Whatever the intentions of its framers, the Federal Corrupt Practices Act was notable mainly for its ineffectiveness during the years following its enactment. The law contained limits on spending in congressional races that were so unrealistically low that they were simply ignored by federal regulators as well as by candidates. The statute also required disclosure of campaign spending by candidates for Congress (presidential aspirants were not covered). However, it was so imprecisely worded that many candidates chose to interpret it as requiring disclosure of only their personal expenditures and thereby reported only a fraction of their actual campaign costs.
In 1940, Congress supplemented the Federal Corrupt Practices Act with a provision in the so-called Hatch Act limiting to $5 000 per year contributions by individuals to a federal candidate or campaign committee. This had little effect on restraining large contributors: a candidate would simply set up numerous campaign committees, and a well-endowed contributor could give $5 000 to each.
The pressure for changing this loophole-ridden system began building after the Second World War and received a major boost when John F. Kennedy appointed the President’s Commission on Campaign Costs in late 1961 (President’s Commission 1962). In May 1966, Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, called upon Congress to pass comprehensive campaign finance reform - partly, he said, to deflect congressional criticism that Democratic Party donors were benefiting from lucrative federal contracts. “Despite the soaring expense of political campaigns, we have done nothing to insure that able men of modest means can undertake elective service unencumbered by debts of loyalty to wealthy supporters. We have laws dealing with campaign financing. But they have failed … They are more loophole than law. They invite evasion and circumvention. They must be revised.”2
But it was five more years before campaign finance reform was enacted into law. While reform legislation - belatedly backed by Johnson - was approved by Congress in 1966, it was suspended by the Senate a year later amid disagreements over how or whether it should be implemented.
Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971
Throughout both Canadian and U.S. history, campaign reform laws almost always have owed their enactment to scandal. “Response to scandal has been the usual impetus for electoral reform in Canada, whether it was the Pacific Scandal, the Winnipeg General Strike, or the FLQ crisis,” Patrick Boyer, a member of the Canadian Parliament, recently remarked (Canadian Study of Parliament Group 1990, 2). Likewise, the U.S. reform statutes adopted during the early part of the 20th century were a direct response to the excesses of the Gilded Age and the Teapot Dome affair; the Federal Election Campaign Act amendments of the mid-1970s were Watergate induced.
One of the few exceptions to this historical pattern was the passage of the original Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, commonly known as FECA. Instead of scandal, the legislative impetus was a concern that rapidly rising campaign costs were pricing many candidates out of the market. According to figures compiled by the Federal Communications Commission, the amount spent on television and radio by U.S. political candidates had increased 150 percent between 1956 and 1964. In 1970, the year before the passage of FECA, a study by the National Committee for an Effective Congress found that in the seven largest states where Senate elections were held, 11 of 15 candidates were millionaires.3
Ironically, FECA was destined to have little or no effect in controlling campaign costs. A provision was included that limited candidates for federal office to 10 cents per voter on “communications media.” This was replaced by a more comprehensive series of limits in 1974, which, in turn, were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 (see section below on the Buckley v. Valeo decision).
However, other provisions of the FECA have, over the past two decades, shed a great deal of light on the ways in which American campaigns are conducted. The Act established a framework for comprehensive campaign disclosure for presidential and congressional candidates, and set an example that state legislatures across the country were to look to as a model. Today, all 50 states require some form of campaign finance disclosure for statewide and state legislative candidates - and often for local campaigns as well.
Under the provisions of FECA, political committees with $1 000 or more in receipts or expenditures are required to file regular reports. This monetary test closed the long-standing loophole in the Federal Corrupt Practices Act that had required reporting only by those committees operating in two or more states; this had long allowed committees operating in just one state to avoid disclosing their receipts and expenditures.
FECA also required that expenditures and donations of more than $100 by and to federal candidates and political committees be itemized and listed for disclosure, including the contributor’s name, address, occupation, place of business and the date and amount of the contribution. (The 1979 FECA amendments raised the threshold for itemization to in excess of $200.) And, in another contrast to the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, the new law’s disclosure requirements covered primaries as well as general elections.
Finally, FECA firmly established the principle of both pre- and postelection disclosure in federal campaign finance. The current FECA filing schedule (the 1979 FECA amendments made some relatively minor adjustments to the 1971 law) calls for congressional candidates to file quarterly reports during an election year and semi-annual reports in the “off years.”
In addition, office seekers must file reports 12 days before primary and general elections, and thereafter report last-minute contributions of $1 000 or more in writing within 48 hours. Like congressional hopefuls, presidential aspirants file semi-annually except for a year in which the presidency is at stake; they then must file monthly if they have raised more than $100 000. (This, of course, differs markedly from the Canadian parliamentary system, in which the uncertain scheduling of elections and the short duration of campaigns provide obstacles to disclosure once the election has been called.)
To collect and monitor the required financial information, the Senate-passed version of the 1971 law proposed the creation of an independent commission to administer and enforce the law. But this proposal was killed by the House of Representatives, and it would be another three years before Congress would create such an independent agency.
The episode illustrates the dichotomy between the Senate and the House on campaign finance reform that persists to this day. It is a split that transcends partisan affiliations. Many House members represent relatively homogeneous districts that provide them with “safe seats”; they are consequently leery of anything that disturbs the electoral status quo. On the other hand, members of the Senate - many of whom represent large, diverse states - are more accustomed to competitive elections and generally are less fearful of enhancing opportunities for political challengers.
President Richard M. Nixon signed FECA on 7 February 1972, and it took effect on 7 April 1972. Ironically, the law was to play a key role in the Watergate affair that led to Nixon’s resignation two and a half years later.
Revenue Act of 1971
President Nixon also signed the Revenue Act of 1971 after exacting a concession from Congress that public financing of presidential elections would be postponed until after the 1972 election. This saved Nixon, then seeking his second term, from having to compete under a system of public financing.
The Revenue Act of 1971 had its origins in the 1966 Long Act (named for Sen. Russell B. Long, D-Louisiana). The Senate thwarted the implementation of that Act in 1967. The 1971 law reflected the Long Act in that it created a Presidential Election Campaign Fund supplied by a $1 “checkoff” on federal income tax returns. But the Revenue Act revised Long’s original proposal so that the funding would go directly to presidential candidates rather than being funnelled through political parties. The latter proposal had engendered criticism from several legislators who feared it
