Getting Around Campaign Finance Law

Much has been made in the last few days about the secret $1 million donation to the Romney campaign -- especially on liberal blogs. It is now known that the donation came from someone associated with the investment firm, Bain Capital, that Romney once worked for. The donation wasn't sent directly to the Romney campaign -- that would be a violation of campaign finance law, which sets the maximum donation of any individual to a candidate's campaign at $2,500. Instead, it was funneled through Romney's "super-PAC" (Restore Our Future), which was set up to support Romney's presidential run.

That may sound like a sneaky way to circumvent U.S. campaign laws, and if you believe that you are right -- but it is evidently legal. While it is still illegal to donate more than $2,500 directly to a candidate, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. FEC removed any limits on donations to a PAC. So the "friends" of candidates have gone out and set up so-called "super-PACs" which can accept unlimited donations -- and then funnel those donations into a candidate's campaign fund.

Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation (a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group), has it exactly right when she says, "We have long had a national policy of establishing limits on what the individual can give to the political candidate because of even the appearance of corruption. Now we have no limits in effect. Under the law, the candidates and the PACs are not supposed to coordinate. But it's a classic Washington wink and a nod."

It turns out that the million dollar donor is not the only person to max-out their contributions to Romney and then start funneling large donations through Restore Our Future. In the first six months of this year the PAC has received 90 donations totaling $12.2 million -- and 57 of those donors (who donated $6 million to the PAC) are individuals who had maxed-out their donations to the Romney campaign.

But before you Democrats get too incensed about this obvious end-run of campaign finance law, you should know something -- President Obama is doing the same thing. Some of his former advisers have set up a super-PAC of their own (called Priorities USA Action), and the only real purpose of that PAC is to funnel money into the Obama campaign. And 82% of the money given to that PAC is by wealthy contributors who have already given the maximum amount to the Obama campaign.

This practice stinks of corruption -- regardless of which candidate or party is doing it. It may meet the letter of the law, but it certainly violates the spirit (and intent) of the law. And it hastens this country's march toward plutocracy (rule by the wealthy class) by giving the rich a much bigger say in who gets elected than ordinary citizens. Somehow, this needs to be stopped.