Category: Vermont
Public Financing System for Presidential Elections Broken
By David Tamasi
WASHINGTON – The recent decisions by former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to opt out of public financing in the Democratic race for President have prompted two prominent Kerry supporters to sponsor legislation to reform the current system.
Congressmen Martin Meehan, D-Lowell, and John Tierney, D-Salem, said they intend to file campaign finance bills before the end of the year to encourage presidential candidates to stay within the public financing system. Meehan said he was still working on the details of the bill, while Tierney said he would reintroduce legislation that he has submitted every session he has been in Congress.
Under current law, presidential candidates are eligible to receive $19.1 million on Jan. 1, 2004, if they agree to spend no more than $45 million until their party officially nominates a candidate at their national conventions.
Tierney said that he hoped the decisions by Dean and Kerry would be the “stimulus to get serious about public financing.”
Dean said two weeks ago that he was declining public funds because the Democratic nominee would have no money from March, when a nominee is expected to emerge, until the Democratic National Convention in July, while President Bush would have $200 million to spend with no primary opponent. The President has also declined public financing.
“A Democratic nominee with no money is exactly what the Bush campaign is hoping for,” said Dean, who has raised more money than any other Democrat. “Ours is the only campaign with a chance to defend itself during those five months.”
Last Friday, Kerry followed suit, saying that Dean had “changed the rules of the race, and anyone with a clear shot at the nomination must play by those rules.” Kerry challenged Dean to stay within the $45 million primary spending cap, but acknowledged that he would retain the option to dip into his personal funds.
In light of Dean’s and Kerry’s decisions, political analysts said presidential public financing was finished.
“The system is dead,” political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said. “When the front-runner in the Democratic race and the Republican nominee opt out, something is wrong. It is time to start over.”
“I think that the system is in serious trouble,” said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that monitors campaign money. “It is probably the end of it if you are a viable front-runner.” The consensus is that $45 million is no longer enough to wage a viable presidential campaign, he said.
Meehan said that while it was too late to reform the system for the 2004 election, he had spoken to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who helped spearhead campaign-finance reform last year. Their “discussions were a benchmark” to work on legislation next year that would increase the spending limit for those who stay within the system in future presidential races.
“We need a system to encourage candidates to raise small contributions,” he said. Under the present system, the federal government matches, dollar for dollar, the first $250 of each individual donation. Dean has said he needs 2 million supporters to donate $100 each to match the amount Bush is expected to raise.
Meehan and McCain, along with Congressman Chris Shays, R-Conn., and Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wisc., authored legislation in 2002 that banned the unlimited contributions known as soft-money and raised individual contribution limits $1,000 to $2,000 per election. Opponents of the measure filed a lawsuit calling the law a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. The case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
New Hampshire Republican Congressman Charles Bass suggested Congress “hold hearings to examine the public financing system for presidential campaigns.”
Congress created the presidential public financing system in 1974 in response to Watergate, and it has been effect since the 1976 election. At the time, proponents said taxpayer-financed presidential campaigns would restore public faith in national elections and reduce presidential candidates’ reliance on big donors.
As the Democratic front-runner, Dean made his decision with an eye toward the general election, hoping to avoid the position 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole found himself in that summer. Dole emerged from the Republican primaries in April of that year out of funds and unable to respond to a barrage of advertising on behalf of President Clinton.
Kerry’s rationale for declining public funds is different from Dean’s. The odds-on favorite last winter to win the Democratic nomination, he has found himself eclipsed by Dean in New Hampshire, a state that is vital to Kerry’s electoral success. By opting out of the public financing system, Kerry no longer must adhere to state spending caps and can also spend his own money.
Federal law prohibits Kerry from tapping his wife’s $500 million fortune, but he could use their joint assets as collateral to secure a personal loan from a bank. The couple jointly owns a $10 million home in the upscale Louisburg Square section of Boston’s Beacon Hill. Kerry secured personal loans totaling $1.7 million in his 1996 Senate reelection campaign against then-Gov. William Weld.
The spending cap in New Hampshire is $700,000, but campaigns are granted a “fundraising exemption” that brings the cap to $1.4 million. Other exempt categories include salaries for campaign staff, direct mail and media.
For example, a campaign that buys advertising time on Boston television stations, which reach southern New Hampshire, need count only 15 percent of the advertising buy against the cap. By opting out of the public financing system, Kerry will be free to spend as much money as he wants in the Granite State. The most recent poll conducted by WMUR-TV and the University of New Hampshire showed Kerry trailing Dean by 22 points.
State spending limits are “an older idea that was no longer workable” and would probably be “scrapped” in any new legislation, the Center for Responsive Politics’ Noble said. But political analyst Rothenberg said he did not think Congress would address the issue in a presidential year. “It is hard to believe that they would,” he said. “I think that they will wait until after the campaign.”
Meehan suggested that public funds be made available to candidates earlier than Jan.1. “These candidates have been campaigning since April,” he said. “The actual campaign begins way in advance of when they receive the money.”
Congressman Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, without saying whether he believed the system was broken, said, “It’s up to each individual candidate to decide what’s right for their campaign.”
Collins, Jeffords Reintroduce Clean Air Act to Clean Up Pollution
WASHINGTON—Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) introduced a new revision of the Clean Air Act Wednesday that they said would prevent the nation’s dirtiest and most polluting power plants from evading pollution controls.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Collins and Jeffords outlined their Clean Air Power Act of 2003, and said it would dramatically reduce emissions of the four major power plant pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and mercury.
“Maine is tired of being the end of the exhaust pipe,” said Collins, emphasizing that New England is one of the most at-risk areas in the nation because it is downwind of almost all the power plants in the United States. “Our parks and our people have waited far too long for clean air.”
The senators are pushing the bill as a counter proposal to President Bush’s Clear Skies initiative, which calls for voluntary commitments by polluters to reduce emissions of harmful greenhouse gases. They say that Bush’s plan does not do enough and leaves too much to chance.
“Though it may make for good PR, voluntary programs like this just don’t produce results,” Lieberman said in a statement, citing the U.S. attempt to limit pollution on a voluntary basis after the 1992 climate change summit in Rio de Janeiro; in fact, he said, gas emissions actually increased by 14 percent from1990 to 2000. “We cannot afford to fall again for the false promise of promises alone.”
The proposed legislation would rely mainly on the successful cap-and-trade system, instituted in the Clean Air Amendments of 1990, which allows utilities greater flexibility in meeting their pollution reduction goals. At the same time, Collins and Jeffords said, their plan would not eliminate or supersede existing local and regional programs currently operating under the Clean Air Act.
Collins and Jeffords said that implementation of their bill would reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide by 81 percent from 2000 levels, nitrogen oxides by 71 percent and carbon dioxide by 21 percent, all in six years. Bush’s Clear Skies initiative, by comparison, promises reductions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by 70 percent, but not until 2018, while ignoring carbon dioxide.
“Certainty is a valuable commodity,” Jeffords said. “Our bill provides a clear signal on exactly what is expected of pollution sources and when.”
“The Jeffords-Collins bill does more to reduce smog, acid rain, mercury pollution and global warming than any other bill,” Collins said. “Our bill provides more public health and environmental benefits than any other serious proposal, and it provides them sooner.”
Jan Pendlebury, New Hampshire state director of the National Environmental Trust, emphasized what she described as the urgent need for widespread changes, citing the timeline and the inclusion of carbon dioxide in the Jeffords-Collins bill as the critical differences from Bush’s Clear Skies proposal.
She noted in an interview that the Bush plan’s goals would not be achieved until 2018, “but the gross domestic product is growing every year, which means you have more energy use. More energy use means more generation by fossil fuels, which means more carbon dioxide, there’s just no way around that.”
Pendlebury said that the Jeffords-Collins bill’s inclusion of carbon dioxide control is one of its most critical elements. Carbon dioxide pollution—the key ingredient in global warming—especially affects states like New Hampshire, whose second-largest industry is tourism.
“Because of polluted air last July, the White Mountains had an air quality alert last summer for elevations of over 3,000 feet—the first time that has ever happened in this state’s history,” she said.
Pendlebury cited 2002 as a “record year” for pollution in the state.
“Any step that reduces air pollution is a step in the right direction,” Collins said, but she and the others at the news conference agreed that reforms need to be swift and certain.
“We must start to make real progress,” Jeffords said. “We must do better.”
“I believe this is the year we can harness Senate support for clean air to pass vital legislation to address all four pollutants,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who also supports the Jeffords-Collins bill. “States like Maine are leading the way…. This legislation sends a powerful message to those who would pollute our air: your days are numbered.”
Published in Foster's Daily Democrat, in New Hampshire.
