The U.S. furor over campaign-finance reform gives oil and gas companies reason to worry.
Nearly everyone agrees on the need for reform. Money matters too much in modern politics. Politicians devote too much attention and energy to fund-raising. Contributions seem too much like sanitized bribes.
The problem centers on what the political trade calls soft money-funds that do not flow directly to candidates but rather to political parties for "party-building activities." Unlike "hard money"-direct contributions to candidates-soft money has no legal limit.
Beyond soft money
Because both major U.S. political parties have fed hungrily at the soft-money trough, President Bill Clinton hopes to confine attention to these technicalities. But reform won't answer questions raised at the end of the presidential-election campaign about large donations to the Democratic Party from the Lippo Group of Indonesia. A party official and Lippo Group associate who worked in the Department of Commerce during Clinton's first term turns out to have been a frequent visitor to the White House.
Did Lippo Group dollars influence U.S. policy or official decisions? The White House says no. But its initial waffling on the issue looks suspicious. When questions arose about a fund-raiser orchestrated at a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles by the former Commerce official, John Huang, Vice-President Al Gore recalled the event as a community outreach project.
More needs scrutiny here than the heavy dependence of both political parties on money traveling the low road to legality. Reason exists to ask whether political donations affected official conduct at high levels of the administration. Clinton's sudden concern about campaign-finance reform and Democratic allegations of anti-Asianism look like dodges.
The oil and gas industry must hope that the U.S. can keep pursuit of a campaign-finance remedy on the high moral plane where it belongs yet retain its ability to make pragmatic distinctions. That asks much of the public and its elected officials.
With some validity, debate on campaign-finance reform often depicts political donors as fat-cat corporations and interest groups out to buy favors. People and groups do give money to politicians and parties in hope for something in return, usually access. Some political donors hope to turn access into special regulatory or legislative treatment. Others just want to ensure they'll be heard in the event someone in an official position tries to harpoon their interests.
It happens. Governments do enact "windfall profit" taxes. Governments do impose price controls. Governments do allow the statutory mandate for multiple use of federal land to evolve into regulation for recreation only. Governments do need to be warned of potential mistakes from time to time.
Indeed, most political activity by oil and gas companies involves self-defense. With government perpetually inclined to meddle in oil and gas markets and corporate affairs, this will not change. As a simple matter of business prudence, oil and gas companies will continue to require access to politicians. They can regret the need to pay in order to be heard, but the sentiment won't change anything.
Rights of expression
People, individually and in groups, have the right to express themselves and to pursue their interests. In a society glutted with information, attracting attention and expressing a view sometimes costs money. To this economic reality, politics will forever yield.
The under-handedness now corroding democratic processes results from the existence of limits on political donations, not to the number of dollars involved. Effective reform would replace funding limits with mandates for full disclosure about sources and recipients of political donations. The U.S. should let funds flow where they will and make certain the public can find out where the money goes and why.
Copyright 1996 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
