In addition to being unconstitutional, the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act is also useless.
Democrats today are kicking off a roundabout way of helping to finance their 2004 congressional campaigns with the very type of unlimited donations from corporations, unions and individuals that many party leaders had vowed to flush from the political system.The BCFRA is causing the Dems more problems than it's causing the Republicans, mainly because the Democrats generally depend on a small number of large donations while the Republicans are financed by a larger number of small donations that are made up of more "hard money". This may be counter-intuitive if you had previously thought that the Democrats are the "party of the people" and the Republicans are "owned by the rich".The strategy involves creating two new groups unmistakably aligned with the Democratic Party's long-standing campaign organizations for the House and Senate. Technically, however, the two groups are not arms of the Democratic Party. That is a key distinction, because the nation's new campaign finance law bars lawmakers from soliciting "soft money," the unlimited money that politicians still crave.
Some Democrats do not feel they have time to wait. With a soft-money ban in place, Republicans raised more than three times as much as Democrats during the first three months of this year. In recent years, Democrats had much better luck raising seven-figure checks from union leaders, trial lawyers and Hollywood moguls.Don't worry, the Republicans are forming these new soft-money groups as well, and in the end there will be just as much money spent on campaigns as there was before the stupid law was passed. It's all smoke and mirrors folks. Money is like water: it follows the path of least resistance to the lowest point available, and there's no one lower than politicians.In 2002, nine of the 10 biggest soft-money donors were Democrats, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.
