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Common Cause and Public Campaign have launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to push for the adoption of voluntary public financing of federal elections. Their goal is to spur Congress to pass the Fair Elections Now Act. From Huffington Post:
Common Cause and Public Campaign, two organizations known for exposing the murkier influences on legislative and electoral processes, are staking $8 million to try and burnish Congress with the willpower to pass the Fair Elections Now Act. And they’re willing to spend as much as $15 million on their campaign-season gambit.
“We’ll draw it out until we win,” said David Donnelly, the campaign manager for the Campaign for Fair Elections. “We will continue the advertising, continue the grassroots organizing, continue the targeting and creative action.”
The bill would provide public campaign money to candidates who proved they had a broad base of support by raising a set threshold of small-dollar donations. The program would be completely voluntary but would at least give candidates a way to run a viable campaign without needing to beg rich donors and powerful corporations for money.
The corrupting influence of big-money donations on our politicians is one of the biggest problems with our country. It is effectively a form of legalized bribery, and the result is felt well outside issues related to good government. Why do we pay nearly twice as much as the rest of the world for health care? Why can’t Congress approve the highly popular deficit-reducing policy or drug re-importation? Why can’t we deal properly with the concept of “too big to fail”? The answer almost always tracks back to the fact that those reforms would hurt corporations with deep pockets. Corporations that are prepared to spend huge amounts on political campaigns.
While the corrupting influence of money is not the only problem with our government, helping to fix it through voluntary public financing would at least move us toward a government more representative of regular people. You can’t expect members of Congress to stand up to corporations when their jobs depend heavily on getting “gifts” from those same groups. It is like having the guards of the hen house paid for with gifts directly from the foxes.
Our system of money in politics is rotten to its core. If we ever adopt viable, voluntary public financing for all federal elections, I suspect in a few decades people will look back and be shocked that regular Americans ever tolerated the current system.
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Thanks for this, Jon. This is the best news I’ve heard this week.
A bold step, but the masses still opt for the status quo. A rather hollow victory I would say, for in the grand scheme of things it will change nothing………………
This is matching funds not public financing. They have to raise a total of 50,000 on there own from 1,500 people.
Ugh, 15 million bucks down the toilet.
Nothing can stand up to the Citizen’s United results.
It’s too late. Congress is not going to do a damn thing to thwart the corporate dollars rolling in now. Their only mission is to remain in power.
Too bad there are so many people who think it’s accceptable if they’re sold out by the people they keep electing because they’re a lesser evil.
Talk about ass backwards insanity.
Agreed. People have to support the Green Party or all else fails
It would be downright un-American and un-patriotic if the coporations could not buy politicians and elections. What are you, anti-American?
Sounds like a step in the right direction. We have miles to go before we sleep.
I would like to see a complete ban on all political television advertising. This would minimize the need for campaign financing. Then the dumb American People would have to actually READ something and think for themselves for once, instead of being brainwashed by passive entertainment.
What’s wrong with forbidding paid political ads, and making TV stations use our publicly-owned airwaves to broadcast, free, a certain quantity of political ads during a defined — and preferably short — campaign season?
It’s one of the insanities of U.S. politics that candidates for public office must raise money to buy air time from for-profit broadcasters who would have nothing without the public airwaves.
Well, 22 Senators as Co-sponsors. However, any Senate candidate that does not publicly favor majority rule in the Senate will not get my vote.
Citizens Political Power in the U.S.
Interesting. Ten responses to such a tremendously important issue. Maybe CC & PC should tie it to pot legalization. That’s sure to wake up & energize “Progressives”!
Try looking around the rest of FDL to see how serious it is here. I wager there have been at least 50 posts about campaign finance reform.
And many hundreds for pot legalization.
Banning political ads is unconstitutional, if nothing else, the 1st Amendment protects political speech. While making commercial TV stations air free ads may be legal (since they operate on FCC-licensed public airwaves), there’s no reason to go to war with the broadcast industry, the US Government can afford to create and fund a public election finance system that covers the cost of political advertising. In fact, the one change I’d make to this bill is to provide the funding for any state that wishes to buy into the plan for its own legislative and statewide races.
I’d note that the important element that makes the Fair Elections Now Act public financing constitutional is its voluntary nature. If Jeff Greene wants to self-finance in Florida, he can knock himself out or if Max Baucus would prefer that the health insurers fund his campaigns instead of the taxpayers, he could keep on keeping on.
Larry Lessig has been pushing this bill for ages, he’s made the point that nothing gets reformed until campaign finance is reformed and he’s right.
http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/