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Thursday, January 3, 2008

Editorial: Mass Mailings Another Incumbent Advantage

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    Tips on car maintenance, tips on home improvement, tips to convicted felons about voting— isn't that what voters expect when they send someone to Congress?
    Maybe not. But that's what people get, along with all the other junk in the mailbox. Maybe they ought to expect it, though, since members of Congress can send mass mailings at no expense to themselves.
    Of course, that means it's at the expense of taxpayers. An expense that often exceeds a congressman's salary— or even campaign mail budget.
    One egregious example is Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., whose 2006 mass mailings alone ran to $172,357, according to an Associated Press review of public records. A dozen other House members dumped 9.8 million pieces into the postal system in 2006, at a cost of $1.8 million. The House total for 116 million pieces of mail was $20.3 million.
    If this represented a vital channel of communication between representatives and constituents, the amount would not be an issue. But most of the slick junk mail has a lot less to do with keeping channels of communication open than with keeping an incumbent's seat safe from any challenge.
    Incumbents have enough advantages without a taxpayer-financed junk mail operation.