Topic: Political Campaign finance reform is needed, not term limits.

You know I am begining to like this section where I can throw things out there and see the feedback. I like controversy and debates as it gets people to thinking and even sometimes move toward action.

I am not happy with our current system where they bring out the personal lives of candidates rather than focusing on the issues that our nation faces. We have had leaders in the past whose personal lives were in question, but they were good for our nation. Some of the very people casting stones if one were to look close enough there would be something there as well.What we have now are these political beings who have made a profession of being in office and they lose touch with what is going on with the average American. But here is a thought this is an article which I found to be very interesting:

Reforms in federal campaign finance law -- particularly in order to eliminate tremendous incumbent advantages in congressional elections -- are urgently needed. However, they have little or no relevance to term limits. Proposals for campaign finance reform currently on the table are written by incumbents and for incumbents and are likely to create even more advantages for them. As former Congressman Bill Frenzel has noted, "No legislature has ever passed a campaign law that made it harder for incumbents to get reelected." (Bill Frenzel, "Term Limits and the Immortal Congress," Brookings Review, Spring 1992, p. 22.)



The centerpiece of the campaign reform bills currently under consideration (S. 3 and H.R. 3) is their limit on the amount congressional candidates can spend, but these spending caps are the same for challengers and incumbents, despite the tremendous incumbent advantages described above. Twenty years ago, the Supreme Court declared that spending limits are an unconstitutional limit on First Amendment freedoms. (Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).) The pending bills circumvent this problem by calling their spending limits "voluntary," even though candidates who exceed them are penalized harshly through punitive taxation, subsidies to opponents, and the suspension of opponents' spending limits. Incumbent advantages make incumbent spending effectively far higher than challenger spending. The cleverness of the spending limit penalty is that it is the challenger, not the incumbent, who will have to break it.



Challengers who wish to avoid the problem by running cheaper campaigns will face another difficulty: it takes a substantial amount of spending just to reach parity with incumbents' natural advantages in media access and name recognition. The proposed spending limit of $600,000 for House candidates is less than the average amount a House challenger needed to defeat an incumbent in 1988. The 1992 House general election statistics are even more instructive. They indicate clearly that success rates for challengers rise with their spending totals.



No challenger who spent less than $200,000 defeated an incumbent.



Fewer than 15 percent of those who spent between $200,000 and $400,000 toppled sitting officeholders, but 25 percent of those who spent between $400,000 and $600,000 did.



Over half -- 54 percent -- of all challengers who spent over $600,000 won election.



Under the proposed campaign finance reforms, this last set of victories no longer will be an option; the genius of the spending limit is that it is set just at the point where challengers become dangerous.



Campaign spending is increasing because the value of the prize -- a congressional seat -- continues to grow. It will likely continue to grow, given the increase in the federal government's size and power and the greater and greater involvement of citizens in the political process. As George F. Will has noted, the $678 million spent by congressional candidates on elections in 1992 is "40 percent of what Americans spent on yogurt." (George F. Will, "So, We Talk Too Much?", Newsweek, June 28, 1993, p. 68.)



Instead of eliminating the tremendous advantages incumbents hold in congressional elections today, the proposed campaign reform bills attempt to increase them. This is probably to be expected, however; one can hardly expect a legislature to pass a law that targets its own privileges for destruction. Real reform measures almost certainly will have to emerge from outside the Beltway -- as term limits have done so far in fifteen states nationwide.

I love my country, but we need people in office who know that the laws they pass will affect them as well. Once they have served their time they need to be back in the work force like the rest of us. Am I dreaming? Am I too far off the mark? Are we the people still in control?