Congress has attempted to regulate campaign financing to prevent buses. Write a proposed law correcting the current deficiencies. .
Presidential candidates get part of their money from private donors and part from the federal government; congressional candidates get all of their money from private sources. In the presidential primaries, candidates raise money from private citizens and interest groups. The government will provide matching funds for all monies raised from individual donors who contribute no more than $250. Congress has attempted to regulate campaign financing to prevent abuses. The law has yielded mixed results.
Congress trying to regulate campaign financing to prevent abuses insures that the candidates are really serious about running. Insuring that the candidate is really serious they have to raise $5,000 in each of the 20 states from each small contributor. The government also gives a lump-sum grant to each political party to help pay the costs of its nominating convention. In the general election the government pays all the costs of each candidate up to a limit set by law (which in 1996 that limit was $61.8 million for each major candidate and $29 million for Perot). Congressional candidates must get their money out of their own pockets or be raised from individuals, interest groups (PAC's), or the political parties. Because the rules sharply limit how much any individual can give, these donors tend not to be fat- cats, but people of modest means who contribute $100 or $200 per person. The most a PAC can give a candidate in any election is $5,000, but the typical PAC doesn't donate anything approaching the maximum amount; usually it gives a few hundred dollars to each candidate it supports. Many individuals and corporations were indicted for making illegal donations (since 1925 it had been against the law for corporations and labor unions to contribute money to candidates but the law had been unenforceable).
