Dear OUCH! subscriber,
We at Public Campaign are deeply saddened by the horrendous acts perpetrated on our country on September 11. The past weeks have been a time of national mourning and resolve. Sadly, many of the people on this mailing list have surely been affected personally by this tragedy. Our hearts go out to you.
Our country and the world face new challenges, and we are sure many changes are coming. Obviously, the problem of terrorism and how to respond to it goes way beyond our purview at Public Campaign. But just as money in politics has shaped our government's decision-making in the past, we know that it will continue to do so in the future-even as the decisions made take on a greater life-and-death cast. Thus we believe it is imperative to keep working for comprehensive and democratic campaign finance reform, even as we all address other more pressing threats to our nation's security and
well-being.
One thing that will undoubtedly change is how we handle airline security. It gives us no pleasure to report that the airline industry now asking for federal control of airport security long opposed this step, insisting on contracting the work out to low-bidding companies that often paid little more than the minimum wage to the people who check passengers' luggage and X-ray their handbags. In 1978, reports the New York Times, the Federal Aviation Administration found that screeners failed to detect guns and pipe bombs 13 percent of the time in compliance tests, while in 1987, the agency found that screeners missed 20 percent of the time. Since then, the agency has stopped releasing figures. From 1990-2000, the airline industry provided over $61 million in campaign contributions to federal parties and candidates.
Another part of the problem of international terrorism is the money these people have to conduct their operations, an issue President Bush began to address on September 24 when he moved to freeze terrorists assets and to take similar action against foreign banks that refuse to cooperate. Congress tried last year to pass a law that would have given the Treasury secretary the power to bar foreign countries and banks from access to the American financial market unless they cooperate with money-laundering investigations. The banking industry blocked it with the crucial help of Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX). Perhaps not coincidentally, the number one career recipient in Congress of campaign contributions from the commercial banking industry is Senator Gramm. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, from 1990-2000, he received over $777,000 from the industry.
While partisanship may be on a back-burner right now in Congress, the old habits of Members looking after their special interest contributors have not changed. For example, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is pushing hard to attach a disputed proposal to expand oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness and provide massive and unwarranted subsidies to the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear industries to a defense bill moving through Congress, ignoring Republican colleagues who want him to avoid disrupting the legislature's newfound bipartisan comity. Inhofe has raised $801,000 from energy interests during his years in Congress, ranking him in the industry's top ten recipients from 1990-2000.
These are the first days of what the New York Times editorial page has called post-complacency America. Let's hope the public's increased interest in current events and policies includes close scrutiny of how our laws are made, whose interests are attended to and whose are ignored, and the continuing role of big money in skewing the process. For if we are going to be called upon to make changes in our lives, it is critical that we insure that the process is fair to us all.
Believe it or not, the informal moratorium on fundraising in Washington that began on September 11th has already ended; money has not disappeared from politics. We at Public Campaign and in the Clean Elections movement around the country are going to keep fighting to clean up the political process by freeing our elected officials from their dependence on private campaign contributions, even as we join with our sisters and brothers in facing the larger challenges ahead.
The staff of Public Campaign
