Nothing personal - Federal Election Commission's imposed ban on the use of political campaign contributions for candidates' personal expenses

One federal official charges the government $6,200 for a seven-month lease on a Jeep Cherokee in Mississippi. Another runs up a $156,729 bill leasing two Lincoln Town Cars - "campaign" vehicles financed by his campaign committee.

In the first case, former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy's taxpayer-financed Cherokee lease was just one of several questionable perks that led to his resignation. In the latter case, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato's (R-N.Y.) Town Car leases raised no eyebrows at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), despite laws prohibiting the use of campaign funds for personal use.

Espy paid back the government and gave up his job. D'Amato is now chair of the Senate Banking Committee. But beyond the irony stands the serious issue of how behavior that derails a career at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue has been standard operating procedure on the other.

Is it any wonder that Espy, a former congressmember, stepped into troubled waters? His congressional campaign paid $1,325 for a tuxedo for the then-representative to wear to President Clinton's inauguration festivities, reasoning that if he were not an elected official he wouldn't have bought the black-tie couture.

Such thinking is not unusual. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), for example, paid himself $21,459 to rent campaign space on the ground floor of a condominium he owns. As Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) explained on the Senate floor, "The commonly accepted definition of political expenditure has grown so broad, and enforcement of the rules has been so lax, that congressional campaigns now routinely make purchases that on their face appear to be personal, such as resort vacations, luxury automobiles, expensive meals, apartments, country club memberships, tuxedos, home improvements, babysitting and car phones."

But that longstanding practice - considered an entitlement by many elected officials - may be on its way out. Despite loud protests and threatened budget cuts from Congress, the FEC voted in December to ban the use of political campaign contributions for candidates' personal expenses. House members strongly opposed the action.

Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) made his intentions quite clear, calling the agency "a burdensome bureaucracy which makes running for office and participating in the electoral process a complex and even dangerous endeavor." Livingston, who's somehow managed to survive 10 campaigns for his congressional seat, charged that "the FEC may be making criminals out of honest people..."

Yet others believe the FEC had to act to uphold the law, Personal use of campaign funds had been illegal since 1970, but over the years lawmakers had stretched the definition of campaign expenses to include everything from health club memberships to family vacations, sporting event tickets, office art and cookbooks for constituents.

The FEC's new rules prohibit the use of campaign funds for items or activities that would be purchased irrespective of a candidate's campaign or official duties. The rules actually spell out some spending no-nos, including payments for personal residences and clothing, food and supplies for personal households, and country club fees and entertainment tickets.

The idea behind the new rules is to force congressional candidates - many of whom are sitting members of Congress - to live like everyone else. But as long as Congress writes the laws and holds the purse strings, the effectiveness of the new roles - and the will and the wherewithal of the FEC to enforce them - remains to be seen.

COPYRIGHT 1995 Common Cause Magazine
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