Campaign Finance
Campaign finance is the topic of Homespun Bloggers HomeSpun Symposium XVI. The question is:
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Senator McCain, who has his own personal non-profit organization which allows him to bypass his own campaign finance reform law, would like to see blogs taken down a notch.
Why should anyone in this country support his law as it exists? Who will take a stand and get their “representatives” to rescind this law? What did we see during this last campaign which shows this law is of value? |
These are easy questions for me this week.
Question 1: Only politicians and those running 527’s created because of it.
Question 2: I am not sure if there will be many representatives who want to change this law.
Question 3: Nothing
This law is a joke and just moves the money from the campaigns to the shadows. Politicians now get to hide behind the law as cover for political attacks done by outside organizations. The 527’s get to raise unlimited funds and have no accountability.
Personally, I would like to see no public financing of campaigns, i.e. no tax money used. Let the parties and candidates raise their own money and pay for their own conventions. The conventions alone last year cost over $70 million or taxpayer money. I would also like to see all limits removed for contributions. For this to work, all donors names and amounts must be publically available on the internet within 48 - 72 hours. It would open the process up for all to see.
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I’m with you on McCain-Feingold, in that it was a worthless law that not only solved nothing but shifted things around and led to the creation of the 527s.
However, I’m skeptical of public (i.e. taxpayer) financing. How to determine how much money each candiate gets? Is it fair to make it 50/50 if one candidate doesn’t have much support? By using taxpayer dollars, is it fair to force taxpayers to fund candidates at all? How do you see public financing working?
thank you,
Comment by The Redhunter — 3/19/2005 @ 3:50 pm
I don’t want to see any taxpayer money used to finance campaigns. There are always pros and cons to every plan. I know a con to this is that it makes it harder for those without money to run an effective campaign. I think this can be overcome with the parties providing money to candidates. By changing ballot access laws to make it equal for independents and minor parties will reduce the cost associated with getting into a race. Another way to help with this is require the media to cover all candidates and hold debates with all candidates, not just those meeting a certain poll percentage threshold.
No taxpayer money and open reporting makes the process very transparent to the the taxpayer which can only be a good thing.
Comment by Lennie — 3/19/2005 @ 4:34 pm