Fred Wertheimer for Huffington Post: “National Political Parties Walk Away From Ordinary Americans to Chase Super Rich for Million Dollar Donations”
An article published yesterday by The Washington Post, revealed that the Democratic and Republican national parties have set up programs to seek contributions of $1 million or more for the 2016 election.
The Democratic and Republican national parties have now joined the 2016 presidential candidates as supplicants chasing the richest individuals in the United States.
The decision by the parties to solicit huge contributions from “sugar daddy” billionaires and multimillionaires is a disaster for ordinary Americans. “Sugar daddies” want something in return and with these contributions it is going to be influence over government decisions that comes at the expense of more than 300 million Americans.
The decision by the Democratic and Republican parties to run after million-dollar contributions places them completely out of touch with the American people.
Citizens have made overwhelming clear that they strongly object to the current campaign finance system and fully understand that big money is rigging Washington against their interests.
The astronomical contributions now being sought by the national parties are the same kind of corrupting contributions that resulted in the Watergate scandals of the 1970s and the soft money scandals of the 1990s, and they surely will result in Democratic and Republican Party scandals during the remainder of this decade.
The move by the parties to seek $1 million contributions stems directly from two developments: the Supreme Court’s ill informed and misguided decision in the McCutcheon case and the “bargain with the devil” deal made last year by House Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Reid, and their lawyers, to destroy the party contribution limits.
In the McCutcheon case, Democracy 21 and others submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court that explained in great detail how striking down the aggregate contribution limits would result in million dollar contributions to the political parties.
In his decision, Chief Justice Roberts scoffed at our analysis stating that it was “divorced from reality.”
It is Chief Justice Roberts, however, who turns out to have been “divorced from reality.”
The national parties are now doing exactly what we predicted and exactly what Chief Justice Roberts dismissively denied.
Because of their naivete and ignorance about how our political and campaign finance systems work, Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court majority in McCutcheon have done extraordinary damage to the country.
The Boehner-Reid coup to destroy the party contribution limits was secretly added to the Cromnibus Appropriations bill at the very close of last year’s congressional session, when it was too late to stop it.
There was no public debate or awareness of the issue because House and Senate leaders knew that it could never stand up to public scrutiny. This abuse of the legislative process has now come to full fruition.
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To read article on Huffington Post: click here.
