from SLATE:
Don't Ask, Don't Tell Campaign-Finance Reform
Would it make politics cleaner? I dunno.
By Steven E. Landsburg
Steven E. Landsburg is the author, most recently, of Fair Play: What Your
Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values, and the Meaning of Life. You
can e-mail him at armchair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Posted Thursday, May 24,
2001, at 4:00 p.m. PT
What do you get when you cross a law professor with an economist? An idea
that's both expensive and impractical? Maybe, or maybe you get just the
opposite an idea that's both practical and efficient. Or maybe you just
can't be sure.
The law professor is Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, the economist is
Stanford's Jeremy Bulow, and their idea is to reform campaign finance by
turning conventional wisdom on its head. While traditional reformers
demand full public disclosure of campaign contributions, Ayres and Bulow
want to make all contributions anonymous. If you want to give $100,000 to
George Bush, go right ahead. You just can't let him know you did it. And
therefore, your cash can't buy his favors.
Here, in brief outline, is how the plan would work: A trusted financial
institution say Vanguard sets up accounts in the names of all recognized
candidates. If you want to contribute to Bush, you write a check to
Vanguard with instructions to deposit it in the Bush account. Once a
month, Bush can see his total and make withdrawals to fund campaign
expenses but he never sees the deposit slips. If you want to prove you're
a big giver by waving your canceled check in Bush's face, there's nothing
stopping you but all he'll see is a check to Vanguard, which for all he
knows went directly into your personal account.
For an extra layer of anonymity, Ayres and Bulow propose a 10-day
cooling-off period to ask for your contribution back. That way, your
canceled check proves only that you deposited money, not that you actually
left it there....
Ayres and Bulow have written a 55-page paper to argue that their plan is
workable, constitutional, and politically feasible. On the other hand, the
Cato Institute's Tom Palmer predicts with confidence that "politicians
will find more ways around this restriction than two professors can think of."
http://slate.msn.com/Economics/01-05-24/Economics.asp
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine