Campaign finance ideas

The worst thing that could come out of Congress this session is a commitment to study campaign finance reform. The topic has been studied more times than President Clinton has had coffees in the White House. Nothing less should emerge than significant legislation that will allow challengers to compete with incumbents and prevent politicians from becoming beholden to a few well-heeled special interests.

Some suggestions for what meaningful legislation would contain:

Require the broadcast industry to pay for licenses and its use of the public airwaves by providing free or reduced-cost television time to candidates. TV time is the most expensive part of a campaign; reducing that cost reduces the need to raise money.

Ban soft money, the unregulated funds sent to political parties that are supposed to be used for such activities as get-out-the-vote drives, but instead are used to promote specific candidates. Soft money in the 1990s has become the largest abuse of campaign regulations, and several of the major campaign-finance measures, including the popular McCain-Feingold, either restrict of ban it.

Individual contributions to candidates has remain unchanged at $1,000 since 1974. Increase this level to reflect inflation during the last 23 years, thereby making individual contributions more important. At the same time, limit political action committee money to individual levels. Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has added an interesting way to encourage individual donations: he would make the first $100 worth an equal tax credit. That sounds like a good idea.

Require a daily electronic filing with the Federal Election Commission of candidate expenditures and the name, address and occupation of all donors. This provision or a similar one is included in several major reform proposals and is, essentially, the only measure in a bill by Rep. John T. Doolittle, R-Calif. Rep. Doolittle would then make monitoring campaigns simple by eliminating all restrictions on donation sources and levels.

Knowing who is giving money to candidates, which is often difficult to determine now, could greatly help the public understand why a politician votes a certain way. Rep. Doolittle’s lack of restrictions on giving, however, would limit congressional races to incumbents and millionaires. Average challengers would not be able to overcome the enormous sums an incumbent could collect.

Congress has been fiddling with campaign finance reforms since it passed public financing for presidential races two decades ago. It should act this session and has all the proposals and information it needs to truly improve its current faulty system.