Last week, the GOP in the House of Representatives passed a bill to end public campaign financing. This is something they’ve wanted to do for a long time now, and of course, so has their wealthy donors. This bill likely will not get through the Senate or this would be yet another step toward turning control of our country over to corporations.
What I have advocated many times in the past is that we should instead end private financing. This is the very issue that has led us to this point of being at the mercy of the wealthy through private campaign financing, which I prefer to call “legal bribery”. We should end it in favor of only public financing and make any type of financial favors or even gifts from lobbyist, illegal. We should call it all illegal bribery and leave no room for compromise.
I know our current president Barack Obama turned down public financing in favor of private funding; it is one of two things (the other is extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy) I believe were mistakes, but he simply took advantage of a entirely legal thing to do. It still does not change one iota the importance of ending private campaign funding.
Think about this; if we had elected officials that only received their salaries and nothing else, and because of public campaign financing, they wouldn’t have to spend their time courting big donors. The only people they will need to satisfy will be the voters they represent, and they could do their jobs without undue influence of moneyed interests.
How it would work is that anyone who wishes to run for office would need to get enough signatures to qualify for public funds to run their campaigns. If anyone can’t at least get enough registered voters to sign their petition to run for office, then they cannot receive public funds.
I believe the effect on our society would be a very positive. For one thing, those who are concerned about how our tax dollars are spent, would surely be interested to know that those we’re spending it on to get elected, are the people we want to represent us. Maybe then it would get more of the American public really interested in politics and who our representatives are.
Most importantly, we would end the undue influence that corporations have on our government and our elected leaders would be more responsive to all the people and not just those with wealth.
Certainly, corporations can still hire their lobbyist, they can hire the sharpest guys on the block if they wish, but those lobbyists would not have any more power than the poorest and least citizen in the country, and that is to petition their elected leaders, and nothing more.
A one-hundred percent publicly funded campaign system would also present an equal playing field for everyone in this country to run for office if they so wish to. And why not; this is supposed to be a country of equal opportunity, but what’s equal about a corporation using their ability to influence our government with bribes to override the will of the People? Surely there are a great many people out there who may not have a great deal of money to afford running for office but could be strong leaders if they were given an equal chance to run.
What I want to know is; why should a lobbyist hired by a corporation have any more access to our elected officeholders than anyone else in the country? In fact, we all hired lobbyist to represent us when we hired those elected officeholders with our votes, and our tax dollars pays their salaries. They’re there to serve us, not the highest bidder.
Isn’t what’s going on in Washington and state houses across our nation, is that corporations are constantly using their financial advantage against what is good for the People in favor of their own interests? Isn’t corporations’ interests also always profit driven? This is why Republicans have introduced legislation to kill pollution laws that protect us from the filth of their factories destroying our ecosystem. The GOP has also put much effort into repealing financial laws that protect our economy.
So now the Republicans in the House are trying to seal the deal that was made when the U.S. Supreme Court handed over their ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC which opened the door to corporations having unlimited powers to influence our government. If this bill were able to survive the Senate and the veto pen of the president, the very idea that we’re a democracy would only be a fallacy. The People would no longer count, as their rights would surely begin to erode as more money would pour from corporations to control our government. Anyone wishing to seek office would need to do what it takes to gain the approval of the wealthy, as there would be no other way to even kick start an election, unless of course they’re wealthy themselves and can afford to fund their own campaigns.
I hear so much talk about Term Limits of late, which to me is just smoke and mirrors and solves nothing. Do you really believe that just because you go find a new person every few years that big corporations aren’t going to have as much influence on those new guys? As long as they can spend endless amounts of money to throw around to influence government, then they’ll continue to get exactly what they want. They can always use the Republicans; both their elected leaders and all of their party members, which being almost half the country, to blame the same government that they’re controlling with their money. So what if we have small government? That will just make it fewer people that big corporations have to bribe. I would say they have it made. At least they have it made, as long as we let them.
It’s going to take a lot more than the “Occupy” movement occupying parks to get the job done. If the “Occupy” movement wants to change things, then they’re going to have to get moving on the political side, and like the Tea Party, affect the 2012 elections enough to not only change the makeup in Washington, but also to demand from those newly elected officeholders to pass a new law to end private financing, and then make sure that the party controlling government will carry it through.