CAMPAIGN SPENDING: JUST WAIT UNTIL NEXT TIME

The polls tell us the public is fed up with Congress. Amongst the reasons given are misconduct by some members, free airport parking and other perks, overdrafts at the House bank, foreign junkets, golf and tennis outings, gridlock, "all talk and no action" and more.

Campaign finance reform is not one of the public's compelling concerns. It should be.

Here's how spending in House and Senate races has skyrocketed over the years.

Election Year and Amount Spent (figures in millions of dollars)

1978 $194.8

1980 $239.0

1982 $342.4

1984 $374.1

1986 $450.9

1988 $459.0

1990 $446.3

1992 $678.0

Spending on the 1992 election jumped 40% over the 1990 level. If it zooms another 40% this year, it would hit a billion dollars.

The Senate race in California between Sen. Diane Feinstein and Congressman Michael Huffington may set an all-time record in the spending obscenity scale at close to $50 million. Admittedly California is crazy half of the time, but $50 million for a seat in the U.S. Senate goes well beyond the outer limits of decency. (Note: Harry Truman, in his first race for the U.S. Senate in 1934, spent $785 in defeating the Republican incumbent in the general election.) California voters may be bored by now with the barrage of 30-second spots, but not so bored as to express outrage at a system that engenders such excess.

There really isn't a "system" in any real sense of the word. We have a hodgepodge of federal election laws that are easily avoided by gimmicks and contrivances.

We have a Federal Election Commission so overwhelmed in paperwork and so afraid to exercise any meaningful authority that it may be worse than nothing because it creates the illusion of supervision when none is there.

The FEC has to beg for its annual appropriation from Congress. Its success is measured by how few House and Senate members it has irritated.If the FEC were to irritate a lot of members by probing into their fund-raising, its budget would sink to zero.

Amongst other issues, candidate Bill Clinton advocated campaign spending reform. He was a new Democrat not to be beholden to special interests. Under existing law in presidential elections, each of the two major candidates gets "hard" money (federal matching funds) to buy television time. Each candidate is also permitted to raise what is sometimes referred to as "slush" money from private contributors to "get out the vote." There is now more "slush" money in presidential campaigns than "hard" money.

Clinton's 1992 reform pledge was nice rhetoric. Before the election, Clinton fully indulged in the loopholes of back door financing. He had to do so, he claimed, because President Bush was doing the same and the challenger couldn't fight with one arm tied behind his back. Clinton claimed he would change all of this when he got in office. But it seemed other things always got in the way. First there was the budget fight; then the NAFTA fight; then the health care fight and the crime bill. Campaign spending reform just didn't seem to fit in.

So in the final days of the Congressional session, an effort was made to tinker with a sick system. The Republicans predictably used the filibuster to kill campaign spending reform by a vote of 52-46 -- eight votes short of the number needed to permit a vote on the bill. End of reform.

If the American people really want to change the ways of Washington, they will forget about the symbolism of term limits as the way to political heaven. Term limits without campaign spending reform will not affect the nature of today's political process: money-soaked elections. Six two-year terms in the House; two six-year terms in the Senate -- all these races would be continuing magnets for a billion dollars worth of special-interest funding.

The system will sink deeper and deeper in the money morass. The public will clamor for change in Washington, but will not clamor for the one reform that would change Washington the most. Maybe it will take a cascade of $50 million Senate races for the voters to realize they are being had.

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for Pulitzer Publishing Co.