What will be the justification?

Published on March 11, 2008
by Michael Schrimpf

File Under: Taxpayer Financing

A CQ Weekly article this week examines what the likelihood of two presidential nominees who support government-financed elections means for efforts to "revive" the largely defunct presidential taxpayer financing system.

According to its advocates, the "problem" with the current system - laid out in the CQ piece, as well as, a recent editorial and op-ed in the Washington Post - is that the spending limits are too low.  In essence, even proponents of campaign finance regulation admit that spending limits are de facto speech limits.

So, as alluded to by Bob Bauer, public-financing advocates are forced to argue that campaigns need the government payouts to guard against corruption and the appearance of corruption.  But Bauer also notes that asking citizens to subsidize knavish politicians is an all but impossible task.  Instead, Bauer suggests putting forward "a message of participation, to a picture drawn of a politics in which theirs is the leading part."

Abandoning the "corruption" argument - if only for debate on reforming presidential public financing system - would be a major departure for campaign finance regulation advocates and is unlikely to happen. 

The pro-regulation community has consistently cried "corruption" more often than the boy who cried wolf in their efforts to pass FECA, BCRA, HLOGA, and every piece of legislation in between.  Crying corruption is the "reformers" tried and true m.o. and downplaying it now could signal a shift that "battling corruption" is either a need that is overstated or is best combated through pro-speech means.

But should either Obama or McCain be elected, the proponents of the presidential public-financing system will still find themselves in a most-difficult-to-navigate quandary. 

This election looks to be the first in which the candidates completely abandon the presidential financing system.  So, any calls to "reform" the system to battle corruption imply that the administration sitting in Jan. '09 is in danger of being corrupted by the money they just finished raising.

Of course, no one really thinks that McCain or Obama become any less trustworthy if, and when, they officially tap out of the presidential financing system.  Moreover, as the state of the current system suggests, spending limits are arbitrary and government should have no role in deciding when citizens have heard enough.  

So we are left with little compelling justification for the type of public financing - a block grant - found in the general election and just one remaining justification for the type of government-financing in the primaries - subsidizing speech so as to amplify the voice of small donors.  But to be speech-friendly the subsidy program would have to erase spending limits and thus would be unattractive to most advocates of campaign finance regulation.

Fortunately, thanks to the power of the internet and online tools like ActBlue, candidates like Barack Obama have shown the power of low dollar fundraising.  In fact, ironically, it is the low dollar donors that will likely compel Obama to opt out of the presidential financing system.