Cleaning Up Congress & Campaigns (by Ari Berman for The Nation)

[marmar]

Cleaning Up Congress & Campaigns

Ari Berman

As the post-Watergate presidential financing system collapses and Congressional elections grow more expensive by the millions every cycle, Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter believe it's time to fundamentally change the way campaigns are financed and run. Earlier this year they introduced the first bipartisan bill to publicly finance federal races, modeled after successful "clean election" laws at the state and local levels. (See The Nation's "Making Elections Fair.") This week the Senate Rules Committee held the first of what reformers hope will be many hearings on Durbin-Specter and the corrupting influence of big money on politics. Our Washington intern Matthew Blake attended the hearing and filed this report:

On Wednesday morning, Senators Durbin and Specter were given a chance to make an impassioned plea to their colleagues about why the current financing system was broken--and how their bill would fix it.

"Politicians spend so many hours with special interests and wealthy donors that we don't know what life is like for average working people," Durbin told the committee. "We need to get out of the fundraising business and into the constituent and policy business."

Former Senator Warren Rudman testified in support of Durbin's bill on behalf of a bipartisan coalition of former Senators, including Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.

"Increasingly, candidates qualifications are being measured by the size of their wallets, not the strength of their ideas," Rudman said. Under Durbin-Specter, Senators "will be free to spend their time and energy attending to the nation's business instead of wasting their time on nonstop and demeaning fundraising."

As expected, Senators from both parties quickly attacked the bill and defended a status quo system that re-elects incumbent politicians 98 percent of the time. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15