A Reform in Campaign Spending

The disaster of Watergate will yet benefit the U.S. if some lessons are learned, some long-range changes brought about. This week Congress almost certainly will approve a momentous reform that grew directly out of Watergate: the public financing of presidential campaigns.

The currying--or outright buying --of future governmental favors by private interests through campaign contributions to both parties has long been one of the most degrading features of U.S. political life. In Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign, it reached new depths. Last week the Greyhound Corp. became the 16th corporation to plead guilty to making illegal contributions.

The obvious cure for such real and apparent abuses is to consider the election of a President a public responsibility to be financed from public funds. That is the major provision in a campaign-spending reform bill agreed upon last week by House-Senate conferees after months of backstage wrangling in both chambers. The bill does not apply the same funding principles, however, to elections for Senators and Congressmen.

Under the compromise, the public funding of presidential campaigns would work this way:

MAJOR PARTY CANDIDATES. A major party is defined as one whose candidate drew at least 25% of the vote in the previous presidential election. For the general election, if a sufficient pool of tax money has been built up, each such party's candidate would be allotted $20 million in public funds to finance a campaign. The money would come from the income tax check-off system now in effect, by which each taxpayer can earmark $1 of the tax he is paying for this purpose. The check-off fund is expected to total at least $64 million by 1976. Beyond the $20 million spending ceiling, the state and national committees of a candidate's party can support his campaign at a rate of 20 per vote--roughly $2.9 million.

Presidential primary campaigns would be financed by a mixture of public and private funding, but with a spending limit of $10 million per candidate. To become eligible for any public funds at all, a candidate would first have to raise $5,000 in each of at least 20 states, in gifts not exceeding $250.

For each $5,000 such a candidate raised privately, the Government would provide a matching $5,000, up to $4.5 million. In addition, the nominating conventions of major parties would be supported from the check-off fund with $2 million each--roughly what the two parties spent in 1972.

FRINGE CANDIDATES. A presidential candidate from a party not defined as major would be entitled to public funds under a formula linked to the percentage of the public vote his party received in the most recent presidential election. (The American Independent Party, which ran John G. Schmitz for President in 1972, polled 1,099,482 votes, only less than 5% of the total, and thus would not qualify.)

The big battle in the conference committee was over applying the public funding idea to senatorial and congressional races. House members, who have to run for office every other year, were particularly loath to provide ready funds for opponents seeking to unseat them. Some critics of the House bill, which provided public financing only for presidential campaigns, tagged it the Incumbents' Protection Act.

The conferees did agree, however, to place upper limits on both private donations and candidate expenditures in Senate and House campaigns. Candidates for the Senate could spend $100,000 in primary elections or 80-c- per voter in their state, whichever amount is greater; they could spend $150,000 in general elections or 12-c- per voter. In New York, for example, the 12-c- would allow about $1.5 million (in his successful 1970 campaign, New York Senator James Buckley spent $1.1 million in the general election). The same limitations would apply to House candidates in the six-states that have only one Congressman (Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming). For House races in other states, candidates could spend no more than $70,000 in their primary- and general-election campaigns.

No single individual could give more than $25,000 in one election year, no matter how many candidates for federal office shared in his gifts. He could give only $1,000 to a single candidate in each election (primary, runoff and general) or a total of $3,000. Organizations such as the National Education Association could give only $5,000 to a candidate in each such election, or a total of $15,000.

The Senate conferees prevailed in insisting that a relatively independent commission with enforcement powers be created to ensure that the new laws are observed. It would consist of six voting members, two each nominated by the House, the Senate and the President. All nominees to the commission would have to be confirmed by a majority vote of both the House and Senate. The commission could bring civil but not criminal action against offenders; the legislators had no wish to make it easier to jail a Senator or Representative.

By the time the compromise was reached, the pressures for reform had grown so great that many past foes of public financing revealed that they would vote for the measure. Alabama's Democratic Senator James Allen, who had filibustered against the original Senate bill, indicated he would not repeat that tactic. Ohio Democrat Wayne Hays, who had bottled up the reform in committee for months, is now expected to support the compromise.

The only remaining question was whether President Ford, long an outspoken critic of public financing, would sign the bill. It is expected that he too, despite personal misgivings, will decide that some reform is essential. Said John Gardner, chairman of the citizens' lobby Common Cause: "We got more than we had expected--other than in the area of public financing of congressional elections." Gardner and other observers predict that by 1978, public funding of House and Senate races will also be a fact.

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