You Speak Good

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Dear Mr. President:

Our organizations are writing to you once again to express our grave concerns about the extraordinary failure of the Federal Election Commission to properly enforce and interpret the nation’s campaign finance laws, and about your inaction to address this very damaging situation.  

The organizations include Americans for Campaign Reform, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG.

The FEC is widely recognized as a failed, dysfunctional enforcement agency and has itself become a national campaign finance scandal. The refusal of the FEC to properly enforce the campaign finance laws is well known to candidates and political operatives. This has created a “do-anything-you-want approach” to complying with the country’s campaign finance laws. These laws have been enacted to protect against the corruption of federal officeholders and government decisions.

Currently, five of the six FEC Commissioners sit as lame duck Commissioners, whose terms have expired and who are ineligible for re-appointment, but who can continue to serve on the Commission until replacements have been nominated by you and confirmed by the Senate.

During the 2008 presidential campaign you unequivocally recognized the problems at the FEC and the need for new Commissioners. In response to questions raised in September, 2007 by the Midwest Democracy Alliance, you responded:

I believe that the FEC needs to be strengthened and that individuals named to 
the Commission should have a demonstrated record of fair administration of the law and
 an ability to overcome partisan biases. My initial goal as president will be to determine
 whether we can make the FEC more effective through appointments. What the FEC 
needs most is strong, impartial leadership that will promote integrity in our election
 system.
 

You further responded at that time:

As president, I will appoint nominees to the Commission who are committed to enforcing our nation’s election laws.

However, with the exception of one unsuccessful attempt in 2009, you have failed as President to nominate any individual to replace any of the five lame duck FEC Commissioners.

Nothing will change at the FEC until you begin the process by exercising your executive branch responsibility to nominate new FEC Commissioners. In this sense, the national scandal at the FEC is currently your responsibility.

It is essential that you nominate new Commissioners based on merit, skills, qualifications, experience, background and professional reputation. It is also essential that the nominees have a basic commitment to enforcing the campaign finance laws as written by Congress and as interpreted by the courts. Individuals who are ideologically opposed to the campaign finance laws must not be given the responsibility to enforce these laws.

One possible approach to nominating FEC Commissioners based on merit would be to establish a bipartisan advisory group of distinguished individuals who could find and recommend potential qualified nominees for each available seat on the Commission. This would be similar to the way in which some Senators use outside advisory groups to surface the names of potential nominees for a judgeship.  You could then choose nominees based on these recommendations in compliance with the statutory requirement that no more than three members of a political party can serve on the Commission at the same time.

We are well aware that in nominating FEC Commissioners based on merit and qualifications you would create a conflict with congressional leaders who are accustomed to choosing the Commissioners themselves.

 Given the completely dysfunctional state of the FEC that has resulted from a business-as-usual appointments process, however, and given the enormous damage that has been done as a result to our campaign finance laws which protect against corruption, it is essential to end this national scandal by moving forward with a new approach to nominating Commissioners and with five nominees to fill the vacancies on the FEC.

 If you proceed to nominate new Commissioners based on merit and qualifications, then it would be up to the Senate to address the FEC scandal.  Each Senator would be faced with a clear choice: vote to confirm new FEC Commissioners selected on the basis of merit and qualifications or vote to take personal responsibility for perpetuating a scandal that is severely damaging the nation’s anti-corruption campaign finance laws.

We recognize that nominating new Commissioners may well lead to Senate filibusters against the nominees. If it does, that is a battle that must be fought.

The effort to remake the FEC and restore the integrity of our campaign finance laws cannot begin until you nominate new Commissioners. Our organizations strongly urge you to expeditiously nominate five new FEC Commissioners.

    Thank you for your consideration of our views.

    Respectfully,

Americans for Campaign Reform         Democracy 21

Campaign Legal Center                       League of Women Voters

Common Cause                                   Public Citizen 

Citizens for Responsibility                   U.S. PIRG

and Ethics in Washington (CREW)    

Dear Mr. President:

We can’t believe we have to write another letter to you about how the Federal Election Commission isn’t going about business the way we think they should.

There are eight of our organizations peddling the same message. Because we all signed on to this letter, it must be really important that you listen to our interpretation of the law.

If not, we’ll continue to call it a “scandal,” because even though campaign finance reform is a First World Problem, we know you won’t pay attention unless we try to make a bigger deal out of it than it is.  So yes, we’re going to call it a “scandal.”  Also, because we’re trying to cultivate a sentiment that Father Government knows best, we’re going to scare people by telling them that this is an issue in which people can “do what they want.”  We will make people dislike you unless you actually go ahead and do something about this. Around our offices, we all agree that the FEC is a failed, dysfunctional agency. The evidence that it doesn’t always do what we want is overwhelming.

Look, you have a golden opportunity to shove a reform agenda that we couldn’t get passed through normal legislative channels down the country’s throat because the terms of the people we disagree with are over.  Although you realized this years ago, things like four (?) wars, people angrily defecating in buckets in Manhattan, and that pesky bipartisan requirement for FEC appointments seem to have gotten in the way of you doing anything about it.  Let us remind you what you said: 

“I believe that the FEC needs to be strengthened and that individuals named to
 the Commission should have a demonstrated record of fair administration of the law and 
an ability to overcome partisan biases. My initial goal as president will be to determine
 whether we can make the FEC more effective through appointments. What the FEC
 needs most is strong, impartial leadership that will promote integrity in our election
 system.”
 

You also made these promises on the campaign trail that we’re holding you to:

“As President, I will appoint nominees to the Commission who are committed to enforcing our nation’s election laws.” And let us be clear – all of us understood that as code for “people who agree with us on how the law is to be interpreted.”

Your idea of fulfilling these promises was giving it a shot once?  WTF?  For serious? (P.S. – Please forget about the fact that we lobbied to block the appointment, deeming him insufficiently pro-reform.)

As we said before, unless this gets fixed, we’re going to make this YOUR scandal.  And you’d better fix it the way we’d like, because if you nominate people who don’t agree with us, we’re still going to have a scandal.

It is essential that you choose people who agree with us.

Now, if you’d like, we can put together a group of like-minded individuals to do this work for you.  In fact, the less work you do the better, because then you can’t screw it up for us.

We are well aware that in nominating FEC Commissioners based on our criteria, you would create a conflict with those people whose job it is to ACTUALLY confirm the commissioners.

If you put one of our hand-picked candidates for Commissioner in front of the Senate for confirmation, we can bully them into nominating said candidate until they decide they don’t want to deal with us anymore. Given that we’ve had to threaten you with a scandal and things haven’t been going our way, you owe us one.  And, if you do this our way, we’ll make sure to tar and feather our detractors as much as possible!  Did we mention scandal?

Yeah, some people may make it tough.

Look, if you’re going to make it happen, you need to make it happen.  We can’t get our agenda on the road until you stack the deck in our favor.

Beware of the scandal! We issue press releases!  Sorry we couldn’t book Alec Baldwin for this one!

Thanks,

Big Reform