Durbin/Spector Campaign Finance Bill

As promised, I have finally started the review of the text of the Durbin/Spector campaign finance bill that will create a public financing option for Senatorial Elections. Rep. John Tierney has introduced a similar bill in the House, but much of it is similar in nature to the Durbin/Spector that I will over time highlight the differences when that text becomes available.

Looking first at Sec. 101, Findings and Declarations, I am struck by how electoral ideas get all mixed up. For example, there is this findind (Sec. 101(a)(3

))(3) violating the democratic principle of "one person, one vote" and diminishing the meaning of the right to vote by allowing monied interests to have a disproportionate and unfair influence within the political process;

The campaign finance rules have no impact on the actual process of voting. Every voter, regardless of whether they have made a contribution to a candidate, committee or party is entitled to one vote and having that vote count. "One person, one vote" deals with apportionment and redistricting, not campaign finance. But the myth that somehow monied interests have more of a vote than anyone else is a myth.

A little later in Sec. 101(a)(7),

the bill declares: burdening incumbents with a preoccupation with fundraising and thus decreasing the time available to carry out their public responsibilities.

While the government may have an interest in having Senators focus on official duties, I am not sure that the preoccupations with fundraising weighs heavily on Senator's minds. They have staff to worry about that. Do Senators spend lots of time raising money? yes, but a far smaller change in the law could obviate the worry, such as banning fundraising until a challenger has declared or until say a date certain before the election, like January 1 of election year or September 1 of the year before election. This is an idea I have long espoused. This law change is far simpler than creating a new public financing regime.

Later, in Sec. 101(b)(4), Sen. Durbin believes public financing would help by

reversing the escalating cost of elections and saving taxpayers billions of dollars that are (or that are perceived to be) currently allocated based upon legislative and regulatory agendas skewed by the influence of campaign contributions;

The bill does provide from some lower costs for advertising by providing discounts on advertising rates, etc. However, those modest changes are not going to make campaigns any less expensive. Nor will public financing do away with pork barrel spending. Despite assurances in this bill and rhetoric by Democratic leadership, pork barrell spending is alive and well. Just because a campaign is publicly financed does not mean that legislative and regulatory agendas will not be skewed by other interests, like getting re-elected.

However, Durbin gets a few things right, despite the fact that I think his chosen mechanism is wrong. The incumbent advantage is finally acknowledged explicitly in Sec. 101(a)(6). The current law is:

disadvantaging challengers, because large campaign contributors tend to donate their money to incumbent Senators, thus causing Senate elections to be less competitive;

and the advantage is implicity acknowledged again in Sec. 101(b)(5):

creating a more level playing field for incumbents and challengers by creating genuine opportunities for all Americans to run for the Senate and by encouraging more competitive elections;

Indeed. One of my objections to the Millionaire's amendment is that it does not treat personal and political wealth in the same manner. Incumbent Senator spend six year building massive war chests. For that reason, limiting the time for fudnraising and forcing every candidate to start at zero, as I had proposed, will go a long way to leveling the playing field, again without a massively complex addition to the campaign finance laws.

While Findings and Declarations generally don't have much impact as other segments of the law, but they do provide a good indication of where they are coming from. Many of the goals of this bill, providing a level playing field and encouraging competition can be attained with far easier changes to the law that the method be proposed.