Campaign Finance
Back in September, I made a modest proposal to get the corrupting money out of politics: ban donations from any person who is not a voter in the election. Carol D. Leonnig and T.W. Farnam of The Washington Post give us a reason to update our thinking, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:
The senator began dialing old and new friends around the country, asking for their help. Many of them had one thing in common: They had a financial stake in legislation that Reid, as the most powerful member of the Senate, helps control.
One of the calls Reid placed seeking cash was to trial lawyer John Morgan. At a March party held at his home near Orlando, Morgan raised about $96,000 for Reid's reelection battle.
I'd like to augment the modest proposal with the following restriction, in a perhaps futile attempt to play whack-a-mole with this bribery.
This is probably not the worst such example we will find, but it is pretty telling when everyone admits to it. Regarding the campaign finance bill working its way through Congress, John Bresnahan of Politico reports:
The proposal would exempt organizations that have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations. Democrats say the new language would apply to only the NRA, since no other organization would qualify under these specific provisions. The NRA, with 4 million members, will not actively oppose the DISCLOSE Act, according to Democratic sources.
The exemption for a huge group like the NRA is sure to outrage smaller special-interest groups.
On the substance of the bill, I think we will see any number of efforts like this to make sense of the rules after the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. All of them will be unsatisfactory in some way. It is hard to get the money out of politics when the reform must come from the existing political institutions.
