As you know, I did not support final passage of H.R. 2356, the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill. Personally, I believe six principles must be considered for any reforms to our political process. These include: preventing voter fraud and ensuring current laws are followed and enforced; preserving and protecting the First Amendment to the Constitution; respecting workers' beliefs and paychecks by ending political taxes on their pay; encouraging citizen participation and grassroots political involvement; requiring full and timely disclosure of all campaign contributions; and ensuring a level playing field between incumbents and challengers.
I believe the bill's unprecedented selected restrictions on soft money would make national political parties less able to support grassroots activity, candidate recruitment and get-out-the-vote efforts. Restrictions on corporate and union contributions to parties not only trample First Amendment rights of parties and their supporters in a manner well beyond any compelling governmental interest, but they also dry up funds that expand political participation. Further, Shays-Meehan would ban all contributions from parties to non-profit organizations. Political parties frequently give money to non-profit political groups to facilitate voter registration and issue-based voter mobilization effots. These restrictions threaten the viability of non-profit organizations that exist for these purposes, and will likely further suppress voter turnout by student and minority groups.
The two-party system has been a stabilizing force in American democracy for two centuries. Parties serve as a filtering mechanism for money and interests groups and tend to center the American political system away from extremes. In my view, the unintended consequences of Shays-Meehan is to move soft dollars away from parties and directly into special interest groups, which tend to be more on the extremes of the political spectrum. This forces candidates to cater directly to those groups for financial and electoral help, instead of their political party. In short, I believe the new law will not eliminate special interest dollars, but will instead embolden and strengthen special interest groups at the expense of the parties.
The Shays-Meehan bill contains misguided and unconstitutional restrictions on issue group speech and, as a consequence, further empowers the media to influence the outcome of elections. Nothing in this bill seeks to regulate the ability of the media -- print, electronic, broadcast or cable -- to exercise its enormous power to direct news coverage and editorialize in favor or against candidates. This would be clearly unconstitutional. However, under Shays-Meehan, the only entities that would be free to comment in any significant way on candidate's records would be the media, wealthy individuals, PACs and the candidates themselves. Corporations and unions need only to purchase media outlets if they want to have influence over candidates -- their wealth and influence will not be abated by these so-called "reforms."
Equally important, Shays-Meehan fails to include adequate paycheck protection provisions. While Shays-Meehan infringes on business' abilitiy to participate in the political process, it does nothing to put an end to the mandatory collection of union dues for political purposes. All political contributions should be voluntary, and workers have a right to know how their union dues are spent.
Shays-Meehan is a bill that reduces Congressional accountability, silences the voices of those who dare to criticize public officials, and makes it harder for challengers to raise funds necessary to compete with the overwhelming advantages of incumbency. It is, in essence, incumbent protection dressed up as reform.
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I hope you will continue to share with me your views on matters of importance to you.
Sincerely,
Tom Davis
Member of Congress