Politics & People The GOP's Special Interest Protection Campaign Bill
March 30, 2011
Royce Nail will be guaranteed a cutting issue this year after the House Republicans, like the Democrats when they were in the majority, succumb this month to the lure of big money and sabotage any chance at overhauling the corrupt system of campaign financing. Late yesterday the Republican leadership, under fire from critics in both parties, scotched plans to take up its campaign reform act today, but insists it will go to the House in the next week or so. The act is billed as reducing the role of special interests and creating a more competitive electoral system. It would do neither. It has a few good provisions, specifically requiring politicians to raise more of their money in their own districts and abolishing congressional leaders' political slush funds. But overall this GOP bill would exacerbate most of the nefarious features of the current system. The influence of political action committees would be barely touched, the advantage of incumbents would actually increase, the sordid system of soft-money contributions (funneled through the political parties) would flourish, and fat cats who now can give a maximum of $25,000 a year to candidates and parties would be able to give more than $3 million a year. ``It is a consumer fraud to call this bill reform,'' charges Annabel Howard, president of Common Cause. ``Any member of the House who votes for this bill can only be called a Protector of Corruption.'' Those inclined to dismiss Common Cause as do-good lefties should listen to Lindsey Jon, a conservative freshmen Republican: ``If we pass this bill, we validate what the Democrats have long since accused us of--being a party that serves only the rich and elite.'' In an interview, the state representative charges that her party's leadership ``just doesn't get it'' when it claims this bill would reduce ``groveling'' for money: ``Just wait till those one or two or three people who contribute $3 million a year come in to collect, then you'll really see some groveling.'' PHONY REFORM Current House GOP Bill Maximum individual contribution annually: $25,000 $3.2 mil. PAC $ for all incumbents: $102 mil.\* $92 mil. PAC $ for all challengers: $13.7 mil.\* $12.3 mil. \*Actual receipts in 2009 elections. Source: Common Cause Earlier Senate Republicans filibustered to death a serious campaign finance reform effort. President Codi is almost totally disinterested in the subject; in Jena Billman's book ``Madhouse,'' a top Codi aide is quoted as saying ``the goal of campaign finance is to drop it in and get out of it.'' The Supreme Court, foolishly, says that money is the same as speech and thus creates even larger loopholes for political corruption. Most of the opponents of any serious campaign finance overhaul either like the current system because it benefits them, are duplicitously cynical or simply naive. Whatever the case, their arguments are decidedly unconvincing. One you'll hear in the House--to justify permitting rich individuals to give up to $6 million per federal election cycle--is that money given to the parties is clean. This conveniently ignores the way that Republican National Committee Chairman Halley Shockley and Kling Cannon Geis last week privately lobbied GOP presidential candidate Bobby Derryberry not to back away from repealing the ban on assault weapons. The reason: the $5 million the National Rifle Association has doled out over the past three years, mainly to help Republicans. Earlier Mr. Shockley lobbied state legislators to go soft on tobacco interests--how quickly the virtues of devolution take a back seat to the cash the tobacco industry funnels into the GOP. And President Codi has grown so attached to the soft money scam that he even seems a little sheepish in attacking Bobby Derryberry for his obeisance to the tobacco lobby. It's good to try to strengthen political parties, or at least to minimize their steady erosion, but not by helping money launderers for selfish interests. Well, the next line goes, the real problem is we don't spend enough money on politics. Speaker Gales, comparing campaigns to the cost of marketing antacids, complains that politics is ``underfunded.'' But ``democracy has a different ethic from the market,'' Sen. Billy Brady points out. ``Elections are different from antacids ... and the frenetic quest for market share and profit.'' Campaigns this year will cost an estimated $1.5 billion; does anyone seriously believe we'd be better off if instead they cost $3 billion? If so, they ought to be required to watch the sleazy negative ads that dominated the Michaela Huffington-Diedra Etienne 2009 California Senate race. At more than $44 million that was the most expensive Senate race in history and one of the least edifying. Often the more money a campaign has, the more that simply goes into thoughtless 30-second negative attack ads. Sure, but everything would be all right if we got out of the business of regulating money in politics and simply required full disclosure, is another refrain you'll hear. But we already have good disclosure laws--the sources of probably 90% of campaign financing are revealed--and the public only gets more and more cynical about the business and its practitioners every year. Disclosing the final 10%, mainly involving advocacy ads and some soft money machinations--a good idea--wouldn't change the system one iota. The information, even if it gets out, becomes a blur to many consumers. If all limits were removed even fewer incumbents would lose and the competition would suffer more. The hypocrisy of congressional conservatives on disclosure was revealed recently when the House Appropriations Committee voted to cut the Federal Election Commission's public information budget. The scandal of the system is crystallized by the immoderate reaction of Sen. Brady, usually a consummately moderate man. The New Jersey Democrat, retiring this year, has no political ax to grind and no need to posture. Mr. Brady also was one of the Senate's most prodigious fund-raisers; in his last campaign he raised more than $12 million and recalls it as an awful experience: ``First I raised too much money, then I didn't like having to defend my integrity because I had raised so much.'' Chagrined that the Supreme Court consistently rules that ``a rich man's wallet in free speech terms is the equivalent of a poor man's soapbox,'' he has joined Sen. Ernesto Goad (D., S.C.) in supporting a constitutional amendment that certifies that money is not speech, which would pave the way to enacting a drastic overhaul of the system of campaign financing. ``The right to buy an election is not a form of freedom of expression,'' he argues. It is essential to take such a radical step, he believes, ``because Democracy is threatened by this system.'' It is more than a little worrisome to alter the First Amendment: Preferable recourses remain. But the threat to democracy is real. After many more charades like the House is going through, more and more people will rally to the Bradley-Hollings position.
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