Reed: Presidential Candidates Don't Need Our Tax Money to Run a Campaign

Hello, folks, and welcome back to Butt and Rebutt. As you've noted, we have been somewhat out of the loop, but this week we're back with a vengeance, and our topic is, "Should public financing continue to be available to candidates for president?". Based on our coin toss, I will argue that public financing for national campaigns has outlived its usefulness if, indeed, it ever had any.

Our recent election brought this issue to the forefront in a surprising way. The Republican candidate, Senator McCain, opted to accept public funds, while the historically cash-strapped Democrats prodded Senator Obama to forego public funding. The Democratic strategy, fueled by Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, proved to be an overwhelming obstacle to Sen. McCain's ability to compete for expensive media time, and many pundits are convinced that, once again, this election was won and lost on the ledgers, not at the ballot box.

Sen. McCain, however, had little choice but to opt for public money. He was, after all, the co-author of the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) McCain-Feingold Act, more properly known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. President Bush signed the act into law on March 27, 2002, making it the first meaningful revision to laws pertaining to public financing of elections since the first such measures began being administered by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in 1976 (see www.fec.gov/pages/bcra).

It is important to note that 1976 was not the year that this issue came to the forefront. In 1966, Congress passed legislation that would have provided public money to Presidential candidates by funneling funds through the political parties. According to the FEC, the law was suspended a year later, for obvious reasons (www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/pubfund). In fact, not even in 1966 were Americans first prodded to look at such a system. Fifty-nine years earlier, according to the FEC, Theodore Roosevelt proposed that public financing of national elections was the only means through which a fair result could be obtained.

Roosevelt's argument in 1907 was the same as that which resonates today - money, and I mean big money, perverts the political realm and insures that only the wealthy and well-heeled can attain high office. To the founding fathers, service was expected and personal gain was set aside. But by Roosevelt's time, special interests had already begun to pervert the process and political chicanery had become commonplace. Thus the argument was, and remains today, that public financing is the only way to assist a candidate with modest means to aspire to greatness in the political arena.

I don't buy it, no pun intended. I agree, as I assume the vast majority of our readers and Americans in general do, that money has indeed become a corrupting influence in the political realm. And the fact that Barack Obama raised more than half a billion dollars to compete for a job that pays $400,000.00 a year raises the simple question, "Why?"Our system has been co-opted by special interests, to be sure, and the money is the driving force. But it's relevant to note that, according to the New York Times and Fox News (organizations that don't often find themselves in agreement, editorially speaking), the average donation to the Obama campaign was less than $90.00.

The most money raised in any political campaign in history, and the average donor gave ninety bucks. Do the math. It's clear that, in spite of our cynicism and anger over how lobbyists, corporations, unions and radicals on the right and left have dominated the money grubbing and media hype, the common man and woman still care enough to fork over a few bucks to support a cause.That's democracy in action, the little person stepping up to help the candidate who best represents his or her values, beliefs and interests on the national level. But that citizen, passionate for a candidate or a cause, has no control over how the federal government doles out his or her tax dollars to presidential aspirants. In other words, your taxes may be going into the campaign coffers of a candidate you find totally repugnant.

I know I don't like that. I assume you don't either. But I also don't like the system the way it is, or was, where money drives politicians to say anything it takes to get elected, to crawl in bed with whatever special interest has the most umph, and then to claim high moral standards as a reason to earn my vote. So the idea of using tax-payer dollars to fund campaigns was based on noble ideals. But as so often happens in the political realm, the best intentions often produce the worst results.

This is a complicated issue on several fronts. Dating back to the 1970's, challenges to restrictions on fund raising and expenditures in political campaigns have hinged on the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of Buckley v. Valeo which upheld the notion of restrictions on certain campaign fund raising as "primary weapons against the reality or appearance stemming from the dependence of candidates on large campaign contributions." However, in the very same ruling, the court recognized the validity of free-speech arguments, stating, "virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money." Restrictions on this form of free speech, the court said, could only be justified in the case of an overriding governmental interest (see http://www.campaignfinancesite.org/court/buckley.html.)

In this seemingly contradictory ruling, the court did not spell out what constitutes "overriding governmental interest," but the concern was balancing a group or individual's right to participate in the electoral process with the need to prevent graft and corruption within that process. I submit that this balance, and indeed all the concerns expressed in Buckley and cases brought subsequent to this ruling, can be addressed by common sense regulation of private sector contributions to candidates and parties.

I would accomplish this by instituting two major reforms to the current system which I believe would render public financing unnecessary. First, Congress should enact legislation that prevents a candidate for federal office from soliciting or accepting contributions for his or her campaign for a period of time equal to half the term of the office sought. In other words, a candidate for the office of president, which carries a four-year term, could not officially form a campaign committee or raise and spend outside contributions until two years prior to the general election. This is important because, while we prepare to inaugurate the man we elected this month to serve for the next four years, National Public Radio has reported that former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is in Iowa, planning his strategy for a 2012 run for the presidency (All Things Considered, November 22.)

Nothing in the legislation would impede a potential future candidate such as Governor Huckabee from traveling around making speeches. It would, however, prevent political parties, corporations or wealthy individuals from contributing to a campaign fund in the candidate's name.

The second and equally important aspect of this reform would identify, once and for all, who may or may not contribute to national candidates and how much that candidate can lawfully raise. An individual's campaign would be allowed to raise no more than ten times the amount of the salary paid by the office aspired to during the course of one term. In other words, a candidate aspiring to attain the presidency, and its $400,000.00 annual salary, could raise and spend no more than $16 million. That money could be raised through donations from individuals not to exceed $2000.00, or corporations, unions, or parties not to exceed $50,000.00.

While these sums may seem paltry compared to the massive amounts of money currently spent on national campaigns, a shortened political season would mean less money would be necessary. Such a system as proposed would also serve to level the playing field for third-party candidates, or those with less name recognition.

There is one argument that public-finance proponents offer that would not be addressed under a system such as I propose. That is the notion that unheralded candidates with modest financial means and no name recognition could not compete. I would submit this argument is flawed for two reasons. One, it is false on its face. Raise your hand if you had ever heard of Ron Paul before the Republican debates first aired. Very few hands in the air. But the Texas Congressman set a single day financing record, raking in more that a million dollars over the Internet after his first debate performance.

Secondly, a young state senator from Illinois, from a very modest background and without a war chest, went from virtual unknown to President-elect in four years due to nothing more than his eloquence and perseverance. Proof positive that gifts of style and substance can overcome, at least in the short term, a lack of money or power.

In closing, I believe we can all agree that our political system, with its reliance on massive amounts of money and influence, is broken. The answer lies not in turning the system over to the government, or by completely deregulating the system. As is often the case when things are complicated beyond the capability of most citizens to understand, we should strive to simplify this system while relying on citizen participation, not taxpayer funding, to select our leaders.