Line Item Veto

[nodoginnafight]

You're right, it's a speech issue. And again, I think that's a mistake. The political speech of organizations should not have the same level of protection as individual political speech. But until and unless that rule changes (and that is one Constitutional amendment I would back) what you're proposing is also unconstitutional.

What about the "local only" rule? - Only contributions from within the area that is covered? Do individuals/groups from outside have a constitutional right to donate to a candidate in an election that doesn't represent them?

Senators are State wide. Presidents are Country wide.

Gee, thanks for clearing that up??????????????????
Yes, there really is no such thing as a national election (The presidential election is really a series of state elections) but even with that understanding, my local-only rule would mean if the candidate wants to represent the entire county (prez) then donations could come in from all over the nation. Senators would be restricted to accepting donation from within the state they are running to represent, and so forth.

But it's mostly moot.

 

[nodoginnafight]

You're right, it's a speech issue. And again, I think that's a mistake. The political speech of organizations should not have the same level of protection as individual political speech. But until and unless that rule changes (and that is one Constitutional amendment I would back) what you're proposing is also unconstitutional.

What about the "local only" rule? - Only contributions from within the area that is covered? Do individuals/groups from outside have a constitutional right to donate to a candidate in an election that doesn't represent them?

Political speech is a Federally protected right, in other words an incident of citizenship (sound familiar?). As long as political donations are considered political speech, a local only type of rule is a restriction on speech.

OK, fair enough. Since mho is that campaign finance is the root of (almost) all evil in this regard (with the remainder being the oft-related "bringing home the bacon" re-election strategy) I guess the "unrelated earmarks" rules might be the most realistic approach.

But there ARE campaign finance and campaign donation rules that HAVE withstood constitutional review, so I'm not willing to give up on THAT - just yet. I just think campaign finance reform has to be a big part of fixing what's wrong in Washington right now. But maybe it's off topic and not really related to spending or line item vetos - so I apologize if I have strayed from the real issue under discussion.

 

[goldcatt]

What about the "local only" rule? - Only contributions from within the area that is covered? Do individuals/groups from outside have a constitutional right to donate to a candidate in an election that doesn't represent them?

Political speech is a Federally protected right, in other words an incident of citizenship (sound familiar?). As long as political donations are considered political speech, a local only type of rule is a restriction on speech.

OK, fair enough. Since mho is that campaign finance is the root of (almost) all evil in this regard (with the remainder being the oft-related "bringing home the bacon" re-election strategy) I guess the "unrelated earmarks" rules might be the most realistic approach.

But there ARE campaign finance and campaign donation rules that HAVE withstood constitutional review, so I'm not willing to give up on THAT - just yet. I just think campaign finance reform has to be a big part of fixing what's wrong in Washington right now. But maybe it's off topic and not really related to spending or line item vetos - so I apologize if I have strayed from the real issue under discussion.

I don't think it's off topic at all. The two are intertwined. If the pols weren't constantly begging for money and favors from the big organizational donors, there would be fewer earmarks added to curry their favor. Which takes me back to reserving individual liberties for individuals.

Not that earmarks are such a large part of the budget that they alone break the bank, but they're an abuse of the process and suck up time and resources that could be better used elesewhere. And they're the main point of a LIV for most supporters - although to be honest I'm not sure that's how it would be used. The temptation to single-handedly shape all kinds of legislation from the White House would be too great for most of the sort of people who want that job in the first place to think it would be limited to knocking off a few earmarks here and there.

There's more than one way to skin that cat, short of amending the COTUS. Campaign finance reform is one of them.