Why Campaign Finance “Reform” Is Ill-Advised and Will Not Work Senator Mitch McConnell Chairman, Senate Rules Committee Dear Senator McConnell and members of Congress: Restrictions on campaign donations or expenditures do little to limit the total amount spent on campaigns and make campaigns less competitive. Such rules entrench incumbents, force donations to take hidden forms, increase corruption through such mechanisms as "straw donations," and make it more likely that wealthy candidates will win election. Campaign finance restrictions are similar to price controls that deal with the symptoms rather than the reasons for the donations and are likewise doomed to fail. With campaign financing amounting to less than one-tenth of one percent of government expenditures, campaign spending does not seem large in either an absolute sense or relative to other product advertising. The restrictions force campaign expenditures to be spent in less effective ways and actually leave voters less well informed. The McCain/Feingold bill's provisions on parties making independent and coordinated expenditures on behalf of candidates, and prohibitions on issue advocacy that refers to a candidate, as well as restrictions on raising or spending “soft money” in connection with elections are typical of the rules that produce these problems. So called "voluntary” limits that restrict who can help certain candidates who violate certain rules are anything but voluntary. The different forms contributions can take are essentially infinite and this makes regulation exceptionally difficult. For example, in the extreme case, it would be possible to buy up television and radio stations or newspapers to support particular candidates. Providing favorable new coverage for desired candidates would certainly benefit their candidacy, but it is difficult to see how these kinds of “in-kind” donations would be regulated. We advise Congress, before enacting yet more new laws, to investigate whether many of the existing laws may have contributed to the problems we currently face. The new legislation is ill-advised. APPENDIX 15. The Washington Post (Page B1 continued to B4) April 2, 2000 Is Negativity BY MARGARET REGEL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST By DANA MILBANK uckle your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. Mean Al Gore and Bad George W. Bush, those two nattering nabobs of negativism and nastiness, are about to embark on the longest and ugliest race to the White House we've ever seen-or So we are told. Consider these recent headlines: Gore, Bush Step Up Bitter Attacks Ideals Give Way to Smash-Mouth It's enough to make you want to lock your door and hide under your bed. The mudslinging promises to be so terrifying that it's easy to overlook an inconvenient detail: This talk about negativity is a bunch of nonsense. Presidential campaigns are not getting more negative or nastier. Even if they were, there's new evidence that negativity doesn't necessarily hurt turnout or increase cynicism, as the righteous good-government types have claimed. There's reason to believe that tough, negative campaigning helps strengthen our leaders, boost creativity in policymaking and bring reform to government. Our problem is not negative campaigning but an increasingly puritanical press that of ten makes no distinction between negative comparisons (which are common and useful) and gratuitous personal attacks (which are harmful but rare). The result is that journalists are the ones poisoning public opinion and injecting cynicism into the electorate, by making people think politics is much uglier than it is. The Bush campaign thinks so. "There is a ridiculous semantic dance that goes on about what is negative," says Mark McKinnon, Bush's ad man. "The press plays a big role in pretending to referee what is negative and See NEGATIVES, B4, Col. 1 Dana Milbank writes about politics for |