Publicly Financed Campaigns
One of my all time favorite blog posts by me is An Open Letter to America which is about the merits of publicly financed campaign. I’ve always felt that it had really good mix of righteous indignation, passion, common sense, and wasn’t too badly written. I bring this up now because as The Nation points out there are currently two bills on The Hill that if passed would make public campaign financing law.
From the Nation:
With the nation’s first billion dollar presidential campaign, pay-to-play scandals occurring at breakneck speed (think Jack Abramoff and Norman Hsu), results in elections that are flawed by suppressed votes and machine error (and a War that Stays the Course despite the millions who went to the polls in November 2006 with a demand to end it), the public has had it with politicians who don’t listen to them, care about them, or respond to their concerns. This climate of discontent has led to a rethinking among champions of public financing and clean elections about how to channel their efforts into a larger, more holistic pro-democracy movement. The key question for these reformers is this: how do we fashion a movement that taps into voters’ frustrations and captures the imagination for a cleaner, more democratic way?
Certainly there is good momentum in this direction. In Congress – where, for example, the entire Alaskan delegation is either under indictment or soon will be and the pressure for constant fundraising is unsustainable – there is a convergence of democratic values and ideals and more pragmatic considerations wrought by fundraising fatigue. (”The result of this nonsense is that almost one-third of a senator’s time is spent fundraising,” former Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings wrote in a Washington Post op-ed lat year.) There are two excellent bills with impressive co-sponsorship, the Durbin-Specter Fair Elections Now Act (S 1285) and in the House, the Clean Money, Clean Elections Act of 2007 (HR 1614). Both bills would allow candidates who show a qualifying level of support and opt-out of further private contributions to receive public funding. According to Senator Durbin, “Support is increasing for the idea of public financing in fair elections: seventy-four percent of all voters support public financing… 80 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Republicans, and 78 percent of Independents.”
I support publicly financed campaigns because ideally they’ll allow anyone who has drive and quality ideas to run for office without having to erode their principles in order to get elected. So please take some time today to think of someone that you’ve know of and respect that deserves to be in office, read/skim HR 1614, and then consider bugging your congress-critter.
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testing new ID comments features!! dyre.. way too much money in campaigns now!
I could not disagree more with the thought of "publicly-financed" campaigns! The government should not subsidize candidates. Then again I am not sure when the last time was that I agreed with Durbin or Spector.
ID is looking nicer! I think about the only way campaign finance laws could possibly work is if WE all wrote them. These fools have only themselves in mind; I don't care if it's a "birdturd" Durbin or an agent of Specter. My only concern would be for those that do not have the funding like the charlatans we have now. It sickens me that we're looking at a billion dollar campaign. Bizarre
Bravo, BU. I love the metaphor "publicly-financed" campaigns.
I've always considered public financing of campaigns a terrible idea - notwithstanding the bogus arguments about suppressed votes and voter machine manipulation offered by the The Nation (both of those article links are atrocious). I can understand the frustration that leads one to hand over the choice of who our candidates will be for office to the government, but ultimately the reason there is too much money in politics is because there is too much power in government over our lives. You want to get rid of the appearance of corruption? Limit the power and scope of government. Liberals believe in an activist government that redresses grievances - that's an invitation to government meddling in all aspects, hence - citizens looking to use government power to enrich themselves. Why is campaigning for office so expensive? Where is that money going? Mainly media and then organization take priority, followed by travel and overhead - and incumbents will always have an advantage because they use the power of their office to gain name recognition and ingratiate themselves by bringing home the pork. Secondarily - the campaign finance laws are written so that no politician can be funded by a few big money folks- look at the Hsu case concerning Clinton - he was 'bundling' money - meaning that he rounded up from several donors the max $2500 and brought it in. Ultimately, every candidate is dependent upon tens of thousands of Americans giving what they can up to $2500 (or $5000 to the party). Democrats have a great advantage in having the unions grant them free organizational support in the form of precinct walking and advertising, and Republicans bring in more money from small time individual donors. That's how its been for years, and I suspect that, barring the poor performance politically of Republicans lately, things will remain that way. Handing politicians the power to control who fills the representational positions is inherently foolish - it's like handing the arsonist the water used to put out the fire. They've got no interest to be fair - and too often we've seen parties stiff the candidate who is popular locally for the well placed suit with a name they recognize. The answer is to lessen the power of money, not empower the government that spends it…