Forum Post: The Government by the People Act
Posted 10 years ago on Feb. 8, 2014, 8:12 p.m. EST by GirlFriday
(17435)
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Most members of Congress would leap at the chance to fund their campaigns without having to turn to a familiar cast of big donors and entrenched interests. Today, that’s virtually impossible.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can and must break the grip of special interests on our politics. Those of us inside and outside the Capitol who support this kind of major change are rallying around H.R. 20, the Government by the People Act, which is to be introduced Wednesday. This sensible, straightforward legislation would:
● Encourage the participation of everyday Americans in the funding of campaigns by providing a refundable $25 My Voice Tax Credit. This would bring the voices of the broader public into the funding side of campaigns and democratize the relationship between money and speech.
● Establish a Freedom From Influence Matching Fund to boost the power of small-dollar contributions. To be eligible for these matching funds, a candidate would have to agree to a limit on large donations and demonstrate broad-based support from a network of small-dollar contributors. Amplified by the Freedom From Influence Matching Fund, the voices of everyday Americans would be as powerful as those of big donors.
● Provide candidates with an opportunity to earn additional resources in the homestretch of a campaign so that the voices of the people are not completely drowned out by super political action committees and other dark-money interests. In the wake of Citizens United, this kind of support is critical to ensuring that citizen-backed candidates have staying power.
The funding for these changes should come from closing tax and regulatory loopholes that are the decades-old legacy of special-interest influence in Congress. It’s only fair that those responsible for breaking the policymaking machinery in Washington should bear the cost of fixing it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nancy-pelosi-and-john-sarbanes-reversing-the-grievous-error-of-citizens-united/2014/02/04/0f197d0a-8dba-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html
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To be honest, I laughed out loud when I saw this: Most members of Congress would leap at the chance to fund their campaigns without having to turn to a familiar cast of big donors and entrenched interests.
So, we will see just how many leap.
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they won't jump just because of concern over retribution in the form of lack of financial support during the next campaign.
They do that a lot. They do that after elections. Any time is a good time to start. If they can't do what they were asked to do then why hire them?
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those familiar casts and big donors make them millionaires. not likely to spurn them.
That leaves waaaaay too much room for games and corruption.... ridiculous publicly fund elections and move to amend so tax payers / citizens don't ever have to match donations from multinational corporate conglomerates ...so you don't pay taxes or headquarter here but you get to call yourself a citizen and donate billions to campaign funds this supreme court should be overthrown this sounds like an appeasement with room to play games hidden within the text and interpretation
Which part of the text bothers you? https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr20/text
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