The Center for Competitive Politics’ Sean Parnell scorns Senator Dick Durbin’s defense of public financing, ridiculing his concern with relieving elected officials of the time pressures of fundraising.  But of all the various defenses of reform—such as corruption, or its appearance, or the goal of political equality—Durbin’s is the simplest and easiest to support by reference to plain and visible fact.

     Elected officials do have to spend generous slabs of time planning for the raising of funds and participating personally in making the “ask” of donors.   Campaign costs are one reason; and, yes, a regulated system, requiring the Members to raise limited amounts within an already limited community of donors is another.  But it remains a fact that much time, a crushing amount in many instances, is spent on locating and then mining sources of campaign funds.

     Parnell refuses to shed tears for the Members in this predicament.  Often it is said, and perhaps Parnell believes, that this activity is not all that bad for politicians:  they should be giving time to face-to-face or phone encounters with donors who may also be constituents but who in any event have an interest in the legislative process and should be heard.  But as Durbin points out, this is a select audience, and he argues that Members are not healthily forced into a disproportionate allocation of their time to those needed for campaign contributions. 

     The case Durbin makes does not, however, depend on whether one worries about policy distortion caused by the fundraising company that a Member may have to keep.  If, as Durbin quite reasonably suggests, the amount spent on fundraising-related matters is “nothing short of amazing”, it means that Members have severely diminished control over their jobs and the means of getting them done.  And it cannot be passed off as their choice, poorly made.  The sheer expense Members face in running for office, coupled with the challenges of fundraising, are inescapable facts of political life.  The numbers, in this case, don’t lie, and we have testimony, frank and compelling, across the aisles.

     A public funding option is just that:  an option.  It provides elected officials (and other candidates) with a chance to better balance the demands on their time. They may take this chance or they may not.  It is hard to see why it is not in everybody’s interest, not just theirs, to give them the choice. 

Bob Bauer