If you paid attention to stories about the budget Congress just
passed, a budget that gave us the term “CRomnibus,” (It’s a mash up
of Continuing Resolution and omnibus. Part of the budget is one and
most of it is the latter. Because I think we all can agree if
Congress isn’t inventing new words it’s not doing its job.) you
learned that in addition to giving Wall Street a break, (“About
time!” I say.) it gave national political parties access to huge
swaths of money.
That second part is one U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor,
objected to the most. When the budget passed the house he sent a
news release with the statement:
“Part of the reason Congress is held in such low esteem is
that it does things like this. While I’m all for funding
government, adding a provision at the last minute to a must pass
bill that benefits the wealthiest donors and floods our elections
with even more money undermines our democracy.”
Kilmer didn’t stop there. He offered a bill that would undo that
portion of the CRomnibus. (The more you say it the less debased you
feel.) “Close the Floodgates Act” got no sponsors and the Senate
went home, but Kilmer said this week he will bring the bill back
during the next session, which begins in January.
On Wednesday I asked him if he thought any of the 219 members of
the House who voted for the CRomnibus (You see? You’re becoming
assimilated.) objected to the campaign finance provision. Uh, yeah.
“I have not spoken to anyone on either side of the aisle who
thought this provision made sense,” he said.
That provision would increase caps on annual donations by
individuals to the national political parties from $97,200 to
$777,600.
That so many people would think the provision makes no sense is
because no one is sitting around saying, “You what we need? More
money in politics.” Well, someone might be saying it. On the right
the Koch Brothers and on the left George Soros are the demons of
MSNBC and Fox for saying that with their money, for example.
But someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea. Politico
did two great pieces of reporting on the issue, one that explains the rationale and a
second that discusses how that became part of the
budget and the local roots for it.
The rationale, simply, is this: With so much money going to
third-party political organizations that don’t have to limit what
they can receive from donors, parties are having a tough time
collecting money they use to advertise, host conventions and wage
legal battles. Part of what the CRomnibus rider did was create not
only new limits, but new organizations donors can fund to handle
different aspects of a campaign. The parties want this, because
they don’t want to cede a campaign’s message to third-party groups
that they can’t coordinate with or control.
So who orchestrated this? Sounds like it was Nevada Senator and
now former Majority Leader Harry Reid, employing a Seattle lawyer
to make it happen.
So while most people favor reducing the money in politics by,
um, changing the law to reduce money in politics, Reid and Congress
just passed legislation to open up the tap for the parties, in
hopes of strengthening the parties’ influence in the bigger pool of
money.
Kilmer favors the first approach. He co-sponsored the Disclose
Act, which would have required more financial disclosure in
campaign ads. He also co-sponsored a bill proposing a
constitutional amendment specifying that corporations are not
people and allowing Congress to set campaign limits. Another bill
he co-sponsored would allow candidates to accept public funds as
long as they forego big donations.
Before any of that though, Kilmer wants to kill any
encouragement to attract more money to political races. “First, do
no harm,” he said Wednesday. “The American people want us to take
actions to restore their faith in our democracy.”
Increasing the amount of money wealthy people can contribute to
political parties, Kilmer said, is not one of those actions.
