Campaign spending
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
OF SEVERAL MINDS E.J. DIONNE, Jr. CAMPAIGN SPENDING Business cries uncle N o one is more fiercely con sistent in opposing reform of our broken campaign money system than Senator...
...Matching only small contributions, the report says, would provide candidates "with a strong financial incentive to seek out small contributions from a large number of donors...
...The CED also proposes lifting the current $1,000 ceiling on individual contributions to $3,000...
...Since his letter was first made public by the New York Times, McConnell has stayed on the attack...
...It distorts the market by producing rules and tax laws that favor one competitor over another not on the basis of market prowess, but as a product of who contributes to whom and who works the system best...
...The subtext is very clear: Keep playing with those guys, and I won't play with you...
...The improvement of our campaign finance system is a public benefit, and it should therefore be publicly funded...
...This letter has kind of exposed the way the system works in a fashion that I don't think is terribly flattering," Kolb says, referring to McConnell's efforts to push businesses to sever ties with the CED...
...Ah, but isn't this "taxpayer financing" of politics...
...This group's most innovative suggestion is to use public money to provide a two-for-one match of all small contributions—those of $200 or less...
...In a letter to business executives associated with the group, he charged the CED with an "allout campaign to eviscerate private-sector participation in politics...
...Especially if they're a regulated industry, they have no choice but to play the game...
...And that's not good for business...
...That would mean that a $1,000 contributor would get the same $400 match as the $200 giver...
...But as a new way of winning votes for a broad package of serious reforms, it might be a useful concession to politicians tired of wasting time raising money in $1,000 chunks...
...In its report, the Washington-based CED endorses banning the flow of unregulated "soft money" to campaigns, an issue that will sharply divide Congress in the coming weeks...
...1999, Washington Post Writers Group Commonweal 9 September 24,1999...
...So when the senator attacked a group of business leaders who say the money chase verges on what one of them calls "a shakedown," it was not his intention to give the reform movement a boost...
...By itself, this change would only increase money's influence on politics...
...My, my...
...His office released an op-ed piece he's circulating to Kentucky newspapers charging the CED with "unethical conduct...
...Charles Kolb, president of the CED and a Republican who served in the Bush administration, summarized his group's thoroughly free-market view this way: "Our business trustees would rather compete in the marketplace than in the political arena...
...Kangus, who cochairs the committee on campaign finance reform at CED, also worries about business complicity with a bad system...
...That's what he's done with his assault on the Committee for Economic Development (CED...
...But the two-for-one match only covers the first $200 contributed...
...Refreshingly, the CED doesn't flinch...
...We make no apology for proposing direct public financing of this program," its report declares...
...Our customers believe that we are co-conspirators in this system and that we are as corrupt as the politicians who are pushing this on us...
...Ominously, he suggested to his correspondents that "public withdrawal from this organization would be a reasonable response...
...The venerable business organization's sin was issuing a report endorsing campaign-finance reform...
...Faced with opponents hard to stereotype as wide-eyed radicals, McConnell tried to do so anyway...
...The committed capitalists at the CED understand that...
...The CED, for its part, has noted the irony that McConnell's publicly expressed solicitude for First Amendment rights did not stop him from seeking "to stifle" theirs...
...In many, many cases it's a shakedown, and they have no choice but to give," Edward Kangus, chairman of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, said of his fellow executives in an interview...
...It is an investment in the people's business...
...CAMPAIGN SPENDING Business cries uncle N o one is more fiercely consistent in opposing reform of our broken campaign money system than Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican (and chair of the national Republican committee that raises funds for senatorial candidates...
...He said CED supported a "radical campaign finance agenda" and "antibusiness speech controls...
...The message of this episode is simple: Many business people believe the system holds them for political ransom...
...And now, thanks to Senator McConnell, they'll be heard...
...Its argument, not heard widely enough, is that many business leaders are as tired of being pressured to cough up political money as politicians are at having to raise it...
...It's presented to them as, 'This is what you have to do/ with whatever veiled message that sends...
...That means, if you gave $200, the fund would kick in $400 more...
Vol. 126 • September 1999 • No. 16
