Sens. Orrin Hatch and Jake Garn, both R-Utah, will vote in several weeks on a comprehensive campaign-finance law that includes restrictions on political-action committee giving.
They know what PAC funding means to campaigns. Together they've received about $2 million in PAC money during the 1980s, a recently released report shows.Garn and Hatch crushed their Democratic opponents in their re-election efforts in 1986 and 1988, respectively. And in the process they raised and spent more PAC money, all very legally, than their opponents raised in their whole campaigns.
Garn and Hatch were key members of the Senate Republican filibuster in February 1988 that killed voluntary campaign spending limits. Both opposed the part of the bill that called for public financing of campaigns.
But now Utah's senators are in favor of a compromise campaign reform proposal that goes before the Senate in April.
Said Hatch, "Personally, I would be in favor of eliminating political-action committees. However, as it seems that all sides of this issue are in favor of limiting contributions from PACs, I will support any reasonable proposal toward this end."
However, the reform package doesn't limit PAC funding as other proposals would. At best, the compromise only makes it more difficult to stock one's campaign with PAC money.
Garn and Hatch haven't found raising PAC money difficult in the past, and most likely won't have problems getting the special interest cash in the future, even if the new PAC restrictions become law.
A new study by the citizen lobbying group Common Cause shows that between 1983 and 1988, the last complete election cycle, Garn and Hatch collected almost $2 million from PACs. PAC money is, of course, legal, and there is no hint that Garn and Hatch did anything wrong in soliciting the money.
Most often, the PAC money came from industry groups interested in influencing legislation before the committees where Garn and Hatch are the ranking minority members - the Banking Committee for Garn and Labor and Human Resources Committee for Hatch.
The Common Cause study makes one thing clear: The conservative Hatch and Garn look to business PACs for their funds, not labor unions.
Garn received just $3,000 from labor PACs, while he took in $544,043 from business PACs, the study shows.
Hatch, whose committee often deals with labor law, received just $12,000 from labor PACs, while he took in $1.3 million from business PACs.
PACs have truly changed the face of campaigning for national office. They've become the mother's milk of incumbents, and critics say that special-interest groups are buying Congress through their PAC contributions.
For example, Common Cause - which has a goal of eliminating PAC influence in America - found that in the 1988 election, U.S. House incumbents seeking re-election received $82 million from PACs, while their non-incumbent challengers only got $9 million from PACs.
More than 95 percent of those incumbents, Democrat and Republican, won re-election.
Critics say that inherent interest in keeping a campaign finance system that returns so many incumbents to office will thwart any meaningful campaign finance reform.