What's Right with PACs

...A final type of anti-PACer is exemplified by Senator Thomas Eagle-ton (D.-Mo...

...Guardians of the public interest like Common Cause and Congress Watch are gunning for them...

...they expand the scope of election contests^ so that voters are better informed...

...has gone from a campaign ingredient to an all-pervasive campaign obsession, [and] the range of issues for which one or more PACS stand ready, willing and able to reward a' favorable' vote has expanded geometrically...

...The exceptions are the committees funded by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association...

...To the extent that PACS increase political spending, they help alleviate this problem...

...at the latest count, there were 3,694...

...Yet perhaps we should pause a moment in our drive to stamp out PACS, drown them in a flood of public campaign funding, or render them impotent by penning candidates within spending limits (a step the Supreme Court has ruled constitutional where a contender accepts partial Federal subsidization...

...What has changed is that candidates for national office nowadays, chafing at the idea of being responsible to anyone except the mass media audience, would rather raise their own cash than rely on their parties...

...To begin with, PACS amplify the power of labor more than that of management, of blue and pink collar workers more than their white collar counterparts, and of new money more than of old money...

...A contestant for the House of Representatives, who typically finds himself in a media market much largen than his district, has to scrap hard for a spot on the evening news, even if the local assignment editors are politically minded...

...Public campaign subsidies would, by contrast, help the special interests go back into hiding...

...They contributed $87 million to Congressional races last year, up from $12.4 million in 1974...

...This is admittedly a minority view among contemporary political analysts, however...

...He is especially wrong about this...

...who laments that his campaign costs "skyrocketed" from $200,000 in 1968 to $1.4 million in 1980, and will probably exceed $2 million in 1986...

...The tight spending limit/public financing alternative has worked rather well in the last few Presidential campaigns, but only because the candidates could count on the press to give them plenty of free exposure...

...Eagleton acknowledges that this sort of fundraising has ancient precedents in the techniques used by Mark Hanna in William McKinley's Presidential campaign, by Harry Daugherty to elect Warren G. Harding, and by Lyndon B. Johnson in channeling special interest funds to Democratic Congressmen in trouble as long ago as 1940...

...Both the parties and the poor appear to find them not quite the threat they are generally made out to be by the tsk-tsking mass media folk, who don't like to see information communicated to the citizenry behind their backs via direct mail...

...If the American Medical Association is forced to give a favored candidate $10,000 through a PAC, the densest reporter can trace the relationship between the gift and the beneficiary's voting record...

...Anyone who has been to a political dinner lately knows that working-class donors do not account for, and will not reap the legislative rewards of, anywhere near 24 per cent of the more than $200 million that flowed into last year's coffers from non-PAC sources...

...True, the herd has grown...

...Congressional members, whether they are afraid of being trampled by the beasts themselves or of being winged by the righteous posses, have begun to join the hunt, too, pushing PAC reform...

...Of the PAC money donated to 1982 Congressional campaigns, 24 per cent was given by organized labor...

...The "good government" watchdogs, it seems, would rather have the AM A line up 100 doctors to quietly give $100 apiece, and then have the $10,000 magically transformed to $20,000 at the expense of the taxpayer...

...possibly the downtrodden feel that PACS reflect the persistent maldistribution of money and power in the country less than most political institutions...

...Secondly, campaigns are scandalously underfunded in this country, leaving millions of Americans with the choice between voting on the basis of insufficient information and avoiding the polls altogether...

...Indeed, there is a three-fold case to be made for PACS: They help the underdog...

...Nonetheless, argues the Senator: "What has changed is that money, always a necessary tool...

...This may not be, as is widely contended, the result of apathy or ignorance...

...I will have to approach fat cats both in Missouri and elsewhere, and I will have to get out my tin cup and approach PACS whom I think will be supportive of my views [or] might be willing to contribute if they think I will win, and if they believe they will have access to me because of their hefty contribution...

...There is no way I could raise such an amount from small contributors within Missouri," Eagleton says, despite the fact that he has 4.9 million mostly Democratic constituents...

...It is significant as well that although the two major parties might be expected to oppose the growth of PACS, they have instead encouraged it...

...If one candidate in a race refused to abide by the limit, it would be waived, but the matching grants to his opponent would be doubled...

...The remaining 2,781 PACS, run by big business, labor and farm groups, are a burden primarily to Congressmen embarrassed at having their long-standing dependence on special interests exposed in highly visible campaign gifts...

...One sign of this is the relative disinterest in PAC control shown by the have-nots or the haven't-had-latelies: workers, women and racial minorities...

...PAC gifts," says Common Cause President Fred Wertheimer, "do not guarantee votes or support, and PACS don't always win...

...Five years ago, 13 per cent of the campaign funds of winning Senate candidates came from PACS, and 28 per cent of the money raised by House winners...

...The campaign contributions law that made these overly powerful arms of the rich unveil at least some of their activities was a necessary, if not entirely sufficient, prelude to any hope for substantive structural reform of U.S...

...in New York or Los Angeles quite a few more...

...Of the committees functioning at present, 913 are independent...

...Before expanding upon it, therefore, fairness demands that we present the majority position...

...Jay Angoff, a Congress Watch staff attorney, adds: "The biggest victims of the current PAC system...may be the individuals who contribute to PACS...

...By 1982, those figures had climbed to 22 per cent and 35...

...Union members in particular exercise greater leverage through PACS than they could ever achieve as individuals...

...Third, insofar as PACS rechannel money that has been going into campaigns all along, they reify the connections between Congressmen and Washington lobbies that have resisted public scrutiny for generations...

...But PAC contributions do provide donors with access and influence, they do affect legislative decisions, and they are increasingly dominating and paralyzing the legislative process which is so essential to our system of government...

...Andrew Mollison, a previous New Leader contributor, is chief political writer for the Cox Newspapers...

...While the members at the grass roots are the ones who give the money, the lobbyists and PAC executives in Washington are the ones who benefit, for it is [they]...who make the decisions...

...Similar to a system that has been tested in Badger State gubernatorial fights, the scheme mandates Federal matching funds for all contributions by individuals up to $100, provided the candidate agrees to a limit on total spending...

...A journalistic foe of PACS, Elizabeth Drew, concluded in her recent sprawling, though well-researched New Yorker series on "Politics and Money": "We are paying in the declining quality of politicians and of the legislative product, and in the rising public cynicism...

...a new kind of squalor....Until the problem of money is dealt with, the system will not get better...

...and they let ordinary Americans know about their legislators' financial sources...

...who hand over the $5,000 checks, and who eat expensive lunches at the fancy Washington restaurants...

...In a small city like Dayton, Ohio, for example, newspapers and broadcast facilities reach at least half a dozen CDs...

...Eight of the 10 largest union PACS, moreover, represent primarily blue and pink-collar memberships...

...Like many dangerous or endangered species, PACS on balance seem to do more good than harm...

...Eagleton leans toward the latest panacea, the Wisconsin Plan...

...Now let's look more closely at the three-pronged positive case...

...There were fewer than 600PACS-private fundrais-ing and lobbying associations controlled by neither parties nor candidates a decade ago...

...per cent, respectively...