Feb 7, 2008 -- Statement of Reform Groups Calling on President Bush to Act to Help End the Shut Down of FEC

Our organizations strongly urge President Bush to take action to help end the shut down of the Federal Election Commission.

Our organizations include the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG.

The FEC has been unable to function since January 1, 2008, an unprecedented situation in the thirty-three year history of the agency that has left the nation without a campaign finance enforcement body.

It is inexcusable for the country to be in the middle of the 2008 presidential nominating campaign without a functioning agency to enforce the nation's campaign finance laws.

Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, which established the FEC, the agency is composed of six Commissioners, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate for a six-year term. No more than three Commissioners can be members of the same political party. The statute requires that there be a vote of four Commissioners for any formal action to be taken by the agency.

The FEC currently has only two sitting Commissioners. This means the agency is incapable of taking any formal action.

Four nominees to serve on the FEC are pending in the Senate, including one of the two sitting Commissioners who has been nominated to serve for another term.

The sixth position on the Commission has been vacant since February 2007.

President Bush has provided no public explanation for his failure to even nominate a person to fill this position on the Commission.

The absence of four Commissioners to make formal decisions has meant that the FEC is incapable of enforcing the campaign finance laws, opening investigations, issuing advisory opinions, writing regulations, bringing lawsuits, certifying public matching funds, or undertaking any other activities that require the approval of a majority of the six-member Commission.

President Bush has repeatedly called on the Senate to provide up-or-down majority votes on his Executive Branch, agency and judicial nominees.

Yet, when in December 2007, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered just such an up-or-down majority vote on each of the President's four pending FEC nominees, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the vote on all of the nominees.

Senator McConnell apparently is concerned that a majority of Senators are not prepared to vote to confirm Hans von Spakovsky, a controversial Republican recess appointment to the FEC, who is one of President Bush four nominees to continue serving on the Commission.

By rejecting a straight up-or-down majority vote on FEC nominee von Spakovsky and each of the other FEC nominees, Senator McConnell is holding the other nominees hostage.

Senator McConnell wants hans von Spakovsky confirmed by the Senate to serve on the FEC even if he does not have a majority of Senators prepared to vote for him, as the price for allowing the three other FEC nominees to be confirmed.

In taking this position, Senator McConnell is preventing the campaign finance laws from being enforced in the middle of a presidential election at the expense of the nation's interest.

There is no justification for Senator McConnell's position that a nominee should be confirmed by the Senate regardless of whether the nominee has a majority of Senators willing to vote for him.

Our organizations strongly urge President Bush to publicly call on Senator McConnell to agree to an up-or-down majority vote on each of the four pending FEC nominees and to allow the FEC to begin functioning again.

If Senator McConnell is not prepared to allow the Senate to vote up-or-down on each of the pending FEC nominees, our organizations call on President Bush to break the logjam by withdrawing the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky and sending up a new nominee to the FEC.

Our organizations also strongly urge President Bush to move quickly to submit a nominee to fill the position on the Commission that President Bush has left vacant for the past year.