Cross posted at Dirigo Blue
In light of yesterday's ruling by the SCOTUS that corporations should not be limited in the amount of money they spend to influence public elections (and it is NOT limited to congressional races, but applies to state and even municipal elections), there is more interest in the Fair Elections Now Act, (H.R. 1826 and S. 752). The bill would create a program that is similar to the Clean Elections law here, and is modeled on it.
Make the jump to find out what the bill would do:
Be voluntary;
Allow for unlimited number of individual contributions of $100 or less for seed money;
Require at least 1,500 qualifying contributions between $5 - $100, for a minimum of $50,000;
For primary elections, creates a grant of 40% of the base amount; creates a 4 to 1 matching grant for in-state contributions of $100 or less (up to 200% of the base grant); no spending limit;
For general elections, creates a grant of 60% of the base amount and a similar 4 to 1 matching grant;no spending limit;
Maximum public funds would contributed be $2.8 million.
(The base amount is 80% of the average spent in winning House elections over the previous two cycles.)
H.R. 1826 was introduced by Rep. John Larson, for himself and Reps. Chellie Pingree, Llyod Doggett, Jared Polis, Carol Shea-Porter, Raul Grijalva, Adam Smith, Michael Michaud, Tom Perriello, Bruce Braley, David Loebsack, Judy Chu, Rush Holt, Gerald Connolly, Jesse Jackson Jr., Melvin Watt, Peter Defazio, Danny Davis, Michael Capuano, Gene Green, Lita Lowey, David Wu, Lacy Clay, James McGovern, Peter Welch, Steve Rothman, John Yarmuth, Scott Murphy Steve Kagen, Gary Peters, Michael Arcuri, Pete Stark, Paul Hodes, Paul Tonko, Lynn Woolsey, Martin Heinrich, Marcy Kaptur. There are currently a total of 126 bipartisan cosponsors of this bill, while there are only 5 cosponsors of the Senate version (go figure).
The House Committee on House Administration held a hearing regarding H.R. 1826 on 30 July 2009 (you can find a link to the video of the hearing there), which included testimony from officials familiar with 'clean election' campaigns in states like Maine. Those testifying included Reps. John Larson, Chellie Pingree, and Walter Jones; Speaker of the Maine House Hannah Pingree; Jeffrey Garfield, Executive Director & General Counsel, Connecticut State Elections; Bradley Smith, Professor of Law, Capital University School of Law; John Samples, Director, Center for Representative Government, CATO Institute; and Arn Pearson, Vice President for Programs, Common Cause. It may sound like a dull topic, but the testimonies and comments from committee members are actually of interest.
The NYTimes had this editorial this morning:
With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.
Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.
As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.
While the Fair Elections Now Act will do nothing to stop such spending, it will place an unmistakable stigma on it. Clean Elections candidates will be able to rightly claim that they are a candidate of the people, not of monied interests.
And while conservatives are currently applauding the ruling, it will only be a matter of time before they find this spending influencing elections in their own backyard, working directly against their own interests. Of course, by then, who knows how much more beholden to corporate interests will be.