Issue Position: Campaign Finance

Issue Position

When I first ran for Congress 18 years ago, I said that the single most important issue facing our nation was campaign finance reform because it touched upon every other facet of our system of self-governance. At the time, I spoke out against the dependence of our elected representatives on the ever-increasing flow of special interest money financing their re-election bids. I pointed out that lawmakers were becoming less and less beholden to the voters and more and more in the pocket of the corporations and political action committees whose funds flowed, largely unimpeded, into their campaign accounts.

I explained how these large contributions were distorting the legislative process, affecting whom lawmakers see, and what and how things get done in Congress. I suggested that democracy simply could not survive when elected officials are inevitably obliged to legislate on behalf of their big donors and not in the best interests of the general population.

Now, almost two decades later, things have gotten much, much worse. In fact, there is a broad understanding in our country today that the United States has ceased to be a democratic nation in any true sense of the word.

For example, in a recent study, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, the authors, Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University, argue that over the past few decades, America's political system has been transformed into an oligarchy ­ ­̶ a place where wealthy elites wield the most power, and rich, well-connected individuals steer the direction of the country, regardless of, or even against the will of, the majority of voters.

According to the report: ". . .economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

And while the trend to oligarchy has been steadily building over the past years, two Supreme Court decisions ̶ Citizens United vs. FEC (Federal Election Commission) in 2010, and this year's more recent ruling in McCutcheon vs. FEC ̶ have opened the floodgates even further, allowing virtually unlimited amounts of "dark" money from the so-called "super PACs" to undermine our now, merely quaint, national ideal of one-man, one-vote.

To those who think that this is simply a "liberal" complaint, it should be pointed out that this drift away from our constitutional framework has not been lost on "conservative" thinkers, either. In his recent book, The Great Deformation, The Corruption of Capitalism in America, former conservative Congressman from Michigan and Budget Director for the Reagan Whitehouse, David Stockman writes that our government: ". . . is no longer a system of democratic choice and governance: it is a tyranny of incumbency and money politics." In order to prevent politicians from being: ". . .bought and paid for by special interests," Stockman recommends an overturning of the Citizens United decision, and an end to all private funding of political campaigns. I heartily agree.

But if the citizens of this country want to see their precious franchise washed away in the torrent of special interest money that continues to finance political campaigns, all they need do is stay home on election day and allow those with the most cash to pick and choose who will get to write and enforce the laws of this land. If, as the Supreme Court has so mistakenly declared, that money equals speech, then staying quiet is a tacit agreement that the Court is correct and the framers of our Constitution were wrong.

We must be louder than the oligarchs. We must hire representatives who still believe that power comes from the people and not the pocketbook, and we must support those who are willing to uproot the current corrupt system of campaign finance and declare, once and for all, that private money has no place in the public domain.

Eighteen years later, campaign finance reform is still the most important political issue facing our nation. If nothing changes in this area of our national life, then none of the other serious problems we must solve will ever be approached or remediated in a way that promotes the general welfare of our citizenry. The oligarchs will have won and the rest of us will be mere bystanders, simply watching the slow, painful demise of the great American experiment in democracy begun over two centuries ago by those who believed that the people were meant to rule and govern themselves.

If you agree, hire me.

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