The Thomas-Toner Proposal and Its Limits

 Bipartisanship is hard to come by and some believe that it should be welcomed in whatever guise, at whatever time, it appears.  FEC Commissioners Scott Thomas and Michael Toner have issued a letter to the Congressional leadership, expressing common views on the state of the presidential public financing system.  This is not their first venture into bipartisan reform:  they also jointly developed and proposed strict rules to subject to “political committee” regulation “527s" and possibly other organizations.  There is some connection between the two initiatives, which is one among other points of interest in the new Thomas-Toner program.

    The Commissioners conclude that the public financing system is in danger of passing into irrelevance. They note the significance of the candidacies run outside the system—i.e. the nominees of both major parties in 2004—and acknowledge that the choice to decline public funding was a completely rational one, since the system could have put them "at a competitive disadvantage."  In sum, the Commissioners see the problem, and the corresponding reforms, as follows:

1.    The public won’t "check-off" funds in adequate amounts, and the percentage of taxpayers willing to do so has declined sharply over the last 20 years, now hovering slightly above 11%.  The Commissioners urge an increase in the maximum check-off amount and an adjustment in the fiscal accounting that determines the availability of funds for the primary.

2.    The primary spending limit is too low, as is the total amount of "matching" public funds provided to the participating candidates, and the Commissioners propose an increase, substantial ones, in both.

3.    The state-by-state spending limits make no sense and should be abolished.

4.    Candidates should receive matching funds sooner in the election cycle—the year before.

5.    Parties should have a special spending limit for the primary period, so that participating candidates who have little money left can look to the parties for support in the pre-convention period.

6.    All candidates should receive their public allotment on the same date, so that we avoid the competitive unfairness, resulting (as in 2004) from different convention dates, that one candidate must spread the general election funds over a longer period.

    All of these measures are sensible: some, like the abolition of the idiotic state-by-state spending limits, are long overdue.  The question is: what lies behind the concern, or justifies the expenditure of energy to meet it?  If the public does not care—few participate in the check-off, even though all are told that participation does not increase their tax liability—and if the system in other respects is outdated, fails to serve its essential purpose and is  competitively harmful to the candidates who participate, what would account for arduous efforts to save the patient?

    The Commissioners attempt, if only with some success, to avoid stating their policy preferences too strongly, merely exhorting Congress to study the problem and, if it decides to maintain the system, to make a serious effort to fix it. But those who remain attached to the public financing system believe that a public financing system is healthier, because it substitutes “public” (healthy) money for “private” (not so healthy) money, even if it does not do so completely and even if the candidates eligible to receive the public money are free to reject it.  Examined carefully, this preference for the public over the private seems more a product of wishful than of hard thinking.

    In part, the preference may be anchored by the belief that in some indefinable way, to some extent, the receipt of some public in place of private money will help to reduce the quantum of “corruption."  How this is so is not clear: presidential candidates will still raise private money, and as the cost of campaigns escalate, and the public funds available fall far short of the monies needed, each private dollar pursued will “count” still more to the candidates struggling with the temptations of corruption.  The Thomas-Toner proposal concedes that the overall spending limit should be increased, to perhaps as high as $250 million for a primary campaign, and this suggests the potential for a vast amount of temptation. Then there is the related belief that the candidates receiving public funds can spend less time raising private monies, more time debating issues and speaking with voters.  But as noted, there is still much private money to be raised: and there is no way of measuring how much time for “healthy” pursuits, like stump speeches, tightly scripted rallies and rope-line appearances, is spared. 

    There is perhaps a more compelling, less clearly stated, rationale for those clinging to the public financing system and hoping to keep it going with patchwork reforms.  It is the desire to maintain, in whatever form and however effectively, a limit on spending, on the total amount of money in politics.  The public financing system imposes this limit, of course, as a core condition of receiving public funds. It is not a viable limit, as demonstrated by the candidates fleeing the system and prospering from the decision to do so.  But it is a limit; and the Commissioners propose to raise it in order to save it. 

    Reformer advocates will often deny that BCRA, or other reforms, have as one essential purpose a limitation on the total amount of money spent in politics.  A reading of the Congressional debates over BCRA puts that denial into serious question.  This goal runs through many of the reforms proposed, or reform issues raised, in recent years.  The reform initiative directed at “527s," carried at the agency by Commissioners Thomas and Toner, is no exception.  Complaints about 527s are not complaints about corporate or union money, because the charge is made no less forcefully against the use of individual funds; and those complaints cannot rest on corrupt “links” to officeholders because 527s, the largest and most visible, appear to operate independently.  The concern is more fundamentally about their “impact”—measured by the amount of money they raise and spend. 

The problem confronted by contemporary reform efforts, illustrated by the anguish over the public financing system, is that there is little hope that, by force or incentive, the government can establish reasonable prices for politics—that it can somehow “make the market."  The Thomas-Toner proposal, and others looking to salvage the public financing system, are now prepared to concede that politics makes its own market.  They would raise the spending limit, and the amount of public money made available to candidates, to save the limit—some limit, even, for a presidential primary, at the level of $250 million.  This is an expression of some desperation—a desperation not shared by the very public whose support is needed and not forthcoming.