[quote=IForget]I think it’s time for complete public financing of national elections and state-wide elections. Corporations and the elite are buying our representatives for relatively little cost. Give a Senator a million and get back a billion. The million goes to the Senator and the billion comes from the taxpayers and goes to the donor. We can’t allow this practice to continue and expect to persist as a nation.
My idea is to let candidates choose either to be publicly financed or to be privately financed. Publicly financed candidates would be matched dollar-for-dollar against the privately-financed candidate for the same office who raises the most money. This would mean that privately-financed candidates would have no advantage over publicly financed candidates. Further, in cases where at least one of the candidates chooses public financing, the voters would always have the easy choice of choosing either candidates who are bought-and-paid for by special interests or the publicly-financed candidate who has to pay back no one.
Shortly, I think, under the above system, all candidates would forgo private financing as there would be no benefit to it and only downside. We could crush the special interests by essentially making their money irrelevant to a candidate’s election/re-election. This would also have the side benefit of making fundraising irrelevant and thus politicians could focus on legislating/governing as opposed to fundraising all the time.[/quote]
Agree 100%…but would outlaw private funding altogether. No reason for taxpayers to have to match those who come in with tons of money.
