FINANCE REFORM AT HAND

Maine Reps. Tom Allen and John Baldacci are certain to vote for reform and against soft money when campaign-finance reform comes to a vote in the House, perhaps Wednesday. But while reformers have gotten the required 218 members to bring the bill by Reps. Christopher Shays and Martin Meehan before Congress,

it is far from certain that enough members are sufficiently embarrassed by the corrupt system by which they operate their campaigns to actually approve the reform.

Instead, knowing the public’s desire to see Congress act on campaign finance, they will look for a sham bill to hide behind. For instance, had a poor substitute, by Reps. Robert Ney and Albert Russell Wynn and currently circulating, been in effect during the last campaign, it would have taken the $1.7 million in soft money spread around by Enron and reduced it to a mere $1.2 million. That’s not reform, that’s comedy.

It’s also tragedy, and not only because Enron importuned Congress to relax regulatory safeguards that helped contribute to the loss of savings for hundreds of thousands. Between the House and Senate’s alternating support and rejection of a ban on soft money, with the vote depending on whether it actually mattered, Congress has succeeded in erecting a wall of cynicism that keeps voters from believing in and, therefore, caring what goes on in Washington. Powerless to match the access and influence of big donors of soft money – the largely unregulated money that is supposed to go for party-building and voting drives but in reality is used directly by campaigns – average voters are forced to conclude that they simply don’t count as much as those willing to spend lavishly.

A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University observes that all candidates, parties and interest groups in the 2000 federal elections spent a record $629 million. Remarkably, the parties are on track to break their records again this year even though 2002 is a non-presidential year. The Brennan Center report, called “Buying Time 2000,” by Craig Holman and Luke McLoughlin, details in particular the extent to which parties use soft money to buy air time for, increasingly, ads to beat up opponents.

Members of Congress, however, don’t need studies to tell them about the extent of the problem in their midst. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, in his warning that the GOP could lose the House if reform passed, described the problem exactly: Raising cash is not about funding a battle of ideas but a battle for power, with the ads bought by the soft money an effective means of attack. Republicans who supported reform in the past are now feeling intense pressure to switch sides, and the GOP has 10 amendments it will try to attach to Shays-Meehan to make it unacceptable to Democrats and Republican moderates. Black and Hispanic members are also feeling pressure after a huge effort by lobbying groups last year to persuade them that soft money paid for minority voter turnout. The Brennan Center report disputes this, however, pointing out, “Only 81/2 cents out of every soft money dollar of the national and 50 state party committees was spent for any activity reasonably associated with get-out-the-vote, voter registration, or voter mobilization.”

It is rare that Congress would vote on major legislation strongly opposed by the majority party, but such is the importance of campaign-finance reform that the unusual is also the required. In its conclusion, the Brennan Center report says, “Each election cycle brings new innovations in campaign finance evasion as parties, candidates and groups strive to bend the system to their benefit,” an accurate and important warning that reform doesn’t end with this vote.

But no further reform is likely unless soft money and the influence it buys are taken out of the campaign. The House vote expected tomorrow is crucial to begin the reform.