The Independent View: The Washington, DC K Street 5K

The Citizens United v. FEC decision has produced many attempts to overturn or change campaign finance reform, nationally and state-by-state. So here is another.

On Saturday, began the start of a new kind of movement against corruption. A movement that’s creative, and shouting to the hilltops for America to wake up and become part of the solution. The movement, created by united re:public and represent:us, hit the ground running with volunteers, donors and activists, with a 5k run.

Nearly 500 activists hit the streets of DC on K Street, called "Influence Alley", where lobbyists work, dressed as $100 bills to tell Congress to represent all of us. Speakers from Bold Progressives and The Tea Party stood together to tell America, "This is no longer about Right vs. Left, it's about Right vs. Wrong." There was music, costumes, and the runners hitting the streets to show America that we are sick of lobbyists running this country into the ground.

Think Congress is bought right now? It’s hard to believe, but things could get a whole lot worse and soon. In a new case called McCutcheon v. FEC, the amount an individual can spend per 2-year election cycle could go up from $46,200 to limitless! It’s Citizens United, Round 2.

Currently, the average cost of a Representative’s seat is around $1 million. A Senator’s seat is around $10 million. With a $3.5 million “limit,” one rich donor could buy three Representatives. Three, working in cahoots could pick up a Senator. Do the math. Congress is supposed to represent the people. All the people. Not just those Americans who are buying politicians. That’s exactly what’s happening and will continue to happen if we allow it to. Citizens United put democracy on its back, and Round 2 (McCutcheon) is trying to kick us while we’re down. This is not a fight that we can afford to lose.

Then to make matters worse, it is an open scandal in Washington that the Federal Election Commission is completely ossified as the referee and penalizer of abuses in national politics.

Karl Rove’s powerful Crossroads GPS money machine underlined the agency’s impotence last week with a snippy rebuff of a legitimate inquiry from the commission staff about the shadowy sources of the group’s war chest. Crossroads GPS archly replied that continued inquiries on the matter “are unnecessary,” but that if they keep coming, it will offer the same unrevealing response.

The election commission was asking for more details about the operation’s 2012 fourth-quarter report showing more than $50 million in independent expenditures but not a sign of who donated the money. The rebuke to the agency should be thrown back with a unanimous demand that election law be obeyed. But this is the F.E.C., one of the sorrier federal agencies, where standoffs engineered by the three Republican commissioners on the six-seat panel have stymied efforts to write regulations and enforce them.

The result is a mounting backlog of complaints about blatant campaign abuses. Campaign operatives flout the law, knowing that the commission is toothless. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision deregulating campaign spending by corporations and unions has yet to be spelled out in F.E.C. rules needed by campaign operations. “Everything gets objected to,” Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic commissioner, told the journal CQ Roll Call. “Everything requires a lengthy discussion.”

At the end of this month the F.E.C., already with one unfilled vacancy, will have five members continuing to sit though their terms have expired. President Obama should fulfill his old campaign promise to nominate independent professionals to the commission. Senate Republicans would doubtlessly block his choices, but it would draw public attention to a gaping failure in a democracy that is increasingly exploited by scheming professionals.