|
 onservative
opponents of John McCain's campaign-deform legislation are going
to lose if they don't stop making
the wrong and
unpersuasive arguments against this fraudulent bill. The conservative
attack against campaign reform has thus far centered on three arguments:
first, that the system isn't broken and that campaign spending isn't
out of control — which is a dubious proposition given that
House races now can cost $5 million or more. Second, that campaign-spending
limits are a violation of free speech--which may or may not be the
case but is entirely unpersuasive to average voters, 80 percent
of whom never give a dime to political candidates. And third, that
special-interest groups don't buy undue influence with their donations
— which is totally preposterous. (How else did we end up with
this elephantine $2-trillion budget?)
The denial
of a problem is arguably the worst tactical blunder. Why? Because
John McCain is right: This nation is in serious need of genuine
campaign reform. More to the point, the vast majority of Americans
believe that he is right. To torpedo the McCain bill therefore
requires a much more potent alternative than raising campaign limits
and requiring disclosure. The good news is that there are other
much more promising and popular campaign-reform measures: namely,
term limits, tax reform, and ending corporate welfare, each of which
would bring the fountain of special interest money now pouring into
campaigns to a screeching halt. These reforms would also create
a more competitive election environment — and that's why it's
so excruciatingly difficult to get real campaign reform. Precious
few incumbents want a more competitive climate.
In fact, that
is precisely the cancer in our campaign system today that none of
the so-called reformers will acknowledge.
The system
is completely jerry-rigged in favor of incumbents. Nowadays, it
seemingly takes a blowtorch to pry a congressman from office once
he gets there. (And yet, they actually want a pay raise for this
lifetime-security job!)
How strong
is the incumbent advantage? Let's look at the 2000 congressional
elections. Guess how many incumbents running for the House of Representatives
won?
Did you guess
80%? Wrong.
Did you guess
90%? Wrong again.
Did you guess
95%? Wrong, but close.
Try 97%! These
days, unless an incumbent commits an indictable offense, robs the
House post office, or has sex with a page, there's just no getting
rid of them. Even in the "throw-the-bums-out" election
of 1994, more than 90% of incumbents were re-elected.
Studies show
that House incumbents start every election with roughly a built-in
$500,000 advantage, thanks to name recognition, the ability to pass
out pork and go to ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and, of course, to
the free campaign literature that congressional offices can mail
out at taxpayer's expense during the year. Let's call it Head Start
for incumbents.
So any campaign-reform
law must be judged first and foremost on whether it makes it easier
or harder to defeat incumbents. Does it help create a level playing
field? Now, of course, incumbents of both parties don't have a strong
incentive to change the laws so that it's easier to defeat them.
And voila,
I present to you the McCain-Feingold bill. This bill is a scam because
it would actually increase the incumbency advantage. How so? The
McCain bill helps incumbents in three ways. First, the money-raising
restrictions benefit incumbents, because it makes their $500,000
head start all the more valuable. Second, the bill contains an insidious
millionaire provision, which incredibly says that any incumbent
who faces a Jon Corzine-type gazillionaire who spends more than
a million dollars of his own money, no longer has to live by the
campaign-finance restrictions. And third, the bill contains an amendment
by Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota that prohibits independent groups,
like the Club for Growth, from running TV ads mentioning any incumbent's
name within 60 days of an election. If this gag rule had been in
existence last year, the Club for Growth would not have been able
to run ads educating New Jersey voters on the lousy congressional
voting record of Marge Roukema. Ms. Roukema, by the way, is a big
fan of campaign-finance reform to muzzle groups like ours.
There are three
keys to genuine campaign reform. First, term limits will create
competitive elections and reduce special-interest spending since
politicians would only be around for a few years, thus greatly lessening
the discounted present-value rate of return on campaign contributions.
Politicians can't "stay bought" if they're only on Capitol
Hill for four or six years. The polls show that the public still
strongly supports term limits--even more than the McCain bill. It's
not helpful that some of the lead Republican opponents of the McCain
bill — including Sen. Mitch McConnell — are also ferocious
opponents of term limits.
Second, genuine
tax reform — I'm thinking here of the flat tax--would erode
the power structure in Washington and put most of K-Street lobbyists
out of business. Without tax carve-outs, loopholes, and deductions
to buy and sell, the commerce of lobbying would be greatly depressed.
Dick Armey, the tireless flat-tax crusader, has shown that there
is an almost perfect linear correlation between the complexity of
the tax code and the number of lobbyists in Washington. And the
flat tax would be wonderful for the economy to boot.
Finally, much
of the corporate political giving in Washington is a down-payment
on tens of billions of dollars of corporate-welfare grants, loans,
and cut-rate insurance. A few years ago, I showed that the biggest
corporate givers also just happened to be the biggest recipients
of a boondoggle called the Advanced Technology Program that gives
companies like GE and Hewlett-Packard ten-million-dollar welfare
checks.
All of these
reforms would clean up the buying and selling of votes that goes
on everyday in Washington and that too many conservative opponents
of the McCain bill, in their zeal to defeat that legislation, pretend
isn't really occurring. Anyone who is for smaller government should
be a champion of campaign reform — as outlined above.
|
