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The Issues: Campaign Finance Reform - The Future of Reform
While the McCain-Feingold bill was a milestone
for campaign finance reform, there is much more work to be
done. In early 2005 I helped introduce
S. 271, the 527 Reform Act. This legislation will require
all 527's to register as political committees unless they
fall into a number of very narrow exceptions. This bill will
help close the current tax loopholes that the FEC has allowed.
In July of 2005, I also introduced S.1398,
the Lobbying and Ethics Reform Bill. This bill aims to improve
the ethical relationship between lobbyists and Members of
Congress by curbing the excesses in privately funded trips
or gifts for Members of Congress and their staffs.
In 2003, I joined Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in introducing
legislation that would reform the presidential public funding
system. This bill, S.
1913, the Presidential Funding Act, would have eliminated
the current state-by-state spending limits and substantially
increased the overall spending limit. It would have also required
candidates who receive public funding for the general election
to participate in the primary public funding system as well.
The public financing system has worked well in the past by
reducing the pressure to fundraise and by leveling the playing
field between candidates. The Presidential Funding Act will
help keep the system viable in future presidential elections.
Many of my campaign finance reform efforts have been directed
at undoing the damage done by the Federal Election Commission
(FEC) through rulings that have created loopholes in federal
election laws, rather than enforcing the true intent of the
law. In particular, the soft money loophole was created by
FEC rulings in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and was further
aggravated by the agency's unwillingness to address the issue
in the 90s. Time after time, the FEC has acted as a super
legislature, substituting its policy judgments for those of
the Congress, and proving that it can no longer meet the challenges
of enforcing election laws.
One of the most significant failures of the FEC in recent
years was its decision not to address the explosion of so
-called 527 groups in the 2004 presidential election. Those
organizations, which like most political organizations claim
a tax exemption under the section 527 of the Internal Revenue
Code because their primary purpose is to influence elections,
argued that they did not have to register as federal political
committees. I believe that the law requires groups whose major
purpose is to influence federal elections to register as political
committees and comply with the contribution limits applicable
to such committees.
The 527 loophole left open by the FEC allowed groups such
as the Media Fund and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to finance
their ads attacking the presidential candidates in 2004 with
unlimited contributions from wealthy donors. Senator McCain
and I believe the FEC should have taken steps to reign in
these groups. 527s are not a result of or failure of McCain-Feingold
- in fact many of them operate in violation of a campaign
finance law written decades earlier - but they are contributing
to the undue influence of money in politics, and we will work
to pass 527 reform in the new Congress.We introduced the 527
Reform Act to force it to do so in the next election cycle.
This bill would require most 527s to register as political
committees. Donors to federal political committees can contribute
no more than $5,000 per year. The bill would also require
527s that engage in activities that affect both federal and
state elections to be paid for by at least 50 percent federal
money. Finally, contributions to the non-federal accounts
of federal political committees would be limited to $25,000
per year.
To address the failures of the FEC, in the 108th Congress,
I introduced with Senator McCain S.
1388, the Federal Election Administration Act. Our bill
would have replaced the FEC with a new agency, the Federal
Election Administration (FEA). Although the reporting and
disclosure functions of the FEA would continue much as they
do today, the enforcement functions would have been modeled
after other successful regulatory agencies such as the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission,
and the National Labor Relations Board.
Another area that is ripe for reform is broadcast advertising.
In July 2003, I joined with Senator McCain and Senator Richard
Durbin (D-IL) to introduce S.
1497, the Our Democracy, Our Airwaves Act. This bill would
require broadcast stations to devote a reasonable amount of
air time to election programming. It would also direct the
FCC to create a system in which candidates and parties would
receive vouchers they could use for paid radio or TV advertising
time financed by a broadcast spectrum usage fee. Our proposal
would allow candidates to leverage their grassroots fundraising
and would provide greater campaign resources to candidates
without requiring them to become more beholden to special
interests.
Finally, in November 2003, I introduced S.
1874, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. This
bill would require electronic versions of the campaign finance
reports that Senators must file to be made available to the
public within 48 hours of their filing. That will be a vast
improvement over the current situation, which requires interested
members of the public to review computer images of paper-filed
copies of reports, and involves a wasteful expenditure of
hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-enter information into
databases that almost every campaign has available in electronic
format.
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