Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
Bartlet moves out the United States' ambassador to Bulgaria in order to open up a spot on the Federal Election Commission (1) and undo the FEC's creation of soft money (2). CJ runs a poll on how the nation is viewing Bartlet's efforts and correctly predicts an increase in Bartlet's standing. Joey Lucas offers Josh a literary reason why English-only legislation (3) will never catch on. Sam is caught wishing his friend Laurie congratulations on graduating from law school.
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The Federal Election Commission (last updated August 2001) (back to top)
Created in 1975, the Federal Election Commission is the independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law. It has jurisdiction over the financing of campaigns for the U.S. House and Senate, and for the presidency and vice-presidency and it includes public disclosure of how funds are raised and spent, restrictions on contributions and expenditures, and the public financing of presidential campaigns.
The FEC is led by six commissioners who are appointed by the president, subject to Senate approval,. No more than three commissioners may belong to the same political party, according to federal law codified at 2 USC 437c(a)(1). The commissioners elect two members each year to act as chairman and vice-chairman.
The FEC's structure and composition has often been a source of political and legal controversy in the agency's existence.
Originally, Congress played various roles in appointing commissioners to the FEC, but this was declared unconstitutional in the 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo. The FEC was then reconstituted with six voting members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate serving as ex officio members with no voting powers. In 1993, the presence of such ex officio members was declared an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The FEC has since been reconstituted into its current format of six members, all of whom are appointed by the president and serve six-year terms.
Still, critics of the FEC call it toothless, too constrained by the Congress that it must regulate, and designed to be ineffective. They have called for proposals such as giving the FEC multiyear budgeting so that it is less subject to political retaliation and changing the number of commissioners to avoid the deadlock that can come with a 3-3 split when there are no provisions for tie-breaking.
Currently, the six members of the commission are a mixture of long-term members and relative newcomers. Two members have served since the 1980s, but the other four have become commissioners since 1998. The current members are, in order of their length of service, Danny McDonald (since 1981), Scott Thomas (since 1986), David Mason (since 1998), Karl Sandstrom (since 1998), Darryl Wold (since 1998), and Bradley Smith (since 2000).
Sources: A useful primer on the Federal Election Commission is available at the FEC's website here. Campaign Finance Reform, edited by Anthony Corrado et al. (The Brookings Institution Press, 1997). Brooks Jackson, Broken Promise: why the Federal Election Commission failed (Twentieth Century Fund, Inc., 1990).
How did soft money come about? (last updated 9/16/01) (back to top)
The Federal Election Campaign Act is not explicit on whether nonfederal party funds can be used for fund federal elections. Instead, whether soft money is permitted has been determined by the Federal Election Commission that interprets and enforces federal campaign laws.
Soft money emerged with a 1978 FEC opinion that allowed state party funds to be used for voter registration and turnout drives in federal campaigns. This opinion reversed one made just two years earlier; that 1976 opinion had opened the door slightly for soft money by allowing some state party money to be used for some administrative costs of federal campaigns. Some have challenged the FEC's rulings in court, but such challenges have not met with any substantive success.
In 1976, the Illinois Republican State Central Committee asked the FEC for guidance on how to allocate nonfederal and federally regulated funds in paying some of their general overhead and operating expenses, as well as voter registration and turnout drives that would benefit both federal and nonfederal candidates. The committee also wanted to know how it could use corporate and labor contributions that were permitted under Illinois law but not under federal law.
In a 4-2 vote, the FEC decided that the Illinois Republican State Central Committee could use some of its funds for overhead and general campaign expenses in a 1:2 ratio favoring state campaigns. The committee had asked whether ratios favoring state campaigns even more would be permissible, but the FEC decided that "Federal offices should be given proportionately more weight, and not be equated on a one-to-one basis with, for example, State legislative offices."
At the same time, the FEC decided that the committee could not use state party funds for voter registration or turnout drives because federal law specifically prohibited a political party from using funds raised from a corporation or union for federal campaigns.
Thus, Advisory Opinion 1976-72 opened the door for federal candidates to shift some campaign administrative costs from the funds raised under federal guidelines to the funds raised by state political parties. The decision was bipartisan, as was the opposition. Democrats Robert Tiernan and Thomas Harris, and Republicans Vernon Thompson and William Springer voted for the decision, and Democrat Neil Staebler and Republican Joan Aikens were in opposition, Staebler largely for states' rights issues.
Two years later, the Republican State Committee of Kansas asked the FEC to revisit the voter registration/turnout drive question. And this time, the two Republican commissioners who had been in the majority beforehand switched their votes and joined Staebler and Aikens in allowing the use of state funds for federal voter registration drives.
Democrat commissioner Thomas Harris took the unusual step of filing a written dissent. He called the new majority opinion "clearly impermissible" under federal law. He also pointed out that Thompson's switch was particularly "puzzling" since he had written the position in 1976 that he was now reversing. "This sort of unexplained and inexplicable change of position on an important issue, which was carefully examined and decided two years ago, confuses those covered by the Act and discredits the Commission," Harris wrote.
Over the next few years, the FEC legalized other forms of soft money and gave state parties broad discretion in how to allocate funds between federal and state campaigns. The 1978 opinion also survived challenges by Common Cause, an electoral watchdog organization. Common Cause asked the FEC in 1984 to reverse the 1978 opinion; the FEC denied the petition in 1986 with a 4-2 vote. Common Cause then challenged this denial in federal court.
In August 1987, Federal District Judge Thomas Flannery upheld the FEC's 1978 opinion as not arbitrary or improper. On the other hand, he said that the FEC had failed to provide any guidance on the proper distribution of state party funds between federal and state campaigns, and ordered them to do so. A year later, the FEC still had not done so, and Flannery ordered the FEC to report on its progress every 90 days.
Finally, in 1990, the FEC issued new soft money regulations that took effect on January 1, 1991. These regulations required disclosure of soft money and set formulas to determine how various organizations could allocate moneys between federal and state campaigns. But they did not set limits on the raising or use of soft money fundraising, which opened the door for even greater use of soft money in federal campaigns.
It is unclear whether a change in commissioners or FEC rules - rather than the kind of legislative reform sought by people such as Senator John McCain - could now reverse the 1978 opinion and thus eliminate or minimize soft money. Members of Congress and President Clinton petitioned the FEC in 1997 to eliminate soft money through administrative rulemaking procedures (this is what President Jeb Bartlet tried to do in the first season of the West Wing), but some question whether the FEC has this authority. The FEC published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in July 1998 that would change soft-money procedures, but is still considering comments and alternative rules.
Sources: Federal Election Commission Annual Reports, available through the FEC's website, available here. Campaign Finance Reform, edited by Anthony Corrado et al. (The Brookings Institution Press, 1997). Brooks Jackson, Broken Promise: why the Federal Election Commission failed (Twentieth Century Fund, Inc., 1990). Common Cause v. Federal Election Commission, 692 F.Supp. 1391 (D.D.C. 1987). Common Cause v. Federal Election Commission, 692 F.Supp. 1397 (D.D.C. 1988).
Official English (last updated August 29, 2001) (back to top)
English is the most commonly-spoken language in the United States, with 86 percent of the population in 1990 speaking only English at home, but it is still not the official language of the United States. Since 1981, however, a political movement has worked to designate English as such in the states and at the federal level. This Official English movement has achieved success in about half the states, and Congress has considered such legislation several times without concrete results.
Substantively, the debate over Official English usually deals with two topics: the government's use of languages other than English in the conduct of government business, including publications and ceremonies, and the government's support for bilingual education. It does not involve proposals to require people to speak only English in their homes or in private conversations.
But the debate also seems to touch deeper nerves about American self-identity and the uncertain balance between immigrants' assimilation and their maintaining cultural separateness within the United States. Official English proponents say that making English the country's official language would encourage the assimilation of immigrants who cannot fully participate as citizens. Critics say that such a policy would only penalize those who currently do not speak English, deprive bilingual speakers of access to their heritage, and is of only symbolic value to a threatened-white majority.
The modern Official English movement began in 1981 when Senator S. I. Hayakwawa, originally an immigrant himself, proposed a constitutional amendment to make English the country's official language. Specifically, the proposed amendment would have barred the federal government and all states to make any law requiring the use of any language other than English, though it would allow educational instruction in another language for transitional purposes.
The proposal did not make it out of Congress, but Congress has occasionally considered statutes accomplishing largely the same thing since then. In 1996, Official English got its biggest federal success when the House of Representatives passed the "Bill Emerson English Language Empowerment Act of 1996," which would have placed an affirmative obligation on federal government officials to "preserve and enhance the role of English as the official language of the Federal government." This obligation would have included encouraging greater opportunities for learning English, ensuring that no one would be denied governmental services because he or she spoke only English, and conducting all naturalization ceremonies entirely in English. The Senate did not pass a parallel bill and this act did not become law.
Official English has been more successful at the state level. Since 1981, almost every state has considered and 22 states have adopted some form of law or state-constitutional amendment (Arizona's amendment, however, was challenged as unconstitutional in the late 1980s and finally, definitively declared unconstitutional on procedural grounds in 1998). Four other states (Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Nebraska) passed such laws before 1981. In addition, Hawaii passed a law adopting both English and Hawaiian as its official languages in 1978.
On the other hand, the movement has also given rise to laws that protect the use of languages other than English and encourage the study of foreign languages. In 1989, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon passed "English Plus" laws that protect the use of languages other than English and encourage the study of foreign languages.
Census data shows that most Americans do speak only English at home. According to 1990 census data, about 86 percent of persons 5 years and older spoke only English at home. Of the remaining 14 percent, Spanish is the most common language spoken other than English, and most people who speak a language other than English at home also speak English with full proficiency.
Still, many people speak English with less than full proficiency, and many speak no English at all.
About 8.7 percent of Chinese speakers and about 8.4 percent of Spanish speakers have no proficiency in English. About 6.3 percent of Portugese speakers and about 5.4 percent of Korean speakers cannot speak any English at all.
The following graph shows the 15 languages other than English that are most commonly spoken in homes, broken down by such speakers' proficiency in English. Of these languages, Spanish is by far the most commonly spoken, with 17.34 million speakers, or more than half of all people who speak another language besides English at home. French is the second-most-common with 1.7 million speakers. Chinese is fifth, with 1.25 million speakers.
Sources: U.S. English, Inc. is on-line here. James Crawford has an excellent collection of resources and updates at his Language Policy Web Site & Emporium, available here. Census data is taken from tables available here.
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