FEC: An Apology, and Some News

In my front-page diary yesterday, I included some language describing Brian Faler's piece in the Washington Post which was inflammatory and, in challenging the accuracy of his reporting, downright wrong in one instance.  I've taken that language out of that post, and I apologize for being unfair to the writer.

(I still question what I see as a pro-disclosure bias in the article, but that's a side issue.)

As it turns out, Sen. Bennett (R-UT) did indeed add an amendment to S. 271 during the Rules Committee markup last week which would incorporate the entirety of Senator Reid's bill into S. 271.

What you need to understand however is that S. 271, which started off as a McCain-Feingold effort to regulate 527s, has through a Republican-led amendment process metastized into what Sen. Schumer calls an "anti-campaign finance Trojan Horse".

Let Bob Bauer explain what's going on.  

As the WaPo summarizes, this bill now would:

• prohibit 527 advocacy organizations buying television time in federal elections from accepting unlimited contributions. (e.g., Soros can't give the Media Fund $6M anymore, nor Bob Perry $4.5M to the Swifties; both would be limited to $32,500/yr.  But they could still give unlimitedly to GOTV/voter registration 527s like ACT.)
  
• An increase from $5,000 to $7,500 in maximum contributions to political action committees. The amount that PACS could give to candidates would rise from $5,000 to $7,500, and the amount they could give to political parties would jump from $15,000 to $25,000.
  
• Unlimited ability of trade association and corporate PACs to solicit employees, including non-supervisory workers, making it easier for pro-GOP corporate and trade association PACs to raise and spend money.
  
• vast expansion of the use of "leadership PACs" from officeholders to fund national party activities.
• while, yes, exempting the internet from the definition of "public communications", which many here believe would be a good thing.

In short, if you hate campaign finance regulation and love PACs, it's a great bill, but if you just want to see Sen. Reid's bill passed while maintaining the general structure of CFR, this is probably not the means you'd want.

In the meantime, Bob Bauer has this post today properly questioning the dangers of parallelism in response to yesterday's diary, and I recommend you read it. I'm certainly mindful of his warnings.

•  tips/recs/what have you

  This stuff is complicated, yo.

  by Adam B on Thu May 05, 2005 at 11:05:02 AM PDT

•  I'd actually...

  submit that some form of regulation of 527s is a very very good idea.  It's a gaping loophole in the current campaign finance structure, and I see no problem with capping amounts that could be given.  We might also want some form of registration/donor roll created--similar to a PAC.  I don't think it poses any additional constitutional problems to those already posed by prior regulations, so, assuming that the current structure is constitutional (as SCOTUS has said it is, more or less), I see no legal problem with it.

  by profmatt on Thu May 05, 2005 at 11:09:30 AM PDT

  •  The 527 stuff is fine

    And it's what this bill was originally designed to do.  But the PAC stuff is monstruous, designed to aid officeholders and Republican interests pretty strongly.

    by Adam B on Thu May 05, 2005 at 11:20:34 AM PDT

    •  Agreed...

      Just that I don't want to say "every provision of the bill is bad!"  (Even though I agree with you that the "absolute exemption" for Internet-based speech is not a particularly good idea.)

      by profmatt on Thu May 05, 2005 at 11:24:15 AM PDT

•  Enforcement

  Do you really believe such regulations would be enforced equally, given the ruling party's blatant contempt for fairness, due process and even playing fields?

  by Alvin K on Thu May 05, 2005 at 11:30:06 AM PDT

  •  FEC

    The FEC is, by law, bipartisan, with three Republican and three Democratic commissioners at all times.

    by Adam B on Thu May 05, 2005 at 11:40:59 AM PDT

•  Umm...

  So what bucket did my newspaper-pamphet (i.e. NO) vote go into?

  by ek hornbeck on Thu May 05, 2005 at 01:18:07 PM PDT