A First Step in the Fight Against Scam PACs
“We always talk about this is a bipartisan issue or that is a bipartisan issue,” Representative Katie Porter told me with a chuckle this week. “I'll just tell you getting ripped off is probably the most universally un-fun thing that happens to Americans.”
There are scams all over the place, but few are as brazen and unregulated as the phenomenon of “scam PACs,” political-action committees that effectively defraud donors by claiming they’ll spend money on one thing and then using the money for another—typically, lining the pockets of the people who run the PACs.
, scam PACs invert the usual logic of campaign-finance laws: Rather than the concern being that donors will exert improper influence over politicians, it’s the donors from an unlikely pair of legislators proposes giving the Federal Election Commission the power to regulate scam PACs.
