Fred Wertheimer: Democracy 21 Praises Campaign Finance Reform Plan Issued by Clinton
Democracy 21 applauds the very important and valuable campaign finance reform policy plan former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued today.
The plan contains essential elements to repair our corrupt campaign finance system and to restore the integrity of our elections.
On July 23, 2015, Democracy 21 and eleven other reform organizations sent a 21st Century Democracy Agenda to all presidential candidates and requested their responses to the proposed Agenda.
The Clinton plan supports a number of core policy proposals that are contained in our Agenda and will help inject these critical issues into the national debate.
Senator Bernie Sanders and former Governor Martin O’Malley have also made positive statements on the need for campaign finance reforms and we look forward to seeing their formal proposals on these issues as well.
Since the Citizens United decision in 2010, our political system has seen a growing and dangerous role for unlimited and secret contributions in American politics.
Today, the presidential primaries are dominated by individual-candidate Super PACs that are being financed by unlimited, huge contributions from millionaires and billionaires.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in secret contributions are being laundered into presidential and congressional elections through nonprofit tax-exempt organizations.
Ordinary Americans are being shut out of the political system as their small contributions are considered less and less important in the post-Citizen United world.
This is not the representative system of government envisioned in our Constitution.
The Clinton plan would provide an opportunity for ordinary Americans to fight back by having their small contributions matched with multiple public funds. This would increase the importance of small donors, dilute the role of big money and provide an alternative way for candidates to finance their elections.
The Clinton plan would end secret money in our elections by passing new disclosure legislation to require public disclosure of significant donors to organizations making political expenditures and by preventing transfers between organizations from serving as a means for evading the new disclosure requirements.
The Clinton plan also would overturn the disastrous Citizens United decision, either through a Constitutional Amendment or through the appointment of new Justices who would support a new campaign finance jurisprudence to allow necessary regulation of money in the political process.
The fundamental reforms proposed by Clinton would go a long way to addressing the most dangerous government integrity problems facing the country.
But additional reforms are necessary as well. We call on Secretary Clinton to include further important policy proposals in her plan in the weeks and months ahead to deal with other serious problems with our campaign finance system.
The Federal Election Commission is a nonfunctioning agency and as a result campaigns and political operatives know they can ignore the campaign finance laws without concern about being held accountable.
The Clinton plan recognizes that vigorous enforcement of the campaign finance laws is necessary if the laws are to be effective, but Clinton provides no specifics on how to achieve this goal. The Clinton plan should include additional information on fixing or replacing the FEC and on the use of the Justice Department to play a more active role in enforcing the campaign finance laws.
Individual-candidate Super PACs are being used by almost every presidential candidate to circumvent candidate contribution limits. If these Super PACs are not shut down, the candidate contributions limits, upheld by the Supreme Court to prevent corruption, will be eviscerated.
Legislation pending in Congress, sponsored by Representatives David Price and Chris Van Hollen and Senator Tom Udall, would end individual candidate Super PACs and strengthen the rules prohibiting coordination between other outside spending groups and candidates. The Clinton plan should address the issues of shutting down individual-candidate Super PACs and strengthening coordination restrictions.
We intend to press Hillary Clinton to add to her plan the items cited above and to publicly promote her reform agenda as a top priority in the unfolding national debate about the major issues facing the country.
Much needs to be done to move from a proposal to fundamental change in our political system. Commitments to pursue major campaign finance reforms have been made by previous presidential candidates and then ignored once they were elected President.
We intend to press Hillary Clinton to spell out in detail what steps she would take, if elected, to promote her reform agenda in order to enact the reforms. In the end, the ultimate test on campaign finance issues for any officeholder is the specific steps they are prepared to take to promote the reforms they support in order to fix our corrupt campaign finance system.
We look forward to hearing from all presidential candidates on where they stand on the 21st Century Democracy Agenda.
Democracy 21 is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization that does not support or oppose candidates for public office.
