The GOP commissioners disregarded the FEC recommendation on Dave Schweikert. | AP photo Why not defund the FEC?

President Barack Obama and the GOP House are both now talking about ways to cut federal spending. They want to target any agency wasting scarce federal tax dollars that could be eliminated without offending a key constituency. As luck would have it, there is one — the Federal Election Commission.

The agency charged with overseeing our elections has become a regulatory eunuch. This is largely because the three Republican commissioners essentially oppose any efforts to regulate campaign spending. As a result, they are blatantly ignoring laws they are charged with enforcing.


Just last month, these three commissioners disregarded the recommendation of the agency’s general counsel and overlooked freshman Rep. Dave Schweikert’s (R-Ariz.) failure to properly identify his campaign as paying for a negative mailer about his opponent in November.

In January, more than a year after the disastrous Citizens United ruling, the commission could not even agree on draft language for public comment on the decision’s effects on current regulations.

There are many other examples of the agency abdicating its responsibilities. Failure to act now seems to be the rule at the FEC, not the exception.

Leading the dysfunctional charge is Donald McGahn, previously a top campaign finance lawyer to disgraced former congressman (and now convicted felon) Tom DeLay (R-Texas). McGahn has openly expressed his contempt for election laws, admitting during a keynote speech at a symposium at the University of Virginia Law School to “not enforcing the law as Congress passed it.”

This is like a baseball player refusing to swing the bat. Armed with the votes of two other Republican commissioners, McGahn has been allowed to kneecap the FEC.

The problem, however, is structural. Lawmakers created the agency in 1975, in the wake of Watergate, to police elections. Of course, since fair elections are tougher to win than unfair ones, the FEC was not designed for maximum effectiveness.

By law, no more than three of its six commissioners can belong to the same political party; and it cannot act on anything unless at least four commissioners agree. Because of this, the commission is frequently deadlocked on enforcement matters.

Even worse, commissioners can remain once their terms have expired. They are appointed on a rotating basis for six-year terms – at least in theory. So two seats are meant to be open for appointment every two years.

In reality, commissioners don’t leave until their replacements have been confirmed. By the end of April, all but one of the commissioners – McGahn included — will be serving despite an expired term.

Obama could fix the problem by kicking out all the squatting commissioners and replacing them with people who actually pay attention to the law.

With his reelection on the horizon, however, like the lawmakers who created the agency, Obama may prefer an FEC that sees no evil. More than $4 billion was spent on the 2010 mid-term elections. And that may soon look like chump change, with Obama expected to raise more than a billion dollars for his re-election effort alone.

With McGahn firmly in place, the Supreme Court eviscerating campaign finance laws left and right and the president seemingly disinterested in addressing the issue, the American people are left with only a bad solution to a horrible problem. Our elections are for sale, and the government officials who are supposed to do something about it refuse to.

So, if we aren’t going to enforce campaign finance laws, let’s be honest about it. In the name of fiscal responsibility, Congress should defund the FEC.

Melanie Sloan is the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.