An Interesting Idea

The Centre Daily Times of State College, PA, offers this interesting idea for helping raise funds for Katrine relief efforts: Make federal candidates tithe their campaign war chests.

Members of Congress have voted more than $60 billion in Hurricane Katrina disaster relief, with the total estimated to eventually go as high as $200 billion.

But that's (mostly) your money. What about their campaign money?

After all, shouldn't sacrifice for the vulnerable start with the powerful? So how about this unconventional idea: Washington should call a 90-day moratorium on campaign fundraising, and both parties -- and all congressional incumbents -- should tithe from their campaign funds for Katrina relief.

That means 10 percent of their war chests should go to hurricane relief, or they should raise that amount and donate it to the relief effort instead of collecting still more for the 2006 campaign battles.

A little later comes this:

Federal Election Commission re-cords show that the party campaign committees and House and Senate incumbents have more than $400 million with nearly 14 months to go before the elections. Tithing would yield $40 million for Katrina aid, money that otherwise would probably just be used for attack ads.

The rest of the piece is pretty much a solid argument against the current incumbent protection racket. Check it out.