The Million-Dollar Advantage of Incumbency
Perdue, Lewis
The Million-Dollar Advantage of Incumbency by Lewis Perdue up-the stationery allowance, 85 per cent ; the out-of-pocket expense account, 150 per cent; the free-tripshome allowance, 116 per...
...is in effecteveryone works from nine to five for his public salary, so it?s okay if the rest of the ten-hour, 12-hour, and 16-hour days that are common on the Hill sometimes are spent campaigning...
...These mobile offices are invaluable campaign aids...
...They allotted new funds for the rental of a van or trailer as a mobile office in the district...
...There are government-subsidized radio and television studios on Capitol Hill in which incumbents can make their commercials...
...that can cover anything a congressman spends ?that would qualify as ordinary and necessary business expenses under the Internal Revenue Service Code and Regulations...
...challengers have to rent studio space...
...Perhaps the most invaluable campaign tool among them is the time-honored franking privilege, which allows congressmen to send mail free...
...The Biggest Perk of All Besides mailing there are other common campaign expenses incumbent congressmen can get free...
...But the biggest, and least tangible, perquisite of all is staff time...
...The average congressman mails four newsletters (which are little more than self-advertisements) to every address in his district four times a year...
...Since franked mail is, by law, treated as first-class mail, the postage for a year of these mailings would come to $88,400...
...Under a closed rule (a rule restricting debate on the floor, extremely rare for an appropriations bill) that was mandated by the House Democratic Caucus, the office accounts revisions were pushed through Congress last July...
...The Million-Dollar Advantage of Incumbency by Lewis Perdue up-the stationery allowance, 85 per cent ; the out-of-pocket expense account, 150 per cent...
...The envelopes are free too, and each congressman is entitled to about $5,000 worth a year...
...And everyone admits that much of the work done by congressmen and their staffs-particularly administrative assistants and press secretaries-is explicit 1 y c ampaign-related...
...There is a Capitol Office Supply Service where incumbents can spend $6,500 of public money a year on stationery, office supplies, books, gifts, and pen and pencil sets that are sold at reduced rates...
...The trouble with the franking privilege was always that there were other costs besides postage associated with sending out newsletters...
...to cover the staff and printing costs of producing newsletters...
...The most popular proposed way o f re forming congressional campaigns is public funding, but that?s not likely to even out the huge hidden financial advantages of incumbency...
...Committee staffs are empowered to decide for themselves how much the allotment should be, and it usually ends up in the neighborhood of $5,000 a year...
...and money for staff salaries, 60 per cent...
...The average congressional district has approximately 170,000 postal patrons-that is, places where mail is delivered...
...The revisions removed spending limits on some old accounts and added new perquisites, too...
...For an average year of calls by a congressman from Chicago, the new telephone allowance would be worth about $27,000 a year...
...Certainly this money is in theory allotted toward the perfectly legitimate goal of legislating, but the blend of legislating and campaigning is a subtle one...
...The allowance has no specific dollar value, but is supposed to cover two newsletters a year...
...For instance, there is an allowance called ?Official Expenses Outside of the District of Columbia...
...There is no limit on the use of the franking privilege and no restriction on the number of mailings that can be sent to constituents...
...If a congressman wants to maintain an unusually heavy pace of mailing, he can, under the 1976 rule changes, increase his printing allowance by transferring to it funds from different accounts...
...All these accounts, as we?ll see, are quite directly applicable to reelection campaigns...
...This leaves challengers at considerable disadvantage...
...To remedy that, the House in 1975 granted its members a ?Constituent Communications Allowance...
...demise, the House passed a series of reforms that ended the various abuses and unfair perquisites of the Hays era...
...They allowed unlimited transfer of funds between nine small accounts whose total is more than $60,000 a year...
...The Old Standbys ~ ~ ~~ These new perquisites join a host of older ones that have been in existence for years, although their use seems to be on the rise...
...Incumbents get about $10,000 worth of free government publications a year, which can be distributed to voters after being stamped ?Compliments of Congressman Jones...
...While congressmen can campaign, sometimes full time, and continue to draw full salaries, challengers often must leave their jobs to run for office...
...These special mailing lists have another important advantage...
...now it is one of the nine accounts among which money can be shifted, so if a congressman wanted to he could pour all $60,000 into it and use it to entertain, say, influential constituents...
...Then, when the time comes for campaign mailings, a congressman can go back to the same firm and buy the same list with campaign money, at much less expense than an opponent who would need to work up specialized lists afresh...
...They have no staffs and no facilities that come free...
...Not counting salaries, a congressman gets more than $400,000 a term in campaign help from the government, and since that figure accounts for no staff time at all, it?s probably quite low...
...Congressmen are paid $44,625 a year (too low, they often complain) and can spend another $257,144 to pay staff...
...What they can do at public expense is have a computer firm work up special mailing lists for official congressional material...
...They increased the travel allowance, which under Hays rose from 12 to 26 free trips back home a year, to 32 trips a year...
...The IRS approves as business expenses things like maintenance of a boat, payment of club fees, gifts, dinners, and bar tabs...
...problems or about how to avoid those problems in the future...
...They changed the allowance for renting a district office, determining it according to price per square foot in a way that increases the allowance for urban congressmen...
...This allowance is often used to compile selective mailing lists-rich constituents, say, or politically active constituents-to whom frequent, small mailings can be sent...
...The increase was designed to let congressmen go home near election time more often than the usual every two weeks...
...Before last summer this allowance was limited to $2,000...
...Conventional wisdom has it that in the summer of 1976, following Hays...
...The number of franked mass mailings skyrockets, of course, in even-numbered years...
...For thatsame Chicago congressman, this is worth $7,600 a year...
...One scholar, David Mayhew, has argued persuasively that the chief motive behind everything congressmen and their staffs do is winning reelection...
...The accounts were previously all separate and their funds untransferable, but now money from other accounts can be poured into one small one, making it newly substantial...
...Congressmen cannot send explicitly campaign-related material at public expense...
...Congressmen who are running scared have been known to mail as often as eight times a year, using $176,000 worth of postage...
...the privilege is of such clear political benefit that Common Cause has sued Congress for its removal, saying the frank constitutes an unfair electoral advantage for incumbents...
...Those advantages far exceed the most generous conceivable campaign spending limit, and considering who is in charge of monitoring them, there?s not much chance of their being curtailed...
...Here?s what the new rules did: -They created an unlimited WATS line for long-distance calls, a setup every campaign manager dreams of...
...The standard explanation is that an informal ?40-hour rule...
...That, however, only leaves the n ewslet ters written, printed, and stamped, so there are other perquisites too...
...use of corporate facilities for campaigning...
...Federal election law prohibits corporations from paying salaries to active candidates and prohibits candidates...
...The average challenger for a seat in the House, by contrast, spends about $75,000 on his entire campaign...
...Huge chunks of the work done on Capitol Hill-constituent casework, for instance-is of quite tangible campaign value, since it consists of doing favors for people and is seldom accompanied by reflection about the root causes of constituents...
...The House Publications Distribution Service, known as the folding room, is equipped with automatic machinery to fold the newsletters, insert them into envelopes, and bundle them for mailing-all free...
...Not true, The new rules have made the money flow not stricter and smaller, but freer and larger...
...Mass mailing has become a booming business in recent years because of the development of a computer technology specifically designed to manage it, and the House, appreciating that, gave its members each $1 2,000 a year to pay for computer services...
...the free-tripshome allowance, 116 per cent...
Vol. 9 • March 1977 • No. 1
