Cheap Victories

While most of Washington worries about inflation, seven Senators seem to have found a miraculous way to beat it. Each reported to Congress last week that he had spent absolutely nothing getting elected in 1968. Such a feat of legerdemain is not restricted by ideology or party; the Stingy Silent Seven include Arizona's Barry Goldwater, Georgia's Herman Talmadge, California's Alan Cranston, Arkansas' J. W. Fulbright and South Dakota's George McGovern.

Their reports expose the futility of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1925. Designed to limit campaign expenses, the act has never been enforced, and contains so many loopholes that congressional candidates, in effect, often ignore it. Senatorial campaigns can cost more than $1,000,000, yet the law requires a candidate to report only those expenses of which he has personal knowledge; thus many campaign committees purposely never show their man the books. The law also has a convenient provision that allows the committees to make no federal report at all if they exist in only a single state--as many deliberately do. The result is that unless a state has its own tougher reporting law or a Senator insists on a full disclosure, his expenses, so far as the outside world is concerned, are nothing to speak of.

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