POLITICS: A Defeat for Campaign Reform

“It is no longer government of, for and by the people,” complained Senator Walter Mondale. “It is government of, for and by those who are willing and able to pay the price.” The Minnesota Democrat was pointing out a major lesson of Watergate: the corrosive power of private money in electoral campaigns, what he called “the buy-America system.” The efforts of Mondale and other reform-minded legislators bogged down last week in a snarl that once again effectively killed reform of the nation’s laws governing campaign financing.

The congressional tangle began late last month when the Senate, by a 57-to-34 vote, passed a measure to create federal funding for all general election campaigns down to the House level. The bill would have provided major candidates with 150 for each voter in their constituency. That would mean roughly $21 million for presidential hopefuls (compared with $60 million raised by President Nixon in 1972 and $36 million raised by George McGovern), between $175,000 and $2,000,000 for Senators, and a minimum of $90,000 for Representatives. To prevent trivial presidential candidacies, the new legislation would have required candidates to raise some money of their own for primary campaigns before they would become eligible for public funds.

In the hope of avoiding a presidential veto, the sponsors of the measure resorted to a parliamentary trick and attached it to a crucial, though unrelated bill raising the federal debt ceiling. But the maneuver only angered many in the House who were at best unenthusiastic about the legislation. At the urging of Al Ullman of Oregon, the Rules Com mittee rejected the Senate’s amendment; the House then turned it down by a decisive 347 to 54 vote.

All was not yet lost, however. Leading Senators like Mondale, Edward Kennedy and Hugh Scott met with their counterparts in the House and worked out a compromise—a new amendment that would affect the financing of presidential campaigns only. It was thought to have a good chance of passing.

But the reformers had not counted on the tenacious opposition of Senator James Allen, a conservative Democrat of Alabama and master of the Senate’s rules. The amendment passed the House, but when it was presented to the Senate, Allen filibustered for four days.

Administration lobbyists quickly SUPported Allen’s delaying tactic. “They were all over the place,” said Kenneth Davis, an aide to Senator Scott. “Their first interest was in getting the debt bill.

Their second was in killing public finance.” At one point, the White House dispatched an Air Force plane to fly the two Republican Senators from Oklahoma back to Washington to vote against ending the filibuster.

Allen remained unmoved by appeals to step aside that came from the Democratic leadership, including fellow Southern Conservative Russell B. Long.

Calling the amendment “a raid on the public treasury” and a “half-baked concoction,” Allen skillfully used his knowledge of the Senate’s rules to tie the body up in procedural knots. A cloture vote was called for Sunday—the first Sunday session in more than 40 years—but failed to get the required two-thirds majority. Another cloture vote fell short on Monday, and by that time pressure to pass the debt-ceiling bill was all but irresistible. The Treasury was already halting bond sales, since their purchase would have increased the Government debt beyond the legal limit of $400 billion. The Senate’s reformers threw in the towel and passed the bill to raise the debt ceiling to $475.7 billion—minus the public financing amendment.

Ironically, the reformers had fallen victim to their own legislative strategy.

By attaching the measure to a piece of urgently needed legislation, the amendment’s sponsors left themselves open to charges of trying to sneak an epochal bill through Congress without allowing adequate debate. Indeed, when the measure first went to the House, many Representatives correctly considered it “non-germane” and thus unacceptable under House rules.

Nonetheless, the fact is that reform of campaign financing is badly needed.

The present system too often invites corruption by placing candidates—except those who are very wealthy—in debt to major contributors and gives incumbents a considerable advantage. In the 1972 elections, for instance, only ten House members were unseated (along with six Senators), in part because the incumbents spent on the average twice as much on their campaigns as did their challengers.

Public Pressure. While admitting the shortcomings of their effort, reformers were especially bitter toward the White House, whose opposition clashed with President Nixon’s public statements on the need for campaign reform.

On Nov. 17, Nixon told the Associated Press managing editors of his determination “to do everything possible” to see that campaigns do not “get out of hand in the future.” Still, the Administration has gone no further than to propose a commission to study the entire matter; it has resisted any concrete reform efforts. Charged an outraged Senator Mondale: “An Administration which has done more than any other in the history of this nation to illustrate the defects of our present system of financing political campaigns apparently would prefer to have the American Government grind to a halt rather than clean it up.”

The victory of Allen and the Administration may be temporary. Senate reformers have already won a promise of early action next year on a public financing bill from the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, and even the usually reluctant House Administration Committee chairman has vowed some action on campaign reform. In the meantime, public pressure can be expected to grow.

A Gallup poll in September showed 65% of the population in favor of public finance. There is no guarantee that public finance can survive the powerful opposition of congressional and Executive incumbents. But in the light of the Watergate horrors, it should at least get the full public hearing that it deserves in the months to come.