Apr 6, 2008 -- CQ Weekly: Flimsy Fines No Deterrent
By :Bart Jansen

Partisan bickering over nominations in the Senate has left the Federal Election Commission without enough members to conduct business, and so it's virtually powerless to police this year's election. But even when the FEC was fully functional, it was not the Eliott Ness of campaign finance law.

The commission's built-in division between three Republican members and three Democrats seems to guarantee relatively lenient punishment for those violating campaign law — so lenient that the fines might almost be considered a cost of doing political business.

After the 2004 election, the FEC reached settlements totaling less than $3 million with several "527" advocacy groups for violating the law — fines that amounted to four-tenths of 1 percent of the $681 million such groups raised to make their points of view heard in the campaign. The 527s (the nickname refers to a section of the tax code describing them) are permitted to raise and spend unlimited amounts as long as they don't explicitly call for the election or defeat of a particular candidate; if they do, they must abide by limits imposed on political action committees.

The FEC found, for example, that a 527 run by the League of Conservation Voters had canvassed expressly for Democratic nominee John Kerry and against the re-election of President Bush . The $180,000 settlement was less than 3 percent of the $6.7 million the group had raised. Perhaps the most prominent 527 of that election, Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, paid a $299,500 fine for exceeding contribution limits because it went after Kerry by name in the campaign — but by that time the group had raised $12.5 million from individuals who exceeded the giving limits and $715,000 from companies that weren't supposed to give at all.

In February 2007, the Progress for America Voters 527 got a $750,000 penalty because it had run ads saying "Bush will be the best man to lead us in the war against terror" — at the same time raising 70 percent of its $45 million budget from just 13 people. The penalty amounted to less than 2 percent of that revenue.

Despite such easy handling, campaign watchdogs want the FEC back in operation. Says J. Gerald Hebert , executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, "An FEC that is up and running is certainly better than no FEC at all."