Washington — An associate of ours who once harbored political ambitions interned for a well-known senator and came away thoroughly exasperated: "He spent 50 percent of his time begging for money."
Even those who agree with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that money is an appropriate way to determine whether or not the constituency is buying the message, must be appalled that their elected senators and representatives are able to spend so little time doing what they were sent here to do.
According to statistics compiled during the 1998 election cycle, candidates running for office can expect to spend $100,000 of their own money and about $5 million on direct mailings or advertisements if they expect to win. Since all of this money must be raised in $1,000 increments from individuals or $5,000 checks from Political Action Committees, this translates into an enormous chunk of time spent schmoozing for change or dialing for dollars -- unless, of course, they are playing the big bucks game, in which they ask contributors to send unlimited "soft money" to the party. This money is then ostensibly used by the party for general purposes, but few doubt that it will somehow manage to find its way back to the state of the candidate who was responsible for the largess.
Here is what some well-respected politicians said after spending the bulk of their working lives in the service of the country:
Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine:
"As Senate Majority Leader, one of my responsibilities has been to schedule the operations of the Senate. And I can say to you that there's hardly a day in the past six years when I've been majority leader when one or more senators hasn't called and asked me not to have a vote at a certain time.... One of the most common reasons is that they are either holding or attending a fund-raising event that evening, either in Washington or outside Washington. If I put all the requests together, the Senate would never vote. I once had my staff keep a list of such requests on one day... and had I honored all of the requests, there could not have been a vote that day. It covered the period from nine a.m. until midnight."
Former House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill.:
"I have a great concern over what campaigns are costing these days, You know, I ran my first campaign (in 1956) for $15,000. And then by the time I got to my toughest campaign in 1982, it was $600,000.... When I look around the country and see some of these multimillion-dollar races, I just have to be concerned about that. The time that you spend raising money, and the number of fund-raising events I was obliged to attend or at least stop by -- gosh, you'd have five or six a night. It just wears you out doing that. Now they've started the breakfast routing. You can make more at a breakfast because you don't have to pay as much for the stuff you serve them."
Former Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn.:
"I do think that the amount of time people have to put into raising money is a serious problem in the country.... There's no way you can prove its impact on the quality of the Congress' work.... But when the members making decisions can't devote serious quality time to serious decisions, it has to (result in) a lower quality of work."
Former Rep. Leslie Byrne, D, Va.:
"You are constantly drawn by the siren song of trying to raise money for your race. And I think it's particularly true of the House, where you have to run every two years. This last race I raised $1.2 million and it was constantly, 'I should be making phone calls.' I needed to constantly raise money -- a very real distraction from the real business of legislating."
Former Rep. Guy Vander Jagt, R-Mich.:
"With the increasing cost of campaigns, a member spends far more time and effort and thought to raising money. And usually the effort is directed not so much at the individuals in his congressional district, but at the PACs, the special interests....
The money rarely comes in unless someone begs for it, and that someone is usually the candidate. Rep. Jim Bacchus, D-Fla., explains: "And the candidate himself has to make the calls -- because if the candidate doesn't make the calls, then they are offended because they think you don't care about them, even though you have always, always, always voted for them."
-- Jack Anderson and Douglas Cohn are columnists for United Feature Syndicate.
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