Campaign Spending in Europe and America

Archive Report

Contrast in Systems of Financing

Passage of the New U.S. Campaign Spending Law

The widespread abuses of federal election laws during the 1972 presidential campaign have forced Americans to reexamine and to reform their system of campaign finance. It has long been recognized that at the state, congressional and particularly at the presidential level, political candidates have become increasingly indebted to private organizations and individuals who gave them money to finance their campaigns. But it took the Watergate scandal and the collapse of Richard M. Nixon's presidency to dramatize the need for change in the rules of the game of “dollar politics.”

Included in the unprecedented catalog of misdeeds which have come to be known as Watergate were specific violations of campaign spending laws, violations of other ...

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