Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 6, 1994 TAG: 9407060034
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Specifically, dollars.
Lots of them.
From 1984 through 1993, according to a study this past spring by Common Cause, communications-industry political-action committees made more than $36 million in congressional campaign contributions. During the last half of that decade, the Common Cause analysis found, an additional $14 million in "soft money" was given by communications interests and their executives to national party committees.
Granted, "communications" is a broad category that takes in everything from telephone companies to cable companies to the entertainment business to book and newspaper publishers. And on telecommunications issues, one segment of the industry is often at odds with another.
All share an interest, however, in the means by which information is and will be disseminated; thus, all share an interest in how telecommunications will be affected by government policies. The fact that they don't all want the same kinds of policies simply serves to jack up the campaign-contribution bidding war.
On the giving end, contributors of $2 million or more in PAC money were AT&T, GTE Corp., Bellsouth Corp., and the National Cable Television Association. That doesn't come as a surprise: The top communications-industry donors were those with the most intensely direct interest in congressional telecommunications legislation.
Nor, on the receiving end, is it a surprise that the contributions went disproportionately to members of the two committees - Energy and Commerce in the House; Commerce, Science and Transportation in the Senate - with the greatest voice in communications lawmaking. In the Virginia delegation, for example, the top recipients - by far - of communication-industry campaign contributions were Congressmen Rick Boucher of the 9th District and Thomas Bliley of the 7th. They also happen to be the only two from Virginia on one of the above committees. (The fact that Boucher is a Democrat and Bliley a Republican also fits another larger pattern: bipartisanship in the contributions.)
In an article Tuesday on the Commentary page, Georgia Congressman John Lewis argued in favor of the PAC system of campaign financing. The system gives grass-roots candidacies a chance, he said, by giving nonwealthy individuals an opportunity to pool their money behind a candidate who favors a cause in which they believe.
But, as the Common Cause report shows, the ideological and public-interest PACs cited by Lewis are only part of the story. The other part is that campaigns are too much financed by PACs that represent a narrow economic interest in specific legislation before Congress. Is it too much to suspect that the quality of the legislation, not to mention the integrity of the institution, suffers as a result?
by CNB