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The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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Feingold-McCain ‘Incumbent Protection Plan’ fails

Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, worked for years to pass
campaign-finance “reform” legislation. Last March this legislation
was signed into law. But it didn’t take long to see this
legislation was a failure.

The illusion that money had been largely removed from the
political system faded this week as billionaire hedge-fund operator
George Soros told the Washington Post in an interview that the 2004
presidential election was “a matter of life and death.” Soros also
donated $5 million to the liberal activist group, MoveOn.org,
apparently bringing his total donations in an effort to oust
President Bush to over $15 million, and the election is still over
350 days away.

Two of the main objectives of the plan were supposed to be to
take money out of politics and to even the playing field. These
were, at least, the publicly stated objectives of those Senators
and Representatives behind the proposal. Perhaps one of the more
likely motivations for many Democrats was to try to hamstring the
Republican Party and candidates from raising money. But the exact
opposite effect has occurred for some candidates. With
hard-money-donations limits now doubled, effective hard-money
fund-raisers, like President Bush, are breaking fund-raising
records each election cycle, as their support grows. President Bush
is expected to raise approximately $200 million in hard money for
the upcoming presidential election.

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The idea for this campaign-finance bill was that if soft money
was banned, candidates would be elected by the issues, not because
one candidate was vastly out-spent (as Republican candidate Sonny
Perdue was in the Georgia election, when he faced and defeated
Democratic incumbent Gov. Roy Barnes).

This plan was, from the beginning, fraught with loopholes.
Unlike the old system where political parties and candidates for
federal office had to report all large contributions received, the
new system allows a billionaire like George Soros, or New York
attorney Harold Ickes, who was embroiled in President Clinton’s
1996 presidential scandal, to pour millions of dollars into new
start-up special-interest groups like MoveOn.org and America Coming
Together. Both groups started in response to the new
campaign-finance laws.

Special-interest groups are not required by law to disclose how
much money is being donated or who is making the donations. While
money could be donated to these groups under the old system, it was
generally believed to be more effective to donate the money to the
political parties, and thus, the money was reported and open to the
public. Now many people will not bother donating money to the
parties, since they are limited to $2,000 per election cycle, and
will instead funnel millions of dollars that will go publicly
unaccounted for to special interests seeking to influence the
elections.

This new system makes organizations and candidates less
accountable and leads to greater possibility of corruption, because
the stakes have been raised. The millions of dollars poured into
these special-interest groups will mean more television attack ads
and even possible political favors can occur without others knowing
that it is happening.

If special-interest groups are going to be active in
campaigning, as they will be in 2004 and have been almost every
year, these organizations should be required to disclose financial
information about how much money was donated and by whom. This
information should be posted online, and these organizations should
be held to the same finance limits set at $2,000 per individual,
per election cycle, as political parties and candidates running for
federal office.

The McCain-Feingold plan has also turned into an
incumbent-protection plan. Incumbents have the advantage of name ID
and office to help raise funds throughout the nation (as Feingold
has done in amassing his war chest). Challengers have little chance
now unless their last name is Schwarzenegger, because the amount of
money they can raise is restricted and the state and national
parties do not have the funds they once had to help good candidates
get their names out to voters.

Consider the pending Senate election Feingold faces. Between his
various opponents — Tim Michels, Bob Welch and Russ Darrow — at
least one of those candidates would likely represent Wisconsin
better than Feingold is representing the state. But the likelihood
of Feingold losing, even though he doesn’t represent Wisconsin
residents’ views on important issues such as taxes and gun rights,
is much less because Feingold’s finance law prevents
competition.

Money and politics have always and likely will always go
together. At least under the old system, political parties and
candidates were held accountable through reporting. A strict system
of reporting, such as what President Bush is doing by going above
and beyond reporting requirements and reporting all campaign
donations regardless of size and posting them online is the
direction we should move, not backward in the direction of less
disclosure.

Matt Modell ([email protected]) is a senior majoring
in journalism and political science.

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