(00:00:00) One of the events in town that has nothing to do with our scenery really and has more to do with fairly serious matters is a conference a common cause Conference of common cause members occurring this week this weekend in the Twin Cities and with us today for a portion of midday is the chief counsel of the lobby group common. Cause can guide. Oh who is based in Washington DC. Good afternoon, Kenan welcome. Thank you common cause was started in 1970. And since that time the group has assumed the title of the citizens Lobby and public financing of Elections campaigns open meetings for federal agencies administrative deregulation. Those are just a few of the causes that common cause has champion and a couple of the things we like to talk about today. First of all can I'd like to ask you a bit about the organization itself. How many members in common cause right (00:00:49) now? They're about 225,000 members of common cause around the country now five thousand of whom are in Minnesota residents of (00:00:58) Minnesota. So, what's your And I'm a clout. What is your budget per year for (00:01:02) common cause it's I mean it varies depending on the size of the membership. Is it that can vary but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of four and a half million to five million dollars. I can go as high as six million dollars to periods when the membership is way (00:01:17) up. Now, how does the strength of common cause in terms of Staff people in the size of your budget compared with other Lobby groups in Washington DC and thinking of Lobby groups for business and labor. For example. (00:01:29) Well, I mean, when if you look at the reported figures on the lobby reports, we are the largest lobbying Group by 10 times or 20 times any other group in reality? That's more due to non-compliance with an old loophole ridden Lobby disclosure law and the part of other (00:01:47) organizations. Give us some details on that. If (00:01:49) you're the the old law that the law and under which we're operating now. Says that it's only if an organization's primary purpose is to Lobby. Does it have to register? Well the effect of that primary purpose language the way people interpret it is that very few groups registered because their primary purpose maybe in a for labor purposes or for a certain corporate purpose and their lobbying is just one means of achieving that end so that you find a lot of groups not reporting or Under reporting even if they do register is lobbying organizations. In fact, we had a lawsuit against the National Association of Manufacturers, which has a budget that's just a dwarfs common cause and they were not registered for they finally agreed to register after we sued them and they're now complying with the (00:02:40) statute. You mentioned that loophole in federal law, excuse me. And as I mentioned in the introduction to you Ken the common cause is taken the title of the citizens Lobby has anybody challenged your title? What sort of challenges do you get from the various (00:02:55) groups? Well, I mean You periodically here the challenge. Well, how can you claim to represent these citizens? We don't claim to represent these citizens. We claim that we are a citizen's Lobby and that we were organized for two reasons. One is to change the rules of the political game to give citizens and input in between elections so that they don't vote for the politician and have the politician go off and represent other interests and second of all is to show people how how they can organize themselves in a modern highly industrialized Society to have some some clout. We think it would be we successfully demonstrated that can be done and would welcome other groups doing this likewise. (00:03:38) I'd like to return to that issue of how you have demonstrated how people can organize on the local level for example, and perhaps we can get back to that in a moment. But I want to talk about to news items that have come up recently and asked the common cause stand on those two issues that today, for example, we had the news item that Tonight the house overwhelmingly approved the air service improvement acted as it is called in among other things that act would call for dissolving the mutual Aid pact among various Airlines and it would apparently deregulate Airlines. Well, even before that measure was passed by the house last night and has won some measure of Senate approval as well. The Civil Aeronautics board apparently was involved in what has been termed administrative deregulation. And I wonder if you could explain what administrative deregulation is and what promise of savings it may hold for (00:04:31) consumers. One of the things that that you find with any government regulation is over a period of years. It tends to get crusty and outmoded and its original purpose. No longer exists deregulation is sort of a coin word for how to deal with that phenomenon and that problem we've been looking at this whole problem of inflation in the country. For about a year and a half and trying to get a handle on it. And so the lack of innovation the lack of incentives the airline industry being a perfect focal point for that that kind of study and felt that there were some areas where competition would enhance the services that were being provided to people and that the government regulations were in an effect stiflingly that sort of that sort of endeavor. It wasn't surprising that you know corporations who you know continually complain about government regulation. We're primarily opposed to it in that case and waste the airline companies. Well because it's safe, I mean, it's me you don't have to compete you can depend on the the commission the Civil Aeronautics board to have worked with them to sort of set a floor under it so you didn't and they didn't have to worry about aggressive competition from somebody yet. Got the control of a management of a competing Airline. So it's sort of a Usual protection tennis aside, you know arrangement. I don't remember the specifics but there were a few Airlines who did want (00:06:03) deregulation. So perhaps some of the smaller (00:06:06) ones the smaller ones probably and that's a small ones but I think those are the ones we probably the more aggressive companies (00:06:13) and now the prospect of administrative deregulation or let's put it another way competition is being heralded as the new wave for the future in the Interstate Commerce Commission as well. And I wonder if you can give us some general background as to why people are looking at the interstate commerce Commerce Commission as the next Target for deregulation in the ICC (00:06:33) is traditionally been trying to balance off the sort of competition between Trucking and the railroads. I mean, it's one of the things that it got into more and more became a vehicle to protect those people who were already in the business and sort of keep their profits up in the competition down and number of people have been a beginning to focus on the ICC is Is a problem area and that it (00:06:58) well what has been the motive do you think for this Groundswell of support what appears to be a Groundswell of support among members of Congress for at least talking about (00:07:07) deregulation are I don't think you can discount The Proposition 13. I think you know that we have seen over the last few years dissatisfaction with the the lack of responsiveness of elected officials to to their constituencies the big I mean the first major push you see in that regard is foreign policy the Vietnam War you now see people you know members of Congress who are much more responsible about Foreign Affairs matters. The Congress is taking a much more active role in that that's creating problems for the administration of times, but that tension may be very healthy tension. I think that politicians have become more responsive. Then you have sort of the Watergate areas will question of being tied in with special interests, and that sort of thing people got people were dissatisfied. You had some reforms if it were an outgrowth of Watergate you now have this whole view that you know, politicians are really unresponsive in terms of economics and when you and when you look at you know how special interests operate and how many of them are. There are with this enormous growth in these political action committee set up by corporations from 89 in 1974 over 700 today, you know with potential of putting your literally hundreds of millions of dollars into Political campaigns, you're talking about power to stifle any kinds of change economic interests are you know have two goals one is to increase their share of the economic by and the other one is to protect it and they tend to cancel each other out so you don't get very much done and you don't get re-evaluation of various programs. (00:08:46) That would well you've let very neatly into one of the area's I wanted to discuss it's not the second news item. I had in mind but since you brought up the issue of political action committees what accounts for this rapid increase The number of political action committees who apparently are raising enormous sums of money. (00:09:01) Well, I think two things one is when we passed when Congress passed financing for presidential elections public financing the dollar check offer presidential elections, it released an enormous amount of money to go into Congressional races. And other races second is that corporations weren't really sure until 1971 that they could set up political action committees and and prior to 1974 wasn't clear whether or not they could use any corporate funds to set up the administrative costs of these now they can you know, they can administrator these funds with corporate funds. They can raise money from the stockholders and from management employees and number of companies are finding is to their advantage to do (00:09:48) so, so I presume that common cause feels that this is not a good way to conduct Kalitta political campaigns or at least raise money for potterpaul. (00:09:56) Texas at the position. Yeah, I mean, I think that the risk of of politicians being more accountable to the special interests that are giving this large sums of money is is very great and we risk undermining the accountability of public officials to their constituents to a great extent (00:10:16) and yet is it really any different from the situation that has prevailed in the past where it seems special interests have ruled this country for a long time in that area of giving lots of money to political candidates. Does that really change anything? And if not, why should we worry about (00:10:30) it? Well, I mean it we brought it out into the open. So people can really see it. I mean everybody suspected it before we've always viewed disclosure in the campaign Finance areas the first step that you had to move toward small individual contributions as a form of financing campaigns to break the Stranglehold that the special interest had over legislative (00:10:54) policy and the other half of that though. That the individual the citizens will be interested in privately contributing to political candidates is common cause convinced that there is that interest among the electorate that they would support political candidates either voluntarily or involuntarily through some (00:11:09) means. Well, I mean you have the dollar check off at the federal level and you also have a in Minnesota at the federal level. The experience has been that you just have each year. You have an increased number of people who who check off. I can remember when you know, when the dollar check off was first passed that the treasury Department made a great effort. I believed to sabotage it by not even putting it on the 1040 form not even letting people know that such a thing existed. We went to court and force them to publicize the information and and they did and as soon as they started doing that you've just seen the number of participants go up markedly so that now the checkoff is such that you could fund not only presidential campaigns but Congressional campaigns as (00:11:50) well. We're leap for a leapfrogging through a variety of issues here and I want to return to that second news item. I To at the beginning of our conversation can of that is the issue about the common cause study reported a couple of weeks ago about the relative openness of federal agencies in particular the meetings held by these federal agencies and the ability of citizens to attend these meetings. I recall correctly. I don't have the numbers on the top of my head but a number of federal agencies had closed meetings in a parent Defiance of federal laws and (00:12:19) right there were seven which we considered we've sort of focused on who had not had would had most of their meetings that were closed the export-import bank, which was first with a hundred nine meetings all of which were totally or partially closed. There were two agent three agencies that were fairly open TVA the ICC and the see a bee with the three that were fairly open in their decision-making (00:12:46) has so common cause is convinced in that open meetings are a significant factor in favor of what benefiting the electorate benefiting the What I mean by that is that you're convinced that it's important for federal agencies to have open meetings that they will be unable to conduct their work and an honest fashion, if they're not (00:13:07) well it turned em, if they have closed meetings the risk is that the regulatory agency will take into consideration factors that is not supposed to take into consideration when reaching a decision now the milk the Department of Agriculture setting the milk prices with, you know, did they take into consideration the fact that a large amount of money was given to Richard Nixon's campaign, we'll never know because those meeting there are none of that was done out in the open but you can you know, and it may not have happened. You know, they may not have been any sort of quid pro quo, but it's important to get the decisions made in public. So people can see what's going on and that way hopefully restore their confidence in the decisions that are made (00:13:46) you are the chief counsel for common cause in Washington DC. How long have you held that job? (00:13:52) For about three years (00:13:52) now in that period of time or in the period of time since 1970. Let's say since common cause was begun. What do you think are the major achievements of the group? (00:14:03) Well, I think that public financing of presidential elections is a major major achievement. The other major treatment is occurring around the country in which is not as visible and I counted as high as as the public financing Victory and that is the changes in the way local government has been conducted state and local government in a lot of states have Lobby disclosure statutes. Now that are very good campaigns are financed in a different way now or at least there's disclosure. There's some states that have public financing of campaigns like Minnesota. Does there are Financial disclosure Statute in effect and in most States now that require the finances of elected officials to be disclosed. That's all. Set of reforms there's I think we've been very instrumental in and I think that they've had a beneficial effect on the way government's (00:14:58) wrong. Do you find yourself more often than not at odds with the other Lobby groups or have you found common ground with enough other groups from let's say business and labor so that you can (00:15:07) cooperate. It depends on the issue like deregulation. We were we worked with the nadir organization and business groups on deregulation when it comes in terms of lobbying disclosure. I mean, we were at odds with almost everybody, you know, whoever people are they don't want to disclose what they do (00:15:24) lobbying was since we've covered almost every topic Under the Sun in an unusually on organized fashion during this conversation. I am compelled to ask you about deregulation. I think that if I recall the news items correctly the Senate is due for a final vote on The Carter supported natural-gas pricing compromises, September 27th. If I'm not mistaken, where does common cause put its position on (00:15:47) that issue done anything on that issue? I see why have you stayed clear? Well mean There's just a certain number of issues you can get into all right, but that seems like an important. It's an important issue. But there I mean there were a lot of others. I mean when that when that really came along. Well, we in terms of the energy stuff. We've been working to develop an energy program. What we're really talking about is in, you know, having one balanced research so that their new we start looking at new forms of energy and the department of energy help fund those new forms and as well as creating incentives for conservation the right now you still have utility companies their pricing that to encourage the use of energy instead of to encourage its (00:16:29) conservation now at the beginning of the conversation we mentioned why you are in Minnesota and that is because of a number of conferences this weekend give us the information on those conferences if you have it available, otherwise, we can pass that along you (00:16:41) don't they I mean the conference is being held in st. Paul and it's an all-day conference tomorrow. We can provide that information to you. Yeah, we can break that up and (00:16:50) get it to our listeners on. A day in just a few minutes. Well, thanks a lot for joining us and good luck on your visit in Minnesota. We've been talking with Kenneth guide. Oh, who's the chief counsel for the lobby group common. Cause again is based in Washington, DC.