Interesting development: Calls for public financing of campaigns
I have long advocated public financing of political campaigns, and now corporations are joining in the call. From the Center for American Progress in an email:
Last Thursday, “all five of the [Supreme] Court’s conservatives joined together … to invalidate a sixty-three year-old ban on corporate money in federal elections,” a move that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) said “opens the floodgates for the purchases and sale of the law” by big corporations. On Friday, in response to the Court’s decision, “dozens of current and former corporate executives” from corporations, including Delta, Ben & Jerry’s, and Crate & Barrel, sent a letter to Congress asking it to immediately pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which would publicly finance all congressional campaigns out of a special fund created by a fee levied on TV broadcasters. Even before the Court’s recent ruling, corporate special interest money was making a huge impact on the legislative process. From 1998 to 2009, the financial, insurance, and real estate lobbies spent nearly $3.8 billion in Washington, which helped deregulate Wall Street, pass huge tax cuts for the wealthy, bar Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices, kill mortgage cramdown legislation, and weaken financial and health reforms. According to polling done in November 2008, 69 percent of Americans support publicly financing all campaigns, including the majority of self-identified Democrats, Republicans, and independents. The bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act currently has six Senate co-sponsors and 125 co-sponsors in the House (President Obama was a co-sponsor when he was a senator).
Click here to sign the Fair Elections Now Act petition.
