Redstate

Chairman Smith--

I couldn't find anything that says the Campaign Finance Institute supports Senator Bennett's "poison pill" as a stand-alone measure. The link you provided merely talks about the obstacle Bennett's amendment creates for passage of electronic disclosure for US Senate candidates. Could you provide a link that supports your claim? I was under the impression that reform organizations supported Senate disclosure, not the removal of coordinated party expenditure limits.

You describe "the prohibition on coordinated party expenditures [as] a remarkably silly one." First, I want to clarify that there is no "prohibition" on coordinated party expenditures, there is a limit, as you note elsewhere. Second, the limit on coordinated party expenditures does not seem "silly" to me on its face.

You correctly note that parties and candidates have an expectedly close relationship. The current regulation scheme recognizes this close relationship by allowing parties to give far more to their candidate nominees than individuals or entities can give to candidates. Parties can make from $81,800 to $2.2 million in coordinated expenditures to a US Senate candidate and from $41,900 to $81,800 to a House candidate. These limits are far greater than those imposed on individuals ($2300/election) and PACs ($5,000/election). After parties exceed their COORDINATED limits, they have to deliver their own message about the candidate, independently from the candidate.

Why do the limits exist? They exist to prevent the circumvention of limits on contributions to candidates by individuals and PACs. Before these rules, parties--due to the relatively higher contributions they could receive under the limits--had long been used as a medium to funnel money to candidates. In other words, if candidates and parties can coordinate fully, giving to one is like giving to the other. WHETHER OR NOT WE SHOULD HAVE LIMITS ON CONTRIBUTIONS TO CANDIDATES IS ANOTHER ARGUMENT FOR ANOTHER TIME. But since we have well-established limits, they should be effective. Coordinated party expenditure limits are a measured anti-circumvention provision to prevent individuals and PACs from funneling above-limit contributions to candidates.

Admittedly, there is the problem of Bob Corker's situation where the RNC ran the (in)famous "Playboy" ads. But an easier solution to the problem, rather than doing away with coordinated party expenditures, would be for the RNC to implement a pre-existing policy where if a GOP candidate publicly calls for the stoppage of an RNC-sponsored independent expenditure ad, the ad goes dark immediately. This would obviate any problem with coordination that you mention.

Finally, I find it interesting that you explicitly mention the primary sponsors of the "dismally failed" Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (a claim with which I completely disagree--but again, another debate for another time) yet fail to mention that you were FEC Chairman/Commissioner while the rules for BCRA were promulgated. You can't just lay responsibility for the failures of BCRA (if indeed there are any) at the doorsteps of Shays/Meehan/McCain/Feingold and silently walk away. Remember, you wrote the RULES!!!

Near the bottom of the accompanying Roll Call article, we find:

"Supporters of Bennett's amendment have noted that the Campaign Finance Institute supports the amendment.

But Steve Weissman, associate director for policy with the institute, said that is not quite right.

Malbin, the group's executive director, personally supports lifting the caps but "is opposed to putting it on this bill because he knows that it would make it controversial and kill it," Weissman said."

So maybe it is just Malbin, not CFI. Either way, we eagerly await Mr. Malbin's endorsement of the Corker-Bennett bill, and we wonder how many times Mr. Malbin's support has not translated into CFI support.

As to McCain-Feingold, it would, of course, have failed much more dismally but for the FEC's sensible rules, adopted by a bipartisan majority of the Commission. None of the complaints about McCain-Feingold failure can be traced to the FEC's rules. It just failed, more or less along the lines that many of us said it would.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

Information that would've been useful on the front end, in the text of your submission. . . To say that Malbin supports the measure is different from saying that there are "reform organizations," including the Campaign Finance Institute, that support repealing party expenditure limits.

Again, I'm not arguing about whether BCRA was a success or failure. I'm saying you CANNOT claim credit for the perceived successes and disclaim responsibility for the perceived failure of the campaign finance regulation scheme setup after BCRA. For good AND bad, you had a hand in the matter--you can't pretend you were a spectator. The administrative process involves a great deal of discretion and some of the complaints about BCRA (i.e. displacement of money to 527s) are the results of your decisions/indecisions.(BTW, kind of interesting that the FEC has finally started treating "527s" like other 527s now that you are gone, huh?)

Brad Smith this morning wrote the following:

"Last month, during the Senate debate over requiring electronic filing of Senatorial campaign finance reports, Sen. Bob Bennett offered an amendment to the bill to remove limits on coordinated party spending. This effort was denounced as a 'poison pill,' even by 'reform' organizations, most notably the Campaign Finance Institute, that declared their support for the amendment itself.... Now Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, joined by Senator Bennett, has introduced the amendment as a stand alone measure, S. 1091. It will be interesting to see if the 'reform' organizations that claimed to support it, just not as part of the Senate electronic filing bill, will now publicly endorse the measure."

Well Brad, all you needed to do was to ask me directly. But of course, that would have taken the fun out of trying to portray me, and the Campaign Finance Institute, as one of those nasty "reform" organizations (compete with quotation marks). In truth I -- speaking in my individual capacity -- have supported unlimited coordinated spending by the parties for nearly thirty years: from my first published writing on the subject, through my years working for the House Republican leadership, until now.

(An aside, to respond to the back and forth in this thread about my positions as opposed to CFI's: CFI does not take positions on anything without going through an elaborate process involving bipartisan task forces, studies, and so forth, which means that it tends not to advocate such positions all that often. CFI has not yet addressed party spending through this kind of a process, which is why you won’t find it on the CFI website. You’ll finds lots of information about party spending and analysis – that’s the bulk of what we do – but not recommendations. I, on the other hand, have thirty years of academic writing, long predating CFI. Sen. Bennett asked me to verify my written position. I did and will continue to do so. It’s that simple. But to get back to the main point: )

My consistent position has been in favor of party spending provided there are limits on all contributions into the parties -- which is a big proviso that Brad does not accept. It has seemed especially odd to me to continue limiting coordinated spending after the Supreme Court in 1996 ruled that unlimited independent spending by parties is protected by the First Amendment. I have made that argument in print several times since 1996. And yes, Brad, I do intend to say it in the Senate Rules Committee's hearings on Wednesday. You can get my testimony when it's ready at www.CFInst.org.

Now let me address the suggestion that it is somehow hypocritical to use the phrase "poison pill" to describe an amendment that would have added a party spending provision I generally support as an amendment to a bill (S.223) that would require the Senate to file its disclosure reports electronically. I assume Brad supports electronic disclosure because he did so when he was on the FEC. Having gotten that out of the way, treating my position if it were as hypocritical simply casts an innuendo about a speaker without addressing the speech.

As to the merits: every single federal entity except the Senate -- House candidates, Presidential, parties, PACs, 527s and lobbyists -- file their reports electronically. Only the Senate exempts itself. Without mandatory electronic disclosure, Senate candidates take the electronic records they all have for their own use, print them out, send them to the Secretary of the Senate, who duplicates thousands of pages to send to the Federal Election Commission, which then duplicates them again to send to a vendor, who keypunches them into an electronic record for about $250,000 and a delay of months. The process is ridiculous. Everyone knows that it would be easier, cheaper, more accurate and would better serve the purpose of disclosure for candidates to send their electronic records in directly so they can be posted within 24 hours.

Thirty-five Senators have signed on as co-sponsors, including such noted left-wing reformers as Senators Allard, Bennett, Cochrane, Cornyn, Domenici, Graham, Grassley, Hagel, Hutchinson, Lugar and Murkowski. Mike Kremkasky endorsed the bill on this blog, as did Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, Club for Growth, and a large number of other blogs left and right. In fact, this is a bill with absolutely no public opposition. If it ever comes up for a clean vote, it will pass unanimously. It passed the Rules Committee unanimously and it has already been cleared by the Democrats unanimously for floor action without amendment. The issue is whether it will receive this kind of clearance by the Republicans.

Everyone who follows campaign finance -- and this surely includes Brad Smith -- knows that almost everything else relating to campaign finance is controversial. Adding anything -- literally anything, no matter how good it may seem, is a way to turn a no-brainer consensus bill on electronic disclosure into something that is not likely to pass. Even the party spending bill, which Brad may think ought not to have opposition does have it. I will be testifying in favor of the idea but others people will be against. Good or bad, there is no denying that this is controversial. We at CFI (and electronic disclosure is a priority CFI effort) were arguing that the Senate ought to dispose of the no-brainer first, and separately, and then come back to deliberate on other issues next. For CFI's testimony on electronic disclosure, see: http://www.cfinst.org/disclosure/testimony_March07.aspx.

I hope this clears up the matter. And I hope the readers of RedState will ask their Senators once again -- now that the issue is almost but by no means yet complete -- to support a unanimous consent motion for the Senate to adopt without amendment the simple electronic disclosure bill (S.223) that was passed unanimously by the Senate Rules Committee.

Michael Malbin

I am delighted to hear that Michael Malbin will be supporting S. 1091. That is certainly good news. I fear Michael takes offense where none was intended.

The reason I refer to CFI as a "reform" group, "complete with quotation marks" is because I refuse to concede the term "reform" to one side of the debate. Only when all folks who seek to reform campaign finance are awarded that label will I cease putting in quotes for those who are now granted it. For the ironic thing is that I seek far more far reaching reform than most "reform" organizations.

Michael, I am glad to hear that we will be in agreement on this issue, as on electronic filing.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

I mean the one for "Center for Competitive Politics".

It should read:
http://www.campaignfreedom.org/

Best regards,
Mycroft