Difficulty of interpretting disclosure data

[Reed Davis <rd100@delphi.com>]

> However, without knowing who the donators are and if they
> represent a special interest, it is hard to know until long
> after the election when the research has been done, just who
> you really voted for. There is probably a solution to this
> problem with disclosure but I'm not legally savvy enough to
> know what would be allowable.
>
> I support disclosure in combination with contribution caps and
> other restrictions - I certainly wouldn't view it as anything
> but one more piece of the puzzle of CFR.

I agree.  I support disclosure but it will be very difficult
to sort through all the data.  Not only do you need to know
the contributor and how much they gave, you need to know the
interests of that contributor and what bills affecting those
interests may soon be before Congress or, more importantly,
before a committee on which the candidate sits.  I attempted
to look at some of the specific campaign finance data that was
available a few years ago found it very difficult to interpret.

I had a somewhat easier time with general campaign finance data
but even this was difficult to interpret.  I've posted the data
at http://home.netcom.com/~rdavis2/acmpfin.html .  The graph of
House Receipts by Party shows that contributions to Republicans
shot up after they won the House in 1994, suggesting that donors
prefer to contribute to the majority party.  The graph of the
Senate Receipts by Party doesn't show this relationship but,
instead, shows a large increase in contributions to Republican
challengers in 1994 itself, possibly helping them take over the
Senate in that year.  Most all of the graphs show a strong
preference for contributing to incumbants.  This is especially
true of PAC contributions.

Probably the most unexpected data to me was the total federal
receipts at http://home.netcom.com/~rdavis2/cffedrec.html . It
shows that the total federal campaign receipts from the 1995-96
cycle was about $2.5 billion.  This includes the presidential,
Senate, and House elections as well as soft money given to
national parties.  This $2.5 billion is less than one tenth of
one percent of the federal budget for those two years.  At this
level, we could fund all federal elections for the next decade
for far less than one percent of Bush's proposed tax cut.
There may be arguments against public campaign financing but
the unaffordability of it is not one of them.

Reed Davis