WASHINGTON REPORT: Money and Politics
Sisyphus
barrassed Administration or Foreign Service. But these are days for paradoxes and strange happenings in connection with the American commitment to Vietnam. Thus we witness a bookkeeping...
...But with the ambivalence, however understandable, with which sitting Members of Congress approach campaignfinancing reform, the "ceilings" on contributions were deceptive...
...The problem is one for North as well as South Vietnam, but important beginnings can be made in the South, and the U.S., which provides roughly 85 percent of the upkeep of the Saigon government, is in a position of great influence...
...Wayne Hays (D-Ohio), chief planter for legislation to upset the status quo in the sectors of campaignfinancing and legislative reforms...
...No one is exempt...
...It may be, said this group, that this will suffice to remedy gross abuses in the existing method of financing campaigns, dominated by private financing, particularly if one also assumes, as a result of Watergate, a greater awareness by voters to campaign financing shenanigans and, perhaps, a skittishness on the part of big contributors...
...But the smelly products of private money financing campaigns are not easily aborted...
...The debate in the Senate extended over a period of three weeks...
...Close to the end of her long And spinistered years, she spread her hands Over an apronful of recipes, and said: Some day these will all be yours...
...Until recently, the half-century-old federal corruptpractices act assisted in disguising sources of large campaign donations...
...These Senators privately indicated they'd be not at all displeased that the bill would be delivered into the hands of Wayne Hays...
...Justice Black, in his opinion in the case of Barenblatt v. U.S., has said: "There are, of course, cases suggesting that a law which primarily regulates conduct but which might also indirectly affect speech can be upheld if the effect on speech is minor in relation to the need for control of the conduct...
...To argue otherwise is to acknowledge, correspondingly, that "peace money" from the Council for a Livable World or "labor money" from COPE or one of the other political arms of organized labor cdrrupts its favored candidates...
...The bill would authorize a candidate to run his campaign on a matching mixture of both federal funds and private funds...
...and the books Fall open flatly to mysterious passages, Where the rubrics of her kitchen witchcraft Are written in with strange juices...
...And what is left behind of her sorcery Is disarmed...
...In 1971, however, for the first time, a law was enacted providing for comprehensive reporting of sources of campaign funds made to candidates for federal elective office--Congress and the Presidency...
...The second group disagreed that the existing flawed "system" can be purged by pouring into it a dose of political "drano...
...Money, in this context, is currency of many colors, depending on the source...
...In addition, federal funding raises an alert--a Government instrumentality will disburse campaign funds...
...Furthermore, public financing of campaigns, should it be enacted for Congressional campaigns, will undoubtedly be challenged in the courts...
...Each man now holding those respective positions is a person of integrity, but each is an employee of the Congress...
...The amount in the fund would depend upon the number of taxpayers who, by giving permission when filing their federal individual income tax returns, authorized $l or $2 in federal funds to be placed in the fund...
...The 1973 bill (S.372) has been buried by Hays since sent by the Senate to his Committee nearly one year ago...
...As for Vietnam itself, there is much that the U.S...
...Even more promisingly, from the standpoint of some campaign reformers, there was established a fund for federal financing of campaigns of Presidential candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties...
...On balance, the Senate moved in the proper direction...
...Beyond the equivocal role of money, the efforts to restrain extravagant campaign spending by introducing ceilings will certainly be challenged by one or more court suits...
...The bill also would impose limitations on total campaign spending, not just that spent on campaign propaganda as did the 1971 law...
...Archibald Cox suggests not, because, in effect, limitations on spending are not really limitations on speech because they are limitations "once removed...
...But exempted from this ceiling were contributions made through major funnels of funny-money, the Republican and Democratic Congressional campaign committees...
...Schemers, trimmers and thieves sired Watergate...
...They are mine now...
...Death, keeping her secrets In its stillest pantries, has kept the best table, While I keep its codebooks and signs...
...Much less was the point pressed that the $266 million might be beneficially spent at home on the nation's own veterans of Vietnam--for projects, for instance, that might lessen the veterans' disproportionately high percentage of joblessness...
...Under terms of the bill, a contributor could give only $3000 to a candidate in any single cam3 May 1974:204 paign--a primary or a general or a run-off...
...And, in the process, a candidate is as sinned against as sinning, in seeking to finance a campaign...
...The uninspiring debate was marked by one unusual feature---opponents, such as Senators Dole and Buckley, quoting The New Republic, skeptical about the bill, and, conversely, proponents quoting conservative writers for support...
...Nevertheless, passage of the federal financing bill is a culmination of an effort begun in the Senate in modern times when Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts introduced a resolution a quarter-century ago inquiring as to the feasibility of financing federal elections with public funds ("our tax dollars" as opponents describe the scheme...
...A total of $21.4 million for each Presidential candidate was estimated to be the maximum that would be collected by this taxpayers' "check-off...
...But that these are so essentially military as American policymakers apparently would have them, or that they justify old hostilities towards Americans of differing viewpoints, is a matter to be hotly disputed...
...The release of the prisoners will not solve Vietnam's freedom problems, but it would remove a major source of grievance--and maybe make Thieu a mite more palatable to those of sensitive instincts...
...The financial constituency is either already in existence or may be created by a candidate himself...
...If a greater close of public-financing is called for, runs this point-of-view, it can be authorized after the 1976 Presidential election...
...Under terms of the public financing bill now in the House a challenger, as well as an incumbent, who first raises $10,000 in private contributions of $100 or less could then receive matching federal funds for each $100 in private funds raised after that threshold was reached...
...Deeds comes to Washington to advance the common weal, but generally even the most high-minded of federal elective officeholders find their causes best advanced if their political coffers are reasonably well stocked...
...The 1971 law placed a limitation on the amount of money that could be spent for campaign propaganda, particularly television and radio "spots...
...It is correct, this group argues, that the Senate bill sent to the House last year would encourage a greater degree of the independence, on the part of sitting members of Congress...
...One group suggested that it would be better to await the consequences, perhaps unforeseen, of the 1971 Presidential check-off statute and the enactment of some provisions of the Senate-passed 1973 bill that yet may be wrested from the grasp of Wayne Hays...
...And, one asks, does "money" itself corrupt...
...With these cases I agree . . . but (they did not) even remotely suggest that a law directly aimed at curtailing speech and political persuasion could be saved through a balancing process...
...But the advantage accruing to incumbents would continue...
...The Watergate scandals are not the direct product of private money financing political campaigns...
...This measure was then sent to the House, where it probably will be interred under the willing direction of Rep...
...Not to have acted would have been disastrous...
...They were wary...
...Few proponents gave themselves up completely to the idea, as proponents do in the pursuit of other legislative goals...
...It also declared that beginning in 1976 elections for federal office would be a national holiday and would be held not on Tuesdays, as now, but on the first Wednesday after the first Monday in November...
...But proponents of comprehensive federal financing of elections are obliged to carefully watch their legislative product, should it be enacted into law...
...Among proponents of public-financing there were two different voices...
...A Senatorial candidate, given existing burgeoning campaign costs, simply cannot be elected in numerous states, Oregon and Idaho among them, unless he or she can find friendly Commonweal: 20J money in certain other states, such as New York and California...
...Subsidies have a way of spawning their own problems...
...cannot do, and would be better off not even attempting...
...It goes without saying in this indictment of tactics and attitudes that the U.S...
...Thus we witness a bookkeeping "miracle" whereby $266 million is "found" in an old ledger to furnish additional military support for the Thieu regime for the remainder of fiscal '74...
...It should insist, for example, that Thieu honor the Paris Peace Accords and at last open the prison gates to the 200,000 political prisoners held there...
...Basically, a member of Congress has, in effect, two constituencies: a geographic one--a state or a Congressional district...
...Indeed, talk in the Senatorial locker-rooms, so to speak, indicated that some Senators would vote for the bill because the "goo-goos" back home, that is, primarily such organizations as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, were pressuring them...
...It's a little comparable to having an umpire calling balls-and-strikes who is also an employee of the home team...
...More realistically, the money flows only when a putative candidate convinces that he or she believes, for example, in the existing tax structure that smiles upon the extractive industries or, correspondingly, in military disengagement from Indochina...
...A degree of public financing available to both non-incumbent Congressional candidates and incumbents would introduce a hitherto missing degree of equity into Congressional campaigns...
...Senators from oil-producing states have been elected, not because they were "corrupted" by petroleum company officials, but because they were already disposed intellectually to acknowledge that the well-being of these companies was a primary responsibility during their Senatorial service...
...Or as someone once suggested: Caveat Emptor...
...But "loans" to candidates were exempted from the $3000 exemption...
...The discovery of $266 million lying around unspent from last year was as fraudulent as some of those battle reports (e.g., Tong Le Chan) that Thieu issues when he is out to influence legislation or opinion in the United States...
...In 1972, the Presidential fund attracted little money, because the Nixon Administration hid its existence from the taxpayers, a situation since remedied in time for 1973 tax payments...
...Then, last year, the Senate took another step toward shedding light on the dark corners of campaign financing...
...Despite passage of the bill, proponents did not exactly carry their arguments with the zest that suggested public financing is an unmixed blessing...
...In her whereabouts The great and little hours do not fill themselves Longer with the design of dinners fit for any god...
...Across-the-board public financing, as its proponents assert, may introduce a needed vigorously competitive element into our system of elections...
...Particularly difficult to identify correctly are the back-stage money men who distribute their capital--or that of others even less willing to identify themselves--to favored candidates of both major political parties...
...By a 5 to 3 margin, the Senate, goaded by the Watergate miseries, broadened federal financing beyond that of the Presidency to include Senate and House primary and general campaigns...
...Most House members, reformist or otherwise, would prefer to ride a barracuda bareback than tangle with the intemperate "Uncle Wayne," chairman of the Committee on House Administration and in his more bizarre expressions reminiscent of Lenny Bruce...
...Proponents were not only wary, they were somewhat divided on the matter both as to (a) the desirability of the bill as it applied to Congressional elections and (b) the degree of public financing that should be permitted...
...Their general opinions and sentiments preceded the "oil money" that flowed into their campaign chests...
...An occasional bare-footed Mr...
...This difficulty confronts hawks and doves, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans...
...A major flaw, knowingly permitted in the new law, is that such reports are to be filed by candidates with either the Secretary of the Senate or the Clerk of the House...
...The question that will be raised is whether limitations are necessarily violative of the First Amendment...
...strange jewels Of stains illuminate the pages like a Duke of Berry's Book of Hours...
...WASHINGTON REPORT MONEY AND POLITICS Political puppets are easily enough discerned by anyone with a sustained interest in public affairs, but the puppeteers are less easily discovered...
...Moreover, the role of money is frequently misstated, even over-emphasized to a degree...
...It also sought to cure the supervision problem, left in the 1971 law, by establishing a new seven-member federal campaignfinancing oversight commission with subpoena power to inquire into records of winning and losing candidates in primary and general elections...
...It approved S. 372 which would place dollar ceilings on both contributions and expenditures...
...But if Congress or the general public was offended by the duplicity, there was no knowing it...
...bears large residue obligations to Vietnam for the devastation dealt that land and its people over a decade's time...
...SISYPHUS 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 NANCY G. WESTERFIELD AN INHERITANCE OF COOKBOOKS Life, teaching her the tolerance Of its empty intervals, taught her to cook, And bread rose in her house like incense...
...But certain things are within its province, and the longer these are delayed the more remote becomes the day when economic, social and cultural stability will return to Vietnam...
...and a financial constituency, which may, and often is, a national one, most obviously in the case of the chairman of a labor, natural resources or banking subcommittee...
...3 May 1974:206...
...Yet Mr...
...With characteristic misgivings, evidenced even by supporters of reform, the Senate in early April of this year took still another step...
...The problem is a complex one...
...First among these would be the restoration of individual freedoms...
...Similarly, a limitation of $25,000 was placed on the amount one contributor would be permitted to give all candidates for federal elective office in any one year...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 9
