"It's a campaign finance scandal of a kind we haven't seen before," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a campaign finance watchdog group. "We have no agency capable of overseeing, implementing and enforcing the nation's campaign finance laws in the middle of a presidential and congressional election year."

At issue is President Bush;s nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the commission, the Democrats want an up or down vote on the nomination leaving the two sides at a stalemate with the outcome being virtually no oversight of our campaign finance system. In addition the FEC has been unable to act on Senator John McCain’s request, given two months ago, to withdraw from the public financing system for the primary campaign. A campaign that is now virtually over with McCain as the presumptive nominee.

We are basically looking at a complete breakdown of oversight and a failure of government to implement a public financing system because the two parties cannot come to an agreement. Congress seems the same under Democratic control as it was under Republican.