A bit more on those dueling NYT and WSJ estimates of outside group spending and what to make of them: The Journal's figures include state and local spending, which in the case of a public employee union like AFSCME, would account for quite a lot of political activity. That's one reason why the NYT's number, which does not appear to include such figures, seems to greatly understate AFSCME's spending. (Another reason, as I noted earlier today, is that unions spend most of their money on mobilizing their members through internal means, not via television advertising--and only public communications like television ads must be reported to the FEC before election day. I still can't account for why the Times would show mysteriously low figures for other outside groups who do primarily run television ads.)

The Chamber itself, by the way, has responded to the Journal's story about AFSCME's huge political budget on its blog:

Turns out the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) -- the friendly DMV clerk down the street -- is pouring money into Democratic campaigns at a rate that would make George Soros blush, "spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections after tapping into a $16 million emergency account to help fortify the Democrats' hold on Congress." Their members, who, the article notes, pay an average of $390 a year in dues, must be gratified at where their money is going.

Businesses of all sizes elect to join the U.S. Chamber -- membership, and even dues levels, are voluntary. But if you're in AFSCME, you don't have any such luxury. Like the Roach Motel, once you check in, you can never check out -- but your money will keep going to support Democratic candidates, whether you agree with them or not.

The full post reflects growing frustration on the right that the current debate over campaign spending doesn't do justice to the major role of labor unions, the influence their political money may be buying, and the fact that not all dues-paying union members support their national union's political agenda (even though the great majority do).

But that's not what's new in this election. What's new is the sudden explosion of potentially corporate-funded independent political groups, often of secretive origins, who spend tens of millions of dollars to elect and defeat candidates without disclosing where a single dollar of it comes from.

You may have noticed that the front pages of today's New York Times and Wall Street Journal seem to paint rather different portraits of who's spending what in the midterm election campaign. According to the Journal, the giant public-employee union AFSCME (or "the bureaucrats union," as an email just in from a conservative group puts it) now leads all independent groups in their campaign output. But according to a graphic in the Times, AFSCME doesn't even make the top 10. As Jesse Zwick explains, the variance is partly due to different ways of measuring spending. The Times is looking at money already spent through October 18 and tabulated by sources like the Federal Election Commission. The Journal looked at spending pledges, which includes money the various groups expect to have spent when all is said and done.

A spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce has already told me that the Times' figure of $21.1 million spent understates the Chamber's spending total to date by $7 million. That's still a surprisingly low figure given that the Chamber has pledged to spend $75 million in this campaign. It would leave them with nearly $50 million to get out the door in the election's final two weeks--which I suppose is theoretically possible but does raise the question of whether the Chamber (and perhaps other groups vying for attention and clout in this cycle) have been inflating their financial punching weight. I've asked whether the Chamber is still on track to reach its spending goal and will update if and when I get an answer.

And what about AFSCME? According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the union is the tenth-biggest spender to date, at a little over $10 million. That's small fraction of the $87.5 million the Journal says AFSCME will have spent by election day. But as Ben Smith notes, such groups only have to report their spending on public communications (like television ads) to the FEC on a regular basis. And unions in particular spend a large chunk of their political budget on so-called member-to-member communications and voter mobilization efforts which don't have to be disclosed during a campaign.

Overall, then, I would say that the Journal story presents a more accurate picture of who's spending big money. Throw in another $84 million from other big liberal unions, by the Journal's tally, and labor will spend at least $171 million. Which means that Democrats won't be totally swamped by those conservative groups orchestrated by the likes of Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie and Haley Barbour. (By the Journal's tally, the top conservative groups clock in at $130 million--although that doesn't count Barbour's Republican Governors Association, which may outspend its Democratic equivalent by tens of millions of dollars in state house races nationwide.)

But there are some important caveats to note here. One is that Democrats say union spending totals can deliver less than meets the eye because so much of it involves member-to-member activity and get-out-the-vote efforts, important priorities to be sure, but not ones that serve the critical battle of the television airwaves. Some Democrats also consider union advertising less helpful than that of other outside groups with a purely partisan agenda because union priorities--say, opposing public employee layoffs--aren't always an ideal fit for a Democratic candidate in a particular area.

Finally, and most importantly, the real objection of campaign finance reformers about the conservative groups is that they are fueled by anonymous donations. It's no secret where union money comes from: rank-and-file workers who pay modest annual dues. When you see an AFSCME ad, you know it's not carrying water for one particular corporation or, say, a Texas housing mogul. When you see a Chamber of Commerce ad, you do know that it represents corporate money. But you don't know whether it's the product of 100 donations from mid-sized businesses or, perhaps a lone $5 million check from an energy or insurance company. And that's the question at the core of the current debate about the avalanche of independent-group spending in this election: Does the public have the right to know where, exactly, the money is coming from?

The New York Times provides some new details into the sources of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's money:

These records show that while the chamber boasts of representing more than three million businesses, and having approximately 300,000 members, nearly half of its $149 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 donors. Many of those large donations coincided with lobbying or political campaigns that potentially affected the donors.

Dow Chemical, for example, sent its $1.7 million to the chamber in the past year to cover not only its annual membership dues, but also to support lobbying and legal campaigns. Those included one against legislation requiring stronger measures to protect chemical plants from attack.

That's hardly shocking--the Chamber makes little secret of its role as a lobbying vehicle for its donors. And by my read the story doesn't tell us anything about who, exactly, is funding the Chamber's $75 million midterm election advertising campaign. Although it is pretty clear that it's not driven overwhelmingly by mom-and-pop Main Street businesses.

Bipartisan consensus may seem particularly evanescent these days, but here's something the 112th Congress, split or not, can address: Government Sponsored Entity reform. The news today from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could end up needing as much as $363 billion in government help by 2013 is hair-raising at best.

The Treasury Department study mandated by Dodd-Frank on how to extract the government from this mess is due to Congress by January 31 of next year. Regardless of whether it's Barney Frank, Spencer Bachus or someone else at the helm of the House Financial Services Committee, everybody seems to agree that things need to change. As I wrote back when Dodd-Frank passed, it's a matter of when not if. In the mean time, here's what that study is supposed to be considering:

Read More…

Considering what may be the toughest foreign policy quandary of Barack Obama's presidency, Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security reminds us of a famous credo:

"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

Exum continues:

George Bush said that on 11 September 2001. And whatever you think of the former president, not distinguishing between transnational terror groups and the individuals, groups and states that sponsor them makes a high degree of sense. What to do, then, about a country that, on the one hand, supplies much of the intelligence that allows the United States and its allies to target al-Qaeda but, on the other hand, most certainly also sponsors transnational terror groups to promote its own foreign policy? That's our Pakistan problem in a nutshell, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that U.S. policy toward Pakistan is schizophrenic....

Maybe we should invade (or threaten to invade) Pakistan's tribal areas, suggests former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad :

The United States should demand that Pakistan shut down all sanctuaries and military support programs for insurgents or else we will carry out operations against those insurgent havens, with or without Pakistani consent.... [T]he Obama administration should be forcing Pakistan to make some choices — between supporting the United States or supporting extremists.

Wait! Bad idea, argues a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker:

[T]he U.S. should not carry out cross-border military actions, which I strongly resisted as ambassador. They are clearly counterproductive, and not just because we hit the wrong target. If NATO can carry out military actions in Pakistan from the west, Pakistanis wonder, what stops India from doing the same from the east? There are other options, including drone strikes, which the U.S. is now coordinating more closely with Pakistanis.

So it goes with Pakistan. I wish I had a pithy summary for this debate, but it defies simple solutions. For the moment, our policy seems to consist of heavy drone strikes, private pressure, and lots of giving the Pakistanis more of what they want.

From Slate's Tom Scocca:

I just wanted to reach out and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider the possibility that you might not really know, given the contradictions between your husband's testimony and Anita Hill's, which of the two of them was lying under oath back in 1991. Give it some thought, and try to understand why you're choosing to act so certain about something you cannot be certain about. Women have misjudged their husbands before in this world, haven't they? Especially when their husbands' conduct toward other women is involved. Pray about this, and your desire to make a public spectacle of it again, and about the bitterness and anger you share with your husband. And ask yourself, about this and so many other things: if so many people consistently refuse to see the world your way—on matters of justice and policy and politics and history and fact—is it because they are selfish and perverse and willfully ignorant? Or might it be because they are right and you are wrong? OK, have a good day.

Discuss.

I missed this yesterday, but according to new campaign finance reports the Houston-based housing mogul Bob Perry, best known in politics for his support of the 2004 anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has donated at least $11 million this year to independent Republican campaign groups operating under section 527 of the tax code. Seven million dollars of that money went to American Crossroads, the group founded (and funded) with the help of senior George W. Bush advisors Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, and which is running negative ads against Democrats nationwide. (For esoteric tax reasons about which you can read more here, American Crossroads must periodically disclose its donors; its sister organization, Crossroads GPS, can provide complete anonymity to its givers. Here's the latest Crossroads GPS broadside against Harry Reid.) Perry has given at least another $4 million to Haley Barbour's Republican Governors Association, which also discloses its donors periodically.

Let's put this in perspective. The federal limit for one individual's contribution to any given candidate is just $2,400 per election. (A primary and a general election count separately). You can give $5,000 to any given Political Action Committee. And if you're feeling really profligate, you can give a whopping $30,400 to a national party committee. But the law also says that your total contributions to whichever candidates and committees you choose can't add up to more than $115,500 within a two-year election cycle.

So Bob Perry's contributions to American Crossroads and the RGA alone--and who knows how much more he's given to groups that do not disclose donor information--totals nearly 100 times the federal limit for giving to other types of political committees. (Read more about Perry's history of political activity here.) Never mind that these 527 outfits provide much the same function as, say, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. (One key legal distinction: The 527 groups can't coordinate with candidates or party committees, though in practice they're run by experienced pols who game out what that coordination would entail and try to emulate it without actually picking up the phone.)

There's something a little crazy about this; no one would design a campaign system this way from the ground up. What we have is a major loophole in election law that neither the IRS nor the FEC nor Congress is able or willing to address, something you can read more about in my new Time.com piece.

P.S. Republicans argue that Democrats have played the very same game in recent years to far less public scorn. And it is true that in 2004 527 groups like the Media Fund and America Coming Together spent more than $100 million on advertising and voter turnout operations to help defeat George W. Bush. For instance, a lesser-known liberal 527 (which in turn donated heavily to ACT and the Media Fund) known as the Joint Victory Campaign took in $16 million from Progressive Insurance founder Peter Lewis and another $12 million from George Soros. But the difference between then and now is that those liberal outfits were 527 groups which did periodically disclose their donors. Many of the conservative outfits now in operation, unlike American Crossroads and the RGA, don't have to reveal anything about where their money comes from. (That list includes that top Obama nemesis, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.) And that, reformers say, undermines a fundamental principle of post-Watergate campaign finance law.

Also, despite what Karl Rove may say, some top reformers did complain about those liberal groups back in 2004.