To Deal with Corruption Democrats Must Fix the Corrupt Campaign Finance System
Democrats took the issues of costs and corruption to the American people, and voters responded with a blue tsunami election this week.
An AP voter poll found that more than half of voters considered government corruption “crucial” to their vote for Congress, slightly more than said the same about the cost of living.
If congressional Democrats are going to deal with corruption, they must make fundamental reforms of the corrupt campaign finance system.
The new Democratic-controlled Congress should move quickly to address affordability issues. House Democrats also should pass the unprecedented democracy reforms in an updated H.R. 1, as an early priority, just as they did in 2019 and again in 2021.
This election showed that big money doesn’t necessarily win elections. Elon Musk, for example, poured more than $470 million into the 2026 elections – including a reported $224 million in Texas, in support of Republican candidates. Yet Texas voters elected a Democratic senator and governor.
But while big money doesn’t guarantee campaign wins, it does buy corrupting influence in the executive branch and Congress. And the American people know it.
The Supreme Court majority, not Congress, created much of the corrupt campaign finance system through a series of pro-corruption decisions, including Citizens United in 2010.
Even with the damage done by the Supreme Court, there are six campaign finance reforms that will curb influence-money corruption. Four are in H.R. 1 and have already passed the House twice. The other two should be added. H.R. 1 also includes vitally important voting rights and redistricting reforms.
The Campaign Finance Reform Agenda
1. Establish a congressional public financing system. H.R. 1 established a system based on small donors and public matching funds. The matching funds are financed by a small surcharge on corporate criminal and civil penalties, settlements, and tax penalties for the wealthy. No general income tax revenues are used.
Congressional candidates must have an alternative way to finance their campaigns, or else big campaign contributions will continue to buy corrupting influence with members of Congress whose big donations make them dependent.
2. End secret contributions laundered through 501(c)(4) nonprofits to support candidates. Rich donors and special interest groups hide their identities by giving secret big money contributions to nonprofit groups that spend the money to support candidates. The DISCLOSE Act, included in H.R. 1, would close this major loophole by requiring nonprofits engaged in campaign spending to disclose their major donors. The Act came within one vote of being enacted in 2010 and has been blocked ever since by congressional Republicans.
3. Strengthen the ineffectual rules that prevent coordination between candidates and outside groups and shut down individual-candidate Super PACs. The Stop Super PAC-Candidate Coordination Act, incorporated into H.R. 1, deals with critical campaign finance problems. Individual-candidate Super PACs operate as arms of the candidate they support. President Trump, for example, has called the $400 million Super PAC run by his political advisers “my money that I control.”
These Super PACs allow donors to make unlimited contributions to benefit individual candidates – thereby eviscerating the candidate contribution limits, despite laws prohibiting coordination between candidates and outside spending groups.
The legislation would strengthen coordination rules weakened by flawed FEC regulations and stop candidates from using supposedly independent Super PACs as extensions of their campaigns.
4. Repair the ineffectual, failed FEC to provide effective oversight and enforcement of the campaign finance laws. The absence of effective campaign finance enforcement has turned campaigns into the Wild West without a sheriff. The Restoring Integrity to America’s Elections Act, also incorporated into H.R. 1, restructures the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to make it an effective and timely enforcer of the campaign finance laws and regulations.
The legislation would break FEC deadlocks, strengthen enforcement, streamline investigations, and establish a bipartisan commission to help select qualified commissioners.
5. Revitalize the presidential public financing system. The presidential public financing system was enacted following the Watergate scandals and worked well for six presidential elections, with almost all major party candidates using the system. However, over time the costs of presidential campaigns greatly increased, and the system became outmoded as Congress never updated it. Candidates could not run competitive races under the system and stopped using it.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, joined by Senator Ben Ray Luján, has taken the lead in Congress to repair the presidential public financing system. They are expected to reintroduce their EMPOWER Act in the next Congress.
6. Close a major loophole in the law that bans government contractors from making campaign contributions to federal candidates and Super PACs. Senator Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA) have announced they will introduce legislation to close a major loophole in the ban on contributions by extending the ban to cover contractors’ executive officers, major shareholders, and affiliated corporations.
The new legislation would have prohibited the more than $250 million that Musk spent to support Trump and the more than $470 million he spent to support Republicans in 2026. Musk’s companies have received tens of billions of dollars in federal contracts. Elon Musk’s huge contributions to support federal candidates and his companies’ huge government contracts make Musk the poster child for this essential pay-to-play legislation.
The American people are fully aware that the corrupt campaign finance system in Washington is rigged to reward big donors at their great expense. They are entitled to the real campaign finance reforms listed above.
Democrats campaigned on ending Washington corruption. Voters gave them control of Congress. Now they must deliver to the American people.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
