Out of the Pockets of Babes

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 29, 1999 | by John Elvin

The Federal Elections Commission has asked Congress to close what it sees as a loophole in campaign-finance laws, the Associated Press reported. Children, high-school students and college students gave $7.5 million in political donations between 1991 and 1998, the AP said. A study by the Los Angeles Times found that many of the contributions were made coincident with maximum contributions by their parents.

Young people donated a record $2.6 million in campaign contributions for the 1996 presidential campaigns, a 45 percent increase over giving by that group in 1992, according to the Times analysis. "This is an area of great abuses where you have the absurd situation of small children supposedly contributing their own money to a candidate of their choice," Donald Simon of the political reform group Common Cause was quoted as saying in news reports.