Hearing on Fair Elections

Ordinary voters are being drowned out by corporate and wealthy special interests that co-opt our elected officials and raid the treasury for earmarks and tax breaks.  The result is policy for Big Pharma, Big Oil and Wall Street.  We can change all that with the Fair Elections Now Act.

The Senate Rules Committee is holding the first congressional hearing in more than a decade on publicly funded elections.

Watch it live on June 20, 10:00 a.m. EST!

Take a minute to become a Citizen Co-Sponsor of the bill and tell your Senators to break free from corporate and wealthy special interests.

Why do you think publicly funded elections are so important?

UPDATE: You can still watch the hearing at the link above.

Comments

[Andy]

One of my favorite parts of the hearing was when Sen. Specter said that he thought that the Supreme Court’s equating of money and free speech in Buckley v. Valeo was the worst decision since Dred Scott. Both he and Sen. Durbin spoke much more convincingly and eloquently than Sen. McConnell, who just rehashed his old, tired complaints. By now we all know that the Senior Senator from Kentucky hates anything that might take away his connections to special interests and force him to pay attention to his constituents.

[Greg]

While I found the hearing to be a slight disappointment - as only Dianne Feinstein, Bob Bennett, Dick Durbin and Ted Stevens attended and all periodically left the hearing to vote - I very much enjoyed hearing Durbin speak to the importance and immediacy of fair elections. Unlike other elected officials I've heard, his disdain for fundraising rather than legislating was honest and his arguments were extremely valid. While Mitch McConnell claims taxpayers shouldn't be paying for hotel rooms or limosine rides, and he is right, by the same token they shouldn't be paying for elected officials to spend all of their time in office raising money from special interests rather than listening to their constituents.

I also find it terribly interesting that conservative politicians may claim they need excessive private funds to fight negative campaign advertisements by unregulated 527s and other political organizations, because their supporters are the biggest offenders of producing electioneering and negative advertisements, and they killed the provision in the recent lobbying and ethics reform bill to disclose astroturf - or fake grassroots - lobbying efforts!

[Greg]

While I found the hearing to be a slight disappointment - as only Dianne Feinstein, Bob Bennett, Durbin and Ted Stevens attended and all periodically left the hearing to vote - I very much enjoyed hearing Dick Durbin speak to the importance and immediacy of fair elections. Unlike other elected officials I've heard speak, his disdain for fundraising rather than legislating was honest and his arguments were extremely valid. While Mitch McConnell claims taxpayers shouldn't be paying for hotel rooms or limosine rides, and he is right, by the same token they shouldn't be paying for elected officials to spend all of their time in office raising money from special interests rather than listening to their constituents.

I also find it terribly interesting that conservative politicians may claim they need excessive private funds to fight negative campaign advertisements by unregulated 527s and other political organizations, because their supporters are the biggest offenders of producing electioneering and negative advertisements, and they killed the provision in the recent lobbying and ethics reform bill to disclose astroturf - or fake grassroots - lobbying efforts!