Here's the deal: Under current rules, each Member of Congress now can raise up to $2,100 per election per individual for their campaign committees. In addition, a Member can have a "Leadership PAC" that can raise $5,000 a year from donors. But under current rules, Members can't use the money raised in their "Leadership PACs" for their own campaigns. A "Leadership PAC" may give only $15,000 a year to a national party committee. This secret sleazy perk would change those rules. Under this perk, a Member could give unlimited funds from a "Leadership PAC" to a national party committee.

That would mean that a special interest donor - the head of a polluting corporation or a tobacco lobbyist - will continue to be able to donate up to $4,200 to the Member's own campaign committee -- $2,100 for the primary and then another $2,100 for the general election. In addition, a corporate executive or lobbyist could give $30,000 -- $5,000 in each of the six years of a Senate term -- to a Senator's "Leadership PAC."

But a Senator now could take all the donations raised from his or her "Leadership PAC", and give it to a national party committee. And that committee could then turn around and spend all that money on the Senator's own campaign. Put another way, changing the rules on "Leadership PACs" gives incumbent Senators the ability to legally raise more than eight times the money a challenger would be allowed to raise in a Senate race.

Changing the rules on leadership PACs gives incumbents a huge fundraising advantage, an advantage they don't need and can't justify. Worse, it helps special interests wield even greater influence on key policymakers in Congress, to the detriment of the public interest.