Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am here today to speak in support of your efforts to reform the laws concerning campaign finance in this country. As a member of the Federal Election Commission for sixteen years, I have seen many election cycles come and go, and I hope that the current wave of reform will have a true impact on how campaigns are run. To this end, I wish to outline for the committee the recent legislative recommendations of the FEC, our current budget requests, and some thoughts on the future before I answer your questions.
On March Third of this year the FEC released its annual slate of recommendations for the Congress to consider. We feel that all of these recommendations enhance the authority of the FEC to act quickly and judiciously while reducing the bureaucratic and financial burden imposed on both campaigns and our agency. First, we recommended that the increase of electronic filing of election reports along with the use of registered mail would reduce the time taken to issue reports, as well as adding to the accountability of campaigns. Second, the bookkeeping measures of reports and contribution limits based solely on election cycles instead of the current calendar year and election cycle based system would save time and money. Third, the enhancement of FEC authority by allowing it to prosecute its own cases, issue injunctions, issue subpoenas through any commissioner, and the reauthorization of random audits would be a first step in giving the FEC some "teeth" with which to do its job more effectively.
I would also like the committee to consider both our FY 1997 budget enhancement request and our FY 1998 budget request as crucial to the continued stable operations of the FEC. The election cycle of 1996 generated a third more complaints than the 1994 election. Among them are several allegations of violations of unparalleled scale. These cases entail complex factual matters, contentious legal and constitutional issues, and involve millions of dollars and thousands of financial transactions requiring detailed review. The law's confidentiality provisions preclude much elaboration of these matters, but we all read the newspapers and know well the alleged excesses that arose in this election. The alleged abuses involve fundraising from non-resident nationals, the use of soft money possibly used to circumvent the party spending limits on behalf of publicly funded presidential candidates, coordination in assertedly independent expenditures, and massive, but undisclosed, expenditures on issue advertisements with an electioneering message by labor and business interests.
If the FEC is to conduct a thorough investigation of these concerns, the Congress must authorize more money. I also wish to emphasize that if the Congress plans to add to the responsibilities of the FEC, money will also be necessary for us to add staff and equipment to properly handle implementation. The FEC submitted to the OMB two budget requests for FY 1998: one at a bare bones, minimal operating level, and one at a level that approximates the FEC budget in 1995, which would allow us to more effectively investigate the many cases that now come before us. Given the fiscal climate, we did not even propose an enhanced performance funding level. The OMB chose to use the bare bones, 29.3 million dollar request. This was before the flood of requests that came as a result of the 1996 election. I urge this committee and rest of the Congress to consider our supplemental requests for this year as well as our FY 1998 budget as crucial to the effectiveness of enforcement.
Finally, I would like to implore the committee, in its current discussions on campaign finance reform, to heed the calls from the media and others and strengthen the decisiveness and authority of the FEC. A recent Washington Post article mentioned that "No significant overhaul of campaign finance is likely to succeed without a concomitant invigoration of the FEC...[which] would require reversing more than two decades of history during which all three branches of government seemed to conspire in neutering the commission." I urge the members of the committee to consider the FEC in its deliberations. Help us help the process by giving us the tools to effectively carry out our mandate. The beneficiaries of this will be not only ourselves, but the American people as well. Thank you Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. This concludes the prepared testimony, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have at this time.
Parts of this speech were adapted from FEC Vice-chair Joan Aiken's testimony before the Budget Committees, found at http://www.fec.gov/press/testim2.html
The quote is from the Washington Post of February 12, 1997, "The Little Agency That Can't" by Benjamin Weiser and Bill McAllister.