Pressing forward: the campaign finance reform battle reaches a critical stage - May 7, 1993 Common Cause press statement - Column

Today President Clinton has opened the door to fundamental change in the way our campaigns are financed.

We applaud President Clinton for his strong leadership on the campaign finance issue and for the overall package of campaign finance reforms he has outlined today.

Congress should move quickly on the president's campaign finance plan. There is no justification for an obstructionist filibuster.

The president's proposal recognizes that there is no way to achieve campaign finance reform without ending soft money abuses. The president's plan shuts down the soft money loophole that has been used to evade federal contribution restrictions and inject millions of dollars from corporations, labor unions, and wealthy individuals into presidential campaigns.

By ending the soft money system, and increasing the presidential dollar tax checkoff, the president would restore the integrity of the presidential campaign finance system and make a critically important contribution to the health of our democracy.

President Clinton also has proposed to create, for the first time, a system of public campaign resources for congressional races.

Public campaign resources are at the core of reforming the congressional campaign finance system. They are the key to increasing resources for challengers of both parties, who are severely underfinanced in the current system. Public campaign resources are central to providing congressional candidates the opportunity to run for office without being dependent on private influence money.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that the American people stand ready to support the president's proposal. As the Wall Street Journal reported on April 23, the poll shows that a majority of Americans now favor public funding of congressional campaigns if it is financed by eliminating the tax deduction for lobbying. The president's proposal incorporates this approach and thereby adds a funding mechanism for the new system that was absent from the bill passed by Congress last year.

President Clinton has made an important new contribution to the campaign reform debate by proposing that lobbyists be restricted from making contributions and soliciting funds for federal candidates. This new idea, if effectively implemented, could make a fundamental change in the Washington special-interest culture and help break the financial link between lobbyists and members of Congress.

The president's proposal would close another major loophole by ending the practice of bundling by PACs to evade contribution limits. Under the president's proposal to end bundling, there would be no special exemption for any group. This position is the approach to bundling taken in the Senate, but not in the House, where a special exemption is being proposed for EMILY's List.

Under the Clinton proposal, the public campaign resources for Senate races are strengthened, a major improvement over last year's bill that is particularly helpful to challengers. The proposal would greatly reduce the campaign spending advantages Senate incumbents have over their challengers and dramatically reduce the role of PAC contributions in Senate campaigns.

The key to the proposal for the House of Representatives and to our support for this proposal is the public campaign resources that are made available to House candidates. House challengers of both parties have an extraordinarily difficult time competing under the current system and would be greatly helped by this proposal. So would House incumbents who want to finance their elections with clean campaign resources.

The overall proposal for the House is basically the same as the legislation Congress passed last year. We have pressed this year for a stronger House bill, with lower individual PAC and aggregate PAC limits and with a lower overall campaign spending limit. We continue to believe that the PAC limits and spending limits for the House should be lower in order to remove more special-interest money from House races. But we also believe that establishing a public campaign resources system is essential to reforming the way House campaigns are financed and will work for the enactment of the House proposal. We will also work to strengthen the proposal were possible.

A tough battle lies ahead. With President Clinton's leadership, it is a battle that can and must be won.

The country now faces a rare opportunity for basic change.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Common Cause Magazine
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