QUOTE
WHY LOBBYING REFORM WON'T WORK.
System Failure
by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 01.18.06
The scandals surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Congressman Tom DeLay have unleashed a flurry of lobbying reform proposals. Some of these measures certainly have merit, but, by themselves, they aren't going to prevent the kinds of problems that have engulfed Congress over the last 40 years. That's because the excesses of Abramoff and DeLay--like those of the Nixon administration in the early 1970s and House Democrats in the early 1990s--are an outgrowth of a flawed system of campaign finance.
In 1974, Congress passed comprehensive campaign finance reform (in the form of amendments to a 1971 act) that was supposed to address the corporate bribery and political blackmail uncovered during Watergate. The Federal Election Campaign Act amendments limited both campaign contributions and expenditures, including independent expenditures by advocacy groups, and established public financing for presidential campaigns. The assumption was that by limiting contributions and expenditures, Congress could reduce, if not eliminate, the power of wealth to undermine the promise of political democracy, which is based upon the equality of voters in the political realm overcoming inequality within the economic realm. But in January 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that the limits on expenditures abridged free speech.
What resulted was a set of laws over two decades that have made the political system even less democratic and encouraged new kinds of excess. By limiting contributions but not expenditures in congressional races, the new laws intensified pressure on candidates to raise money. This new pressure prompted innovations in direct mail (and most recently the use of the Internet in fundraising); but it also encouraged the rise of political action committees, which allowed corporations and unions to bundle contributions, and of lobbyists as key middlemen between candidates and money. As Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall has pointed out, lobbyists became not only key fundraisers but even served as political consultants.
The K Street Project, as originally conceived by Newt Gingrich and lobbyist Grover Norquist in 1995, grew out of this political system. Gingrich and Norquist attempted to use the nexus between money and politics to perpetuate Republican control of Congress. In exchange for helping to finance Republican campaigns and to promote the broader Republican agenda, lobbyists and their clients would get what they wanted from Congress--from a bankruptcy bill that favored VISA and MasterCard to a prescription drug plan that enriched pharmaceuticals. The K Street project worked: It helped Republicans stay in office. But it also subverted the older democratic pluralism by eliminating the power of labor and consumers to counter that of business.
DeLay and Abramoff both took this system to personal extremes--DeLay tried to create a political machine that would enhance his party's power and his power, while Abramoff took advantage of his ties to the Republican majority to gull Indian tribes and Pacific island officials. Both men were products of the system, but the system itself will survive them, creating others who will carry on their dirty work unless Congress is willing to address not merely the perquisites of lobbying but the nexus of money and politics. And that can only be done through replacing the current method of funding campaigns with public finance.
Many of those who favored public financing rested their hopes on the Supreme Court overturning Buckley v. Valeo. But the new Roberts Court is even less likely to oblige than the Rehnquist Court. In the late 1990s, however, Ellen Miller at Public Campaign and other reformers began promoting a new approach called "Clean Money, Clean Elections." It posited a voluntary system of public finance, but one that, unlike the system that finances presidential campaigns, has strong incentives for candidates to accept public funding. It has been adopted by Arizona, Maine, and, most recently, Connecticut; and Massachusetts Representative John Tierney and Arizona Representative Raúl Grijalva have introduced a similar proposal for financing congressional campaigns.
The clean-money approach would fund primary candidates who meet a threshold by raising local contributions and would then fund the general-election candidates. Candidates accepting public funds in the general election could not accept private funds, but if an opponent relying on private funds threatens to outspend them, they can receive additional matching funds. They can also receive matching funds if they are targeted by issue ads from an outside group.
The idea is not without flaws. The public could find itself funding marginal mavericks like Alan Keyes with no chance of winning. But it has already worked reasonably well in Arizona and Maine. In Arizona, for instance, Democrat Janet Napolitano probably could not have defeated Republican Matt Salmon if public financing had not allowed her to match Salmon's private contributions. But on an equal footing, Democrat Napolitano narrowly won in spite of three-to-two Republican registration. She won partly because she was a stronger campaigner but also because her centrist politics were a better fit for Arizona than Salmon's rightwing outlook.
Publicly financed campaigns are, of course, a hard sell. They were adopted in Arizona and Connecticut in the wake of major scandals. And voters in Missouri and Oregon have voted down public financing proposals. But there isn't really another kind of reform that promises to break the connection between money and politics that has given us the K Street Project, Abramoff, and DeLay. Anyone who thinks that passing a gift or travel ban will do the trick is simply deluding himself.
John B. Judis is a senior editor at TNR and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w060116&s=judis011806
System Failure
by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 01.18.06
The scandals surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Congressman Tom DeLay have unleashed a flurry of lobbying reform proposals. Some of these measures certainly have merit, but, by themselves, they aren't going to prevent the kinds of problems that have engulfed Congress over the last 40 years. That's because the excesses of Abramoff and DeLay--like those of the Nixon administration in the early 1970s and House Democrats in the early 1990s--are an outgrowth of a flawed system of campaign finance.
In 1974, Congress passed comprehensive campaign finance reform (in the form of amendments to a 1971 act) that was supposed to address the corporate bribery and political blackmail uncovered during Watergate. The Federal Election Campaign Act amendments limited both campaign contributions and expenditures, including independent expenditures by advocacy groups, and established public financing for presidential campaigns. The assumption was that by limiting contributions and expenditures, Congress could reduce, if not eliminate, the power of wealth to undermine the promise of political democracy, which is based upon the equality of voters in the political realm overcoming inequality within the economic realm. But in January 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that the limits on expenditures abridged free speech.
What resulted was a set of laws over two decades that have made the political system even less democratic and encouraged new kinds of excess. By limiting contributions but not expenditures in congressional races, the new laws intensified pressure on candidates to raise money. This new pressure prompted innovations in direct mail (and most recently the use of the Internet in fundraising); but it also encouraged the rise of political action committees, which allowed corporations and unions to bundle contributions, and of lobbyists as key middlemen between candidates and money. As Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall has pointed out, lobbyists became not only key fundraisers but even served as political consultants.
The K Street Project, as originally conceived by Newt Gingrich and lobbyist Grover Norquist in 1995, grew out of this political system. Gingrich and Norquist attempted to use the nexus between money and politics to perpetuate Republican control of Congress. In exchange for helping to finance Republican campaigns and to promote the broader Republican agenda, lobbyists and their clients would get what they wanted from Congress--from a bankruptcy bill that favored VISA and MasterCard to a prescription drug plan that enriched pharmaceuticals. The K Street project worked: It helped Republicans stay in office. But it also subverted the older democratic pluralism by eliminating the power of labor and consumers to counter that of business.
DeLay and Abramoff both took this system to personal extremes--DeLay tried to create a political machine that would enhance his party's power and his power, while Abramoff took advantage of his ties to the Republican majority to gull Indian tribes and Pacific island officials. Both men were products of the system, but the system itself will survive them, creating others who will carry on their dirty work unless Congress is willing to address not merely the perquisites of lobbying but the nexus of money and politics. And that can only be done through replacing the current method of funding campaigns with public finance.
Many of those who favored public financing rested their hopes on the Supreme Court overturning Buckley v. Valeo. But the new Roberts Court is even less likely to oblige than the Rehnquist Court. In the late 1990s, however, Ellen Miller at Public Campaign and other reformers began promoting a new approach called "Clean Money, Clean Elections." It posited a voluntary system of public finance, but one that, unlike the system that finances presidential campaigns, has strong incentives for candidates to accept public funding. It has been adopted by Arizona, Maine, and, most recently, Connecticut; and Massachusetts Representative John Tierney and Arizona Representative Raúl Grijalva have introduced a similar proposal for financing congressional campaigns.
The clean-money approach would fund primary candidates who meet a threshold by raising local contributions and would then fund the general-election candidates. Candidates accepting public funds in the general election could not accept private funds, but if an opponent relying on private funds threatens to outspend them, they can receive additional matching funds. They can also receive matching funds if they are targeted by issue ads from an outside group.
The idea is not without flaws. The public could find itself funding marginal mavericks like Alan Keyes with no chance of winning. But it has already worked reasonably well in Arizona and Maine. In Arizona, for instance, Democrat Janet Napolitano probably could not have defeated Republican Matt Salmon if public financing had not allowed her to match Salmon's private contributions. But on an equal footing, Democrat Napolitano narrowly won in spite of three-to-two Republican registration. She won partly because she was a stronger campaigner but also because her centrist politics were a better fit for Arizona than Salmon's rightwing outlook.
Publicly financed campaigns are, of course, a hard sell. They were adopted in Arizona and Connecticut in the wake of major scandals. And voters in Missouri and Oregon have voted down public financing proposals. But there isn't really another kind of reform that promises to break the connection between money and politics that has given us the K Street Project, Abramoff, and DeLay. Anyone who thinks that passing a gift or travel ban will do the trick is simply deluding himself.
John B. Judis is a senior editor at TNR and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w060116&s=judis011806