Let's put together a PLAN about campaign financing instead of just talking about it!!
I think many of us, if not all of us, are for public financing of elections. We can sit and rail about it, and that does nothing. I think, however, there are enough smart - even brilliant - people on DU to map out a specific plan for public financing of Federal elections. There are questions that I have about reform, and I know I don't have all the questions, let alone all of the answers. Why don't we, as a community, at least make an attempt to distill something? The questions I've come up with so far are these:
1. How does one become eligible for public funds? In other words, how does someone become a "legitimate" candidate for the House, for the Senate, for the Vice-Presidency, or for the Presidency? Would it be X number of petition signatures by X date? You'd have to make this difficult enough to weed out the cranks and be able to justify the money given to each candidate. There would also have to be a cap on how many candidates could receive funds. How do you do that?
2. How much money does each candidate get? It's very important to have a cap on the number of candidates for this reason. You have to have an overall election budget, not just a budget for each candidate. In order to justify this plan, you have to be able to pitch a number to the American people. I would pitch the number as - "to get corporate money out of politics, it would cost $12.50 per taxpayer per year." There are 138 million taxpayers in the U.S. Of that, I would allocate 1/4 to the executive branch, 1/2 to the House, and 1/4 to the Senate. Here are the $ amounts per election:
Per 4 year cycle: all executive branch candidates would have a common pool of
$1,725,000,000
Per 2 year cycle: all Senate candidates would have a common pool of
$862,500,000
Per 2 year cycle: all House candidates would have a common pool of
$1,725,000,000
I think these figures are right, but math is definitely not my strong suit. How much do you think it'd be worth per taxpayer? More? Less? Would you allocate different proportions to the executive/Senate/House races?
3. Limits. Each candidate would not be, by law, allowed to accept a single penny of money other than the public financing. This would mean private and corporate donations would all be illegal. It would also mean that a candidate could not use his/her personal funds, either. Also, how would you handle excess, if a candidate dropped out of the race before using all funds? I would propose that any unused campaign funds be placed in a common pool that is added to the Social Security budget.
4. Oversight. Each candidate would be required to account for all funds spent on the campaign. Who would be the overseeing body? Would you require daily reports? Weekly? What would the penalties be? Would you assign harsher penalties by the percentage of illegal funds accepted? By dollar amount? What would the line be to automatically trigger removal from office? Jail time?
I'm sure a lot of you have additional questions/concerns about public financing. I just think it'd be a great project for DU to put together a comprehensive plan for public financing that could be pitched and publicized, and challenge our party to get on board with it. I get my inspiration for this from Jon Stewart's interview of Nancy Pelosi. We all have criticisms of how government works. Could we put something together and show lawmakers that everyday citizens can compose effective, sensible ideas for our country?
I think the first thing to do would be to generate a more complete list of questions/concerns/details about public financing. The second thing would be to prioritize them. The third thing would be to hammer out details about each question.
What do you think?
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