"Incumbent Protection Racket"

Ryan Sager, over at Tech Central Station calls the Federal Election Commission like it is:

The FEC, you see, is set up -- like all campaign-finance measures -- essentially as a bi-partisan incumbent-protection racket. No one wants "reformers" of any kind on the FEC. Democrats want Democrats on the FEC. And Republicans want Republicans. Therefore, when Congress set up the agency in 1974, it was decreed that no party could control more than three seats on the commission. Four votes are required to take any given action. Therefore, everything the FEC does will be acceptable to both parties. (People "running" for Congress or the presidency aren't so well represented -- they, after all, didn't get to appoint or confirm the FEC's members.)(emphasis added)

But the real incumbent protection racket is not the FEC. All the talk about the FEC and the appointment of new commissioners is simply a smoke screen for the real incumbent protection measures making their way through the Congress. There are two measures making their way through the legislative gauntlet that are even more of a blatant incumbent protection move than the Millionaire's Amendment to BCRA.

In the House is HR 1316, commonly referred to a Pence-Wynn for sponsors Mike Pence(R-IN) and Albert Wynn (D-MD). The bill does a number of good things from a sense of fairness, among other things, the bill :

• indexes for inflaction all contributions made to political committees, including PACs and national party committees,
• brings IRS Section 527 organizations under the umbrella of the FEC, and
• allows state and local political parties to use non-federal funds for voter registration and sample ballot publication (an activity that, because it invovles federal candidates had to be paid more with federal hard dollars--a rather severe side-effect of BCRA).

However, Pence-Wynn does a couple of things that are essentially designed to increase the power of the incumbent over the challenger candidate. Roll Call called the measure the Million Dollar Loophole. Essentially, Pence-Wynn removes the coordinated expenditure limit that parties may spend on candidates. Coordinated expenditures are just that, expenditures in support of a candidate that are coordinated in message, tone and content, with the candidate. In its article, Roll Call noted that by using a growing tool, the joint fundraising committee, a candidate may end up directly hundreds of thousands of dollars to the national party and then getting direct control over those funds to help with their campaign. Thus, in addition to the overwhelming fundraising advantage incumbents already enjoy, they can use the coordinated expenditures, which they would control, to further bolster their campaign.

Pence-Wynn also contains a provision that would allow for unlimited transfers of funds to the national party committees from a leadership PAC. A leadership PAC is a legal fiction to begin with. Under FEC law, a candidate may only have one authorized committee, i.e. one campaign committee dedicated to that person's election to office. (actually that is not entirely accurate, but for all intents and purposes it is close enough). A leadership PAC is another committee, controlled by the candidate that can be used for purposes such as supporting other candidates (which was the intent to begin with) or to fund the controlling member's travels in support of a future campaign for office, among other things. Like all PACs, these leadership PACs are limited in the amount they can give to the National Parties, a limit fo $15,000 per year. by repealing that limit for leadership PACs (which currently have no specific registration designation called leadership PAC but would need one) and having no coordinated expenditure limit, the transfers to the national parties would be again controlled by the incumbent, giving the incumbent more of a funding advantage.

Pence-Wynn is a stand-alone bill, making its chances for passage a little more dicey. But Roll Call reported on Monday that a legislative rider has been attached to the Treasury-Justice Appropriations bill (which also funds the FEC) that would permit the transfers from leadership PACs to that national party committees. Senator McCain has threatened to delay the bill, but because the appropriations bills are must pass bills and the GOP leadership favors the provision, the rider is likely to remain in place.

So to sum up, the incumbent protection measures in campaign finance are structured in such a way as to by-pass controls already in place. The transfers between leadership PACs to the national parties are a way to circumvent the controls in place to prevent incumbents from using a leadership PAC to fund their candidacy. If coupled with a repeal of coordinated expenditures, what you are left with is a system whose very structure is designed to keep incumbents so far in the lead money wise that it will take either death or resignation to create turnover, creating a permanent incumbent class.

While generally not in favor of a great deal of campaign finance regulation, I think that people need to cry foul on this blatant incumbent protection racket. If we are looking for real reform, perhaps my modest proposal may be a starting point.