'd accrued millions in stock compensation during his time as CEO).

CU and private donations are the tiny little tip of the iceberg. Underneath that, you've got the sprawling network of public-private partnerships that administer our bureaucratic state. And then you've got the massive private real estate holdings and capital improvements that benefit from spending decisions. And then you've got the bones of the public sector economy - the public sector amenities and security spending - that any government needs to preserve its legitimacy. All of these operate at the scale of billions and trillions of dollars. It's such that a seemingly banal decision - national standardized testing for public schools, shifts in regulation/subsidy for different kinds of energy infrastructure, where bureaucrats choose to build a highway exit or a train depot or an airport - can generate obscene fortunes downstream.

The problem isn't "money in politics", it's "consolidation of wealth in a bourgeois class".