Center for Competitive Politics Chairman Brad Smith participated in a Huffington Post Live segment, “What’s Wrong With The FEC?”:
The FEC has been under attack as a “lame duck” agency due to deadlock on a variety of issues. Although the deadlock frustrates pro-regulation reform efforts, it is an essential safeguard built into the Commission’s structure to ensure that partisan interests do not undermine the Commission’s important work. Proposed reforms to the Commission’s structure would place these important safeguards at risk, undermining the Commission’s legitimacy as body where decisions are made on a bipartisan basis.
This is a particularly important concern in light of the IRS targeting scandal. As FEC Commissioner Donald McGahn said in a recent interview, “You just can’t have an agency where the staff is sort of left to their own devices to come up with lists and do their own thing, because it creates such an opportunity for people to accuse the place of playing political games. ”
You can access the Huffington Post Live segment at this link.
