From campaign pledges to political action - campaign finance reform - Column

Campaign finance reform is a national priority.

The 1992 national election provides die most powerful mandate for cleaning up the system in Washington since the 1974 post-Watergate election.

For the first time in 12 years, we will have a president who has made a public commitment during his campaign to sweeping campaign finance reform. We will have 110 new members of Congress, many of whom campaigned hard on changing the way business is done in Washington.

And, thanks to the extraordinary hard work of thousands of Common Cause volunteers in our Anti-Corruption Campaign, a substantial majority of the people who will be sitting in the House and the Senate are publicly on record in favor of campaign finance reform (see page 27).

If President-elect Clinton moves quickly to carry out his campaign pledge, his action could make a crucial difference. President Bush vetoed a sweeping reform bill this year. Following the veto, Clinton urged Congress to pass an even tougher bill and send it back to President Bush.

In Clinton's book, Putting People First, he wrote, "American politics is being held hostage by big money interests. . . . We believe it's long past time to clean up Washington. As part of our plan to fight the cynicism that is gripping the American people, we will support and sign strong campaign finance reform legislation to bring down die cost of campaigning and encourage real competition."

The moment for historic reform is here. We must seize the opportunity.

In 1977, the last time the country saw a new administration and Congress committed to reform, consideration of the campaign finance issue was delayed for six months. That delay gave special interests and congressional opponents time to solidify their opposition and eventually kill campaign reform through a filibuster.

Opponents of reform will do their best to repeat that performance. Lobbyists who rely on influence money to get the ear of the city's policy makers, together with congressional opponents of reform, will look for ways to delay and block reform legislation. Senate opponents may mount a filibuster once again.

To thwart the powerful forces in Washington that are working to protect the corrupt status quo, Clinton must make passage of campaign finance reform a cornerstone of his legislative agenda in the first months of 1993.

Such legislation is vital to resolving a fundamental problem in Washington: People engaged in the business of influencing government decisions are providing large amounts of money to benefit the elected officials who are making those decisions - including the president and members of Congress. Meanwhile elected officials are engaged in a never-ending money chase.

There are many honorable members of Congress, and a number of them are working hard to change the system. Nevertheless, when you add up all the influence money flowing in Washington in all the various ways, you end up with a corrupting way of life - and citizens know it.

The huge economic stakes involved in government decisions, the ever-increasing amounts of money necessary for political campaigns and the willingness of people in Washington to treat as acceptable a number of practices that most people see as plainly wrong, have all combined to make influence money a pervasive force in the nation's capital.

Reducing the dominance of that money through comprehensive campaign finance reform is at the heart of a reform agenda whose crucial elements also include shutting down other channels that Washington lobbyists and special interests use to provide financial benefits to elected officials, enacting a new lobbying reform law, and overhauling the federal bodies responsible for enforcement of campaign finance laws and ethics standards.

These reforms must be accompanied by a wholesale change of attitude by our elected officials in Washington. They must realize what the rest of the country has come to understand - that the flow of influence money in Washington is doing great damage to our political system and its capacity to solve national problems.

It is time for change - real change - in Washington. It's time for our next president and for the members of Congress who campaigned as champions of change to turn their words into quick action.

COPYRIGHT 1992 Common Cause Magazine
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