Campaign spending

WASHINGTON -- Never has the old bromide about America having the best Congress money can buy been more valid than in the current midterm elections. Of course what the people are getting isn't necessarily going to be the "best" when all is said and done. More likely Capitol Hill will remain a place of great divisions and disharmony with real statesmen still hard to find.

The level of spending raises serious questions about the health of the electoral system -- whether the government for, by and of the people is exactly that considering the potential power of special interests providing much of the money. Latest accountings estimate that when the final tally is in, the campaigns for the House and Senate will top $2 billion, a record that exceeds the amounts laid out for the last presidential campaign.

According to press reports, the House races will reach $1.8 billion if not more while the Senate will add another $550 million or so. For the House that means some $4 million for each of the 435 contests when averaged out. Obviously some races will spend much more and others less. But what does that matter? The overall total is still staggeringly obscene and downright immoral considering the lingering economic woes of much of the electorate.

A torrent of cash has been let loose by the Supreme Court's decision freeing the restraints on donations by outside groups including corporations. The amount in contributions allocated to tight races actually is around $400 million despite an excess in publicity. Analysts, however, charge that the spending by outside groups has caused candidates to spend more responding to attacks.

The rest of the grand total is being raised and spent by candidates themselves. This startling amount doesn't count the gubernatorial races where candidates are contributing to the bizarre political spending orgy. Take a look at California where Republican billionaire Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO, already has plopped down the most money ever in a non-presidential race -- $140 million, all of it hers, to run an insane asylum.

The irony is that the new Congress, perhaps as never before, is going to have to do something about the nation's enormously resistant deficits through a number of down-hold measures that may include altering Social Security and Medicare (good luck on that) while at the same time pondering whether to extend the tax cuts adopted during the Bush administration.

A good question might be whether a Congress elected by such wildly uncontrolled spending can change its habits enough to take the steps required to bring the nation back to solvency or at least closer to it. The answer is probably not even though one can expect a serious amount of talk and posturing from both sides of the aisle. The possibility of split control with the House Republican and the Senate Democratic doesn't bode well for serious advances in the cause of debt reduction. The impact of the new health care package still is to be felt, but knowledgeable observers believe the costs have been substantially underestimated.

This is a sad tale. The amount of money spent this year is certain to increase in the next election and the next. Much of what members of Congress do all year round is raise money, tending to the needs of their big donors so as not to lose out to well-heeled challengers. This then leads to ethical problems and even more serious difficulties. The cause of campaign spending reform was set back dramatically by the Supreme Court, leaving pretty much only average individual donors with limits on their contributions.

There must be some constitutional means of restricting the amount of money a candidate can spend running for public office, even if it is his or her own money. But until that is found, the path to the public trough will become increasingly overgrown with thistles. Why one would want to spend such amounts or ask others to do so to win a public office is beyond me. It probably has something to do with ego and self worth, a belief that one is the only candidate who can bring order into the chaos of Washington. The "best"!


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Comments » 1

JesseJohnston writes:

As a bright spot atleast they are pumping cash into the economy hehe


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