Durbin: Time Spent Fundraising "Nothing Short of Amazing."

On Tuesday, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced campaign finance legislation intended to ease the rising fundraising burden on politicians. The legislation would give grants and matching funds to qualified candidates for federal office who volunteered to cap individual contributions at $100.

Joining Durbin to introduce the 2009 Fair Elections Now Act were Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), and Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.), Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.).

Public financing supporters often cite the corrupting influence of money in politics as the primary motivation for reform, but Senator Durbin and his bipartisan coalition focused on the issue of fundraising as an enormous time drain on public servants trying to carry out the business of government.

ANP producer Lagan Sebert was at the lightly covered press conference during which Durbin expressed his growing frustration. The amount of time members of Congress spend raising election money is "nothing short of amazing."

The average price of the ten most expensive Senate campaigns increased from almost $20 million in 2002 to $34 million in 2006.

Comments

[seanparnell]

Golly, all that time candidates have to spend fundraising - what a shame! And lets not forget the burden of actually traveling a district or state, having to explain to voters what you'll do once in office and why you're a better candidate than the others. Why not just do away with elections altogether, and simply allow our betters to self-select among themselves who is worthy of guiding us? I think Plato talked about "philosoph­er-kings," maybe that's the model? We certainly can't have our national leaders sullying themselves by mingling with the common folk, some of whom actually have "interests" in what they will be deciding.

Failing that, perhaps we could just make sure the taxpayers provide free milk and cookies to candidates after their exhausting ordeal of having to solicit support for their campaigns.­..

Seriously, I think Durbin's comments show what this is all about, at least for many politicians. Fundraising is a pain in the neck (and I would agree with that), so let's just force the taxpayers to pay for it all.

It's not about fighting corruption, real or imagined (mostly imagined). It's about making life easier for incumbents and throttling challengers. Some "reform."

Sean Parnell
President
Center for Competitive Politics
http://www.campaignfreedom.org
campaignfreedom.orgeedom.org

[LeftRight]

Or we could look at the fact that more often than not a politician will receive some money from a donor, and then suddenly that donor gets TONS of government money thrown at them...... kinda weird how that happens, huh?

The solution is simple. Money is not free speech, and companies cannot donate money to politicians. Media must sell time to politicians on the cheap, and public financing is the ONLY way to go!

[seanparnell]

Yeah, because nobody in Washington would spend any taxpayer money if it weren't for campaign contributions.

Money isn't free speech, any more than it is a free press. But just try to operate a newspaper without money and see how long your ink and paper deliveries keep coming, or your staff keeps working for you. Your statement is about as wise as saying a human body is not blood - no, but it doesn't work real well without it.

Please, enlighten me on the policies that would not have passed were it not for campaign contributions. Simply showing that X gave to Y and Y then voted for Z that benefited X doesn't do it, because it ignores that Y may actually believe in whatever Z policy was - or are you one of those folks stunned that, for example, someone describing themselves as a "tax cutting conservative" then proceeds to vote for tax cuts?

Sean Parnell
President
Center for Competitive Politics
http://www.campaignfreedom.org
campaignfreedom.orgeedom.org