So what exactly is the deal with the Republicans’ new outreach project, the National Council for a New America, and how is it complying with the letter and spirit of ethics rules and guidelines for financing?
Roll Call explored the topic on Monday looking at how the NCNA’s spending has been bifurcated. Its main Web site is hosted on Cantor’s official House Web site, and his staff have helped build the site, while other aspects such as its recent town hall event have been paid for out of campaign funds. In a follow-up editorial, they called on House Minority Whip Eric Cantor to refund his House account with campaign money for whatever has been spent on this, and for the ethics rules to be revised against this whole thing.
Jan Baran, an ethics attorney advising the group, referred any questions regarding the editorial to Cantor’s office. In turn, Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring gives us this comment: “As Roll Call reported, the NCNA is in compliance with the law and House ethics rules just like other congressional groups such as the Progressive Caucus, the Democratic Caucus, Republican Conference, and the Blue Dog Coalition.”
I spoke with Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, and she had some tough things to say about it, saying that it went against the overriding principles of the ethics guidelines: “This may be legally permissible, but it’s a pretty tortured reading of the rules.”
“There’s already so much, so many resources at members’ disposal,” said McGehee. “With the franking permissions and their own Web sites, they have a lot of official resources that they are given as members of Congress. Then to go through and say they are going to be able to use these to launch what is, by any reasonable interpretation, seems very much a partisan exercise — if the House ethics rules can be very tightly read to allow this, then those rules need to be revisited.”
McGehee also took issue with the comparison to the Democratic and Republican caucuses, or the Progressives or Blue Dogs, in that those groups are built primarily to advance their members’ ideology and policies, not as campaign organs. “There often are problems with some of these caucuses and the roles that they play,” said McGehee. “But what is noticeable here is the partisan tone. There’s one question here – and I would say this isn’t the only situation, but it’s notable for kind of the way it’s positioned itself – as not just about ideas or ideology, but promoting the interest of the Republican Party.”
A spokesperson for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told me that the group is still studying the matter, before deciding what to do about it.
Professor Larry Sabato gives us this amusing take:
I’d be willing to bet that the current funding arrangement is legal, because Jan Baran is one of the most skilled and careful campaign and ethics attorneys in America. But plenty of things that are legal are wrong. This is one of them. Taxpayer money should not be used to support what is clearly a partisan effort. Solid majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents would agree if asked. Let’s be honest. This is a bipartisan problem. If we could squeeze out the congressional expenditures that are primarily political and not governmental, we’d save the taxpayers hundreds of millions each year.
By the way, I had wondered why Cantor and others went to such pains to claim this new effort was bipartisan, when no one with half a brain would ever buy that. Now we know why.
