'My father worked for the same company for forty years. He had a great health plan with complete prescription drug coverage. Now the White House wants to take it away from him and force him into a government run HMO. Call Adam Schiff and tell him to stop scaring seniors.'
The radio ad began only two or three weeks before Election Day. The first time I heard it - coming home late one night from the campaign office -- I almost drove off the road.
The ad was played incessantly for the next two weeks over each major Los Angeles radio station at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It got so bad that I would change the station when the ad came on only to find it was on the next station too. But despite the admonition to call me and tell me to stop scaring seniors - a nice irony given that the ad was designed precisely to scare seniors - no one ever called. No one was supposed to.
Never mind that there was no "White House" plan. Never mind that the congressional plan I supported to provide prescription drug benefits under Medicare was purely voluntary, and no one would be forced to join. These commercials, and dozens of others like it, both for my candidacy and against it, were paid for by massive unregulated contributions that exceeded the legal limits by millions of dollars. And no one could be held accountable. Not my opponent. No one. How was this possible? How could the pharmaceutical industry, for example, spend millions of dollars on similar ads around the country masquerading under the name "Citizens for Better Medicare" and avoid contribution limits of $1,000 or $5,000?
Through the miracle of soft money. Contributions from corporate treasuries have been banned since 1907, when Teddy Roosevelt sought to curb the excessive influence of the large conglomerates on the political process. Similarly, labor unions have been precluded from using their treasury funds to influence federal elections since 1947. Although corporations and labor can form political action committees of their members to contribute, those hard money contributions are limited to $5,000.
There is no limit on soft money, however. What exactly is soft money? Unlike the "soft water" that comes from your home treatment system and has slightly different qualities than "hard water," hard and soft money is identical. Cash to pay for commercials. Cash for mail. Cash to pay for get-out-the-vote. The checks may be drawn on different accounts but the purposes are the same - to get people elected to federal office, or get them thrown out.
But there is one distinction, and it is the distinction that makes all the difference: Soft money ads do not use the "magic words." They don't tell you to vote for or vote against Adam Schiff, they tell you to call him. And, believe it or not, it is generally no more than this ethereal difference that allows contributors of soft money to avoid disclosure and accountability, and to spend as much at it takes - millions if they choose - to influence federal elections. As long as they don't use the magic words, they can do, say and spend as they please.
One of my first acts as a Member of Congress was to co-sponsor the McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform. My race for Congress was the most expensive House race in U.S. history - topping fifteen to twenty million dollars. Teaming up with Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican freshman from Illinois who had the second most expensive House race, we have founded "Freshman for Reform," a bipartisan group of new lawmakers committed to reforming the way Congress operates - and campaign finance reform is first on our agenda.
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform measure eliminates the use of soft money by banning political party soft money and prohibiting the use of corporate and labor funds to pay for broadcast ads that refer to federal candidates in the sixty days prior to an election. In Buckley v. Valeo the Supreme Court upheld contribution limits in federal campaigns, but formulated the "magic words" standard to narrow and save the vague law passed by Congress. In so doing, it created a loophole in campaign finance laws that you can drive a sound-truck through. McCain-Feingold closes that loophole.
Now is the right time to ban soft money. Nationwide, the campaign battles of 2000 saw a surge of special interest money flooding into our democratic electoral process, shattering all previous records. The wave of soft money has exploded from $86 million in the 1992 elections to $260 million in 1996, to nearly $500 million last year. But it will not be easy. The special interests which have come to dominate the soft money industry have formed a strong anti-reform coalition spanning all ideologies from the far left to the far right. And many Members of Congress, content to support campaign finance reform when it looked to have no chance of passing, are beginning to balk under its new found momentum.
As Senator McCain pointed out when I joined him at a recent press conference in support of campaign finance reform, passage will require the American people to stand up and demand an election system free from the corrosive influence of unregulated, anonymous and unaccountable contributions. So, to use the parlance of the soft money ads themselves, "Call your Congress Member. And urge them to vote for campaign finance reform."
(Published in the Los Angeles Times, Valley Edition, March 25, 2001)
