rssPraying for a Scandal
Wednesday, November 03, 2010 at 1:23 pm
- 23 Comments
Commenting on the undisclosed cash that was spent in the 2010 elections and the campaign finance reform battles that lie ahead in Congress, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer makes it clear in a statement that reform advocates are praying for a scandal to revive the urgency of their cause:
Secret contributions in political campaigns are a formula for influencing-buying corruption. It has happened before and will happen again. [...]
Just as history tells us secrecy results in scandal, history also tells us that scandal results in reform.
The Watergate campaign finance scandals in the 1970s resulted in the creation of the landmark presidential public financing system which served the nation well for most of its existence until it became outdated when Congress failed to modernize it. The Watergate scandals also led to the enactment of limits on individual contributions to candidates and parties, upheld by the Supreme Court as necessary to prevent corruption of federal officeholders and government decisions.
The soft money scandals in the 1990s led to the ban on unlimited contributions to the national parties upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003, a decision that was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court earlier this year. The soft money ban continues to serve the country well in preventing a system of legalized bribery of federal officeholders.
There’s no doubt that a scandal involving tax code violations or legislative favors exchanged for some of the political spending in 2010 would most likely provide an onus for Congress to do something about the lack of disclosure in much of independent spending, but it also seems like a fairly longshot legislative strategy. I’ve yet to see why Democrats don’t just try to pass a disclosure-only version of the DISCLOSE Act in order to silence whining about special treatment for labor unions before it starts and just force a straight referendum on merits of the issue at hand.
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Comment posted December 2, 2010 @ 6:19 am
There’s no doubt that a scandal involving tax code violations or legislative favors exchanged for some of the political spending in 2010 would most likely provide an onus for Congress to do something about the lack of disclosure in much of independent spending, but it also seems like a fairly longshot legislative strategy.
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