Hightower Lowdown

Like floodwaters, political corruption takes the path of least resistance. When you think you’ve dammed it up, it squirts out somewhere else.
Congress told us a few months ago that it had finally stopped the flood of corrupt “soft money” that’s been pouring into the campaigns of both parties—some $750 million in the last national election alone. By passing the McCain-Feingold reform bill, however, this corrupt cash was banned from federal elections, they said, and that was that.
Except that the Federal Election Commission had to issue rules to implement the ban. The FEC has long been notorious as the path of least resistance for the money corruption of our politics, and the commissioners wrote the rules so that the soft money can come right back into the process.
McCain-Feingold banned national parties from using soft money, but the FEC ruled that state and local parties can raise and spend unlimited sums of it for national elections, including using it to pay the salaries of campaign staff working on national campaigns. In other words, the law says that a corporation can’t put a million-dollar contribution in a party’s front pocket, but, wink-wink, the FEC says it can slip the loot into the party’s back pocket.
That’s not all. While the national parties are barred from taking soft money after November 6, the FEC says they can set up “independent” soft-money committees before that date, and these committees can keep operating forever—without even bothering to report where their money comes from!
It’s time to shake up the FEC. Call Congress Watch at 202-588-1000.