Carlos Lopez-Cantera on Government Reform

More disclosure of campaign contributions & fundraising

Highlights:
• Requires any electioneering communications organization receiving or making expenditures greater than $5,000 in a calendar year to file a statement of organization with the Division of Elections
• Requires all electioneering communications organizations to file regular reports of all contributions received and all expenditures made by or on the behalf of the organization
• Fines any electioneering communications organization for failure to file a report $50-per-day for each of the first 3 days late, and $500-per-day for each day afterwards
• Requires the caller of any phone calls made for the purpose of electioneering to identify the persons or organization sponsoring the call.
• Defines an "electioneering communication organization" as any group, other than a political party or affiliated party committee, [communicating by phone, mail, email, or other similar method].

Signed term limit pledge: 6 years House; 12 years Senate.

Organizational Self-Description: U.S. Term Limits, the nation's oldest and largest term limits advocacy group, announced that 14 new signers of its congressional term limits amendment pledge have been elected to the 114th Congress. The group includes five new senators, eight new House members and one House incumbent who signed the pledge for the first time this cycle. The pledge calls for members to co-sponsor and vote for a constitutional amendment limiting House members to three terms (six years) and Senators to two terms (12 years). The USTL President said, "The American people are fed up with career politicians in Washington and strongly embracing term limits as a remedy. Gallup polling shows that 75% of Americans support term limits."

Opposing legal argument: [ACLU, Nov. 7, 2014]: In U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (May 22, 1995), the Court ended the movement to enact term limits for Congress on a state-by-state basis. The Court held that the qualifications for Congress established in the Constitution itself could not be amended by the states without a constitutional amendment, and that the notion of congressional term limits violates the "fundamental principle of our representative democracy 'that the people should chose whom they please to govern them.'"

Opposing political argument: [Cato Institute Briefing Paper No. 14, Feb. 18, 1992]: Several considerations may explain political scientists' open hostility to term limitation:

• Political scientists were instrumental in promoting the professionalization of legislators.
• They are cynical about the attentiveness, general knowledge, and judgmental capacity of the average voter.
• They are committed to the conservation of leadership.
• They perceive attacks on professional politicians as a threat to their own self-proclaimed professionalism.
• And political partisanship may encourage them to oppose term limits.