Obama Co-Sponsoring Reform of Public Financing System
Senator Obama is the first presidential candidate to co-sponsor S. 436, essential legislation introduced by Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) to fix the presidential public financing system for future presidential elections.
Senator Obama has provided important national leadership by becoming the first presidential candidate to sponsor vitally-needed reform legislation to protect the integrity of the presidency and to join in the battle for its passage.
Companion legislation to fix the presidential system, H.R. 776, has been introduced in the House by Representatives Marty Meehan (D-MA), Christopher Shays (R-CT) and David Price (D-NC).
The presidential public financing system as it currently stands creates the potential for serious competitive disadvantages for candidates who choose to use the system to finance their 2008 presidential elections. As a result, a number of presidential candidates in both parties are expected to opt out of the system for the 2008 election.
A key test today of where presidential candidates stand on protecting the integrity of the presidency is not whether they use the presidential public financing system in the 2008 election, but whether they make a clear public commitment to support and work for passage of the legislation to fix the system for future presidential races.
Reform groups sent a letter recently urging House members to co-sponsor H.R. 776…The reform groups include the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG.
According to the letter, ”H.R. 776 also has been endorsed by the Committee for Economic Development, an organization of national business leaders and educators, and by Americans for Campaign Reform, an organization whose bipartisan leadership includes former Senators Bill Bradley (D-NJ), Warren Rudman (R-NH), Bob Kerrey (D-NE), and Alan Simpson (R-WY)…”
- excerpted from Democracy 21
I hope these groups are persuasive and expand their concerns to reviving the proposal for public finance of Congressional elections that was almost single-handedly defeated by Minority Leader Senate Mitch McConnell.
I share the concern with others that public campaign finance does not address the role of third parties in influencing elections. I would like to see all political contributions limited to only Individuals. It seems to me that the Supreme Court can make the distinction between freedom of speech and unlimited money used to promote the special interests of non-voters.
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17 Responses to “Obama Co-Sponsoring Reform of Public Financing System”
Paul,
I’ve asked several times but I don’t think you’ve addressed it: how would you propose to deal with 527 money (and are you aware of any bills that would attempt to fix the problems there?) I don’t see how restricting the official campaign donations does any good at all without addressing this- in fact it will likely make it more likely that we’ll see an increase in 527 money and the resulting ads which candidates don’t officially ‘endorse’. That means far more attack ads from outside corporate and special interest groups, for which the candidates have plausible deniability.
I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot, and there doesn’t seem to be any quick and easy solution. I’m glad that Obama is taking the high road here and showing us there is some conviction behind all those high-minded speeches he’s been giving.
To C Stanley,
What would you think of banning all political advertising on television that mentioned candidates by name?
Chris that wouldn’t be legal or perhaps even wise. The best idea I’ve read was at Glenn Greenwald’s blog by Anonymous Liberal.
Mikkel,
We’ve banned cigarette advertising from the television medium. Was that illegal and unwise?
Glenn Greenwald’s idea is interesting. I’d like to see a state try it out and see if it works, but I can imagine a lot of lawyering and corruption involved in that process. “It depends on what the meaning of is is…”
mikkel,
Thanks for the link to Glenn’s site. I appreciate his creative thinking on the issue. His thought is to have a non-partisan board review political advertisements and certify truthfulness. This is worth considering along with other notions that aim to use carrots rather than sticks.
I agree with mikkel that banning ads that mention candidates’ names would be unconstitutional. Not only that though, I don’t think it fixes the problem because even issue based ads can be used to smear an opponent when done for that purpose. Just off the top of my head I can come up with a hypothetical example: what if a group that favored a GOP candidate created an ad using the words of terrorists to imply that if the US withdraws from Iraq they will take that as a sign of our weakness (like OBL’s ‘paper tiger’ comments)? No candidates mentioned, no candidate has to take responsibility for running an ad like that, but it’s used against a Democratic opponent who favors a quick withdrawal from Iraq.
mikkel,
Thanks for the link. I think it’s not a bad idea but the problems I see with it relate to what Chris said in regard to truthfulness. I’d go even farther than that: that even if an ad is true, it can be a smear ad. How would such a commission, for example, handle the ad that was used against Cleland that used his vote on Homeland Security against him? There was nothing untrue, he really did vote the way the ad said, but the implication that this was a vote against the concept of Homeland Security (rather than a vote against this particular bill, because he disagreed with some of the particulars) was the problem. Often an ad is true but it doesn’t tell the whole truth, and I don’t see how a commission could rule on cases like that one way or the other.
In terms of incentives, I guess I’d like to see some sort of formula where a candidate could take a pledge to run a certain percentage of ads that only focused on his own record or platform, with perhaps some incentive for candidates to do so (either an endorsement from some sort of nonpartisan body or maybe even a monetary incentive with some matching campaign funds for those candidates who do this).
I should add though, that even with solutions like those above, the 527′s would be a problem because you’re only dealing with the ads created by the campaign, not outside sources.
The problem really is TV advertising. You just can’t really do service to any kind of debate in a 30 second television ad.
What if we abandon any limit on political ads but require that any print of electronic ad be immediately followed by equal time for rebuttal.
That way information can not be easily taken out of context and leave the voters with an unchallenged assertion. If you run an ad you must provide the funds for a rebuttal. Freedom of speech is not limited but rather held accountable to challenge.
It seems to me that the recent debate in the Senate about Iraq is primarily about what would be in the headlines in political ads in ’08.
Talk of campaign finance reform is a waste of time. It’s a lovely idea, will not and should not happen. Every time we plug one “hole”, another one opens up. The 527s inspired by the last “reform” effort let more money be used with less accountability.
People have a right to freedom of speech and of assembly. Freedom of assembly means they can work TOGETHER to petition the government for redress of their grievances. It is entirely appropriate that “special interest” groups of like-minded citizens pool their money and use it to attempt to influence elections. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
While the Supreme Court has been too soft (in my view) on enforcing the First Amendment in relation to campaign finance reform laws, they’re not going to ultimately approve laws prohibiting political speech by groups of like-minded individuals. What McCain-Feingold did was to encourage money to be steered away from candidates and to organizations with less accountability, the 527s, just as previous campaign finance reform efforts led to PACs and other “ills.”
If Senator Obama is jumping on the campaign finance reform bandwagon (which in reality is an incumbency protection measure), that’s yet one more reason that I will not support him.
The banding together of like minded individuals to elect a representative is preverted when outside special interests with superior funding are allowed to saturate the media with distortions to scare people into supporting their interests like the Military-Industrial complex, Big Pharma, & Oil. How is the world better because we didn’t move towards energy independence thirty years ago or seriously consider Health Care modernization 15 years ago?
I am all for a fair fight of facts and philosophy. I am not in favor of protecting the bully and back room manipulators.
“The problem really is TV advertising. You just can’t really do service to any kind of debate in a 30 second television ad.”
Exactly. The bottom line is that it’s impossible to make a regulation that will cause everyone to magically start having honest and productive debates. Sure there’s give and take, but the quality of the campaigns is at least as much a sign of the electorate as visa versa.
I like Anonymous Liberal’s idea because in my experience about half of the unseemly ads are spin (like the Cleland thing) and half are outright falsehoods. At least the commission would take care of most of the second — and I think that’s the only thing they should check for — and there’s no reason why outside 527s couldn’t be apart of the same process. It is voluntary after all.
Plus I think the actual contribution would be greater than we might anticipate. Accurate but sleezy ads have (at least to me) a feel that is distinct and you can almost smell the manipulation. On the other hand, outright lies are often presented more as objective truth and are easier to use as an authority. At least if people were arguing about the intrepretation instead of the facts that’d be a big step up.
PatHMV said,
It’s a problem when money can buy anything in our country. We have to ask ourselves if we oppose the unchecked power of money in our political system.
I think it’s a problem that only wealthy lawyers seem to make into powerful government positions. Do you?
How about credit card companies writing our bankruptcy legislation, do you think that’s a problem?
“The laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak.â€? – Woodrow Wilson
Controlling money means controlling voices. You get to decide whether “Big Pharma” is so great an ill that it is not allowed to speak and attempt to persuade voters to its point of view. If Big Pharma cannot speak, can the Sierra Club? The Nature Conservancy?
Can newspapers still print endorsements, in your scheme? Who gets to decide whether a group of people are allowed to speak out publicly on paid TV and who is not? If 20 of my friends and I want to get together and put on an ad saying why we oppose Candidate X, can we do so? What provision of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to pass a law prohibiting that? Does it matter whether all 20 of my friends work for pharmaceutical companies or not?
Your responses show that you want to restrict political speech because of its content and the effect you believe it has on the voters. Your message is that the voters are sheep, easily persuaded by whoever spends the most money on TV ads, and you want to put “experts” in charge of censoring political speech to protect the sheeple.
PatMHV,
To me your arguments are reasonable in the particular steps but wrong in the conclusion.
This is a murky issue like pornography, abortion, and gun control in which the public policy is sensitive to context.
I think we should work backwards to contain the political manipulations that have the most consensus: such as eliminating the ability of Unions and Corporations to contribute to elections; and Public Finance of elections, and non-partisan redistricting. Then we regularly adjust the law to level the playing field among money and influence in elections.
I don’t believe the framers intended the largest businesses to decide the outcomes of elections.
Unions and corporations already cannot give to political candidates. They can give “soft money” to political action committees and 527s. Do you intend to prohibit them from giving money to any group which attempts to influence an election? What about gun manufacturers contributing to the NRA? Will that be prohibited? What if the individual managers and board members of the manufacturers make large personal donations to the NRA’s PAC? Or do you consider the NRA itself something which should not be allowed to campaign and influence campaigns?
I don’t believe that the largest businesses actually decide the outcomes of elections. With the existing regulations, no candidate can get all the money needed to run for a major office without obtaining support from a pretty diverse group of interests. The ability to persuade those groups to contribute money is, I think, a pretty good proxy for the ability of the candidate to do the difficult work of implementing public policy around the many, vocal opinions held in our diverse society.
The solution to “bad” speech (and buying a TV commercial is speech) is always more speech.
It’s not a murky area at all. The core of the First Amendment is to uphold the right of the people to speak on political subjects. The right of assembly is the right to work together to accomplish something politically that no individual could accomplish alone. Campaign finance “reform” cuts to the very heart of those freedoms and should be opposed on principle.
It should also be opposed on pragmatic grounds, because all experience with prior reform laws has shown that money simply finds a way. People (and corporations are run by people and supported by people, with people as their customers) who are affected by government actions (and we all are) will find a way to influence those actions. That’s not corruption, that’s the way the system is supposed to work.
If you don’t like it, get some people together to run commercials showing which campaign ads are total lies and which are half-truths. Me, I would love for the American people to get sick and tired of 30 second TV campaign spots, but they aren’t. They could do all sorts of research on candidates and policies on the web and in the papers today, but they don’t. You can’t make them, no matter how hard you try. Your solution is to forcibly prevent them from seeing the 30-second spots, in the hopes that they will then be more sensible in making their voting decisions. That’s not going to work.