The Economist: on Government Reform


Al Gore: Ban soft money and provide free broadcast time

Al Gore might well wish campaign finance reform had not raised its head. An acknowledged king of soft-money, he has not lived down fundraising issues from a Buddhist monastery and using White House telephones. Nonetheless, perhaps to salve his conscience, he now said he would:
  • Ban soft money
  • Set up a “Democracy Endowment” that would allow individuals, corporations and unions to contribute to a non-partisan trust used to help provide money for any congressional candidate who agrees to spending limits
  • Provide of free broadcast time
  • Gore says that the first bill he will support and sign as president will be a campaign-finance reform bill.
    Source: The Economist, “Issues 2000” special Sep 30, 2000

    George W. Bush: Ban some soft money; fewer restrictions on individuals

    Bush has no interest in changing campaign finance rules. He has raised a record amount of money, more than $100M (though only a small part of that is "soft" money, $83M of it coming from individual donations). He also accepted $500,000 in the 1999 Texas legislative session from polluters he had exempted from mandatory cleanup rules. But he, like Gore, has responded to McCain's challenge by devising a reform plan. It would:
  • Ban soft money from unions and corporations, but not from individuals
  • Raise the limit on individual donations from $1,000 to $3,400 in each election
  • Introduce "paycheck protection", by which union members would have to give approval for their dues to be spent on political activities
  • Introduce weekly Internet disclosure of all contributions
  • Reformers say the soft-money ban is undermined by the exemption for individuals. They detect (not surprisingly) an anti-union bias. And they know his heart is not in it.
    Source: The Economist, "Issues 2000" special Sep 30, 2000

    Jeff Sessions: 1986: Voting Rights Act of 1965 is "intrusive legislation"

    Expect Democrats to bring up Sessions's role as attorney-general in overseeing voting rights, even after federal monitoring of state and local election rules has been sharply reduced by the Supreme Court. During his confirmation hearing back in 1986, Sessions agreed that he had called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) a "piece of intrusive legislation." By the time he became a senator his tone had greatly changed. He voted to reauthorise the VRA and sponsored legislation to honour with the Congressional Gold Medal the black civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, who endured racist violence at the hands of local police to promote the cause of voting. In Senate hearings Sessions frequently said that there had been serious racial discrimination against blacks in the South.
    Source: The Economist on 2017 Trump transition/confirmation hearings Nov 18, 2016

    Jeff Sessions: The South has changed; no longer any need to monitor voting

    Sessions sided with those conservatives who argued that the South had changed, making it unnecessary to maintain Section Five of the Voting Rights Act which obliged a long list of jurisdictions with a history of racism to seek federal "preclearance" for any change to electoral laws, down to the location of polling places. In time the Supreme Court would come to agree with Sessions and colleagues, striking down Section Five.

    Democrats and civil-rights groups charge that Republican-run state governments across the South responded with a spate of laws making it harder to vote. As a senator Sessions has opposed calls for Congress to step in and restore federal powers over voting laws, saying in 2014: "To pass a law in the U.S. Congress that provides penalties only to some states and not to others can only be justified for the most extraordinary circumstances. And the justification no longer exists."

    Source: The Economist on 2017 Trump transition/confirmation hearings Nov 18, 2016

    • The above quotations are from Columns and news articles in The Economist magazine.
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