Article by Yuichiro Kakutani in "The Washington Beacon":
As candidates prepare to spend billions on the 2020
presidential election, Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) is working to put to
use more than $300 million taxpayer dollars sitting idly in a public
campaign fund.
Presidential candidates today may request grants from the
taxpayer-funded Presidential Election Campaign Fund to pay for campaign
expenses. The fund has accumulated more than $350 million, as no major
party candidates have requested public financing in the last 12 years.
The Iowa senator has introduced a bill to abolish the fund and divert
its money to pay down the national debt.
"Taxpayers see our federal government as spend, spend,
spend," Ernst said. "These are taxpayer dollars, let's apply them to our
country's debt and move forward. It's over $300 million right now that
could be used to close down deficits that we have in our budget."
Every year taxpayers can opt to make a $3 contribution to
the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. Lawmakers diverted part of the
fund to pay for pediatric research in 2014, while some have tried to use
it to pay for a southern border wall. In 2017, the House Administration
Committee voted 5-3 to approve
a bill that would have ended the fund and used the money to pay down
the national debt. However, that legislation was never voted on.
Ernst said the 2020 election can help the bill can
gain traction as Iowans and the rest of the country turn their
attention toward the presidential race.
"It's a big election year and we've got the presidential
cycle. And Iowans right now are really focused on this," Ernst said. "So
we have a lot of candidates that are running right now. But none of the
candidates that we see running this year have taken advantage of this
election fund."
While the senator said this type of legislation will have
bipartisan appeal, she does not expect it or any other legislation to
receive a fair hearing "until the impeachment trial is over."
"I would hope that most of our colleagues understand once
we're through the impeachment trial, we really do need to get back to
focusing on things that the public wants to see happen. And I think this
is a really common sense issue," Ernst said.
The fund was created in 1966
to curb the influence of special interest groups. At its inception,
nearly 30 percent of taxpayers chose to contribute to the fund, but
interest has fallen in the 21st century. Less than 5 percent of
taxpayers contributed in 2018, according to the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution's Tax Policy Center.
Ernst's bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Finance.