I am planning to send the following letter to my Senator, John Cornyn who has the audacity to claim he represents me or a substantial portion of his constituency. If I am feeling particularly bold, I may even send this to Ted Cruz (god forbid.)
This letter contains some very blunt portions. In my final letter, I will make some minor revisions on these blunt portions in order to improve its persuasiveness: after all, if you are insulting the person you want to convert, then you are, by definition, fighting an uphill battle. I will also write in my name at the bottom.
Without further ado:
Senator John Cornyn,
I have one single question for you: what are you going to be
doing to stop the gradual return of unfettered special interest influence in
Washington DC?
For decades, really picking up since the advent of political
advertising on television, the U.S. political system’s maddening addiction to
money, predominantly sourced from special interest groups, has caused Congress
to become more and more detached from the needs of the nation and from reality
itself.
The problem has been exacerbated
by Citizens United v. FEC, which
opened the floodgates to theoretically unlimited and more importantly unaccountable money that has flooded our
nation’s airwaves with negative and sometimes factually incorrect advertising
via the Super PAC (this lack of transparency even goes directly against the
wishes of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, which emphasized
that Americans needed to know where the money was sourced). During the 2010
midterm elections and again in the 2012 presidential election, inordinate
amounts of this Super PAC money was spent, often crushing the political aspirations those who were less well funded.
I, along with many of my fellow Americans, have had enough.
Why is campaign finance reform important?
The first answer
comes from Princeton professor Larry Bartel. He conducted an excellent study
published in 2005 on Senate voting patterns in the late 1980s and the early
1990s, and observed that you, as a U.S. Senator, don’t seem to give a damn about the poor.
Here’s what he writes:
“My analyses suggest that the views of constituents in the
upper third of the income distribution received about 50% more weight than those in the middle third (with even larger
disparities on specific salient roll call votes), while the views of constituents
in the bottom third of the income distribution received no weight at all in the voting decisions of their senators.”
[Emphasis my own.]
Although statisticians caution against making too many
extrapolations, one could easily imagine that the new campaign finance landscape
enabled at Citizens United has
actually made the problem even worse
today.
Professor Bartel concluded, “the economic order of the
contemporary United States poses a clear and profound obstacle to realizing the
democratic value of political equality.” What he failed to mention was that the
maddening effect our current system of financing campaigns is directly related to the tendency to overemphasize the views of deranged billionaires.
As The Center for Responsive Politics astutely pointed out, during the 2010
midterm election, only 0.26 percent of Americans made campaign contributions
exceeding $200, and only .05 percent reached the $2,400 limit. Worse, only 10
percent of Americans made a political donation at all. Although a large number
of small donations remain a substantial source of funding for politicians, it
is largely overshadowed by a small number of large donations. In other words, the people who fund your political
campaigns is horribly lopsided
towards the wealthy.
The second answer
gives you a compelling personal reason to take up arms against the current system
of campaign finance. Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig estimates that
congressmen spend anywhere between 30 percent to an appalling 70 percent of their time fundraising.
That’s time not spent doing casework
for constituents, researching more about the most pertinent issues of the day,
or, you know, actually reading your
legislation. This fundraising also more than likely includes little quality
time actually spent with constituents, many of whom have requests themselves
about how you should vote.
In order words, in meaningful campaign finance reform that
includes provisions for a robust publicly funded election system, you would be
able to spend more time connecting with constituents and, you know, actually representing them. This would
restore fundamental republican principles of our governmental system.
The third answer
comes from your fellow politicians, state congressmen from states such as
Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut that have varying levels of publicly funded
election systems. Professor Lessig explains in his excellent book, Republic
Lost:
Though the details of these programs are different, the basic structure
of all three is the same: candidates qualify by raising a large number of small
contributions; once qualified, the candidates receive funding from the state to
run their campaigns.
…These “clean money,” or “voter-owned,” elections have had
important success. Candidates opting into these public funding systems spend
more time talking to voters than to funders. They represent a broader range of
citizens than the candidates who run with private money alone. And they have
succeeded in increasing the competitiveness of state legislative elections,
making incumbents if not more vulnerable, then at least more attentive.
With the possible exception of the final point, all of these
are wonderful benefits. Even regarding the final point, if your constituents
believe that your opponent can do a better job than you at helping run the
country, then it is the simple reality of democracy. Who knows? Your opponent
might even do a better job, and if they don’t, you can step right back in the
next election cycle.
So what can you do to give representation back to the
American people and uphold political equality?
There are many solutions out there, but in my opinion, the
best one comes from Professor Lessig. Here is how he explains his plan:
Almost every
voter pays at least $50 in some form of federal taxes. So imagine a system that
gave a rebate of that first $50 in the form of a “democracy voucher.” That
voucher could then be given [in part or in whole] to any candidate for Congress
who agreed to one simple condition: the only money that candidate would accept
to finance his or her campaign would be either “democracy vouchers” or
contributions from citizens capped at $100. No PAC money. No $2,500 checks.
Small contributions only. And if the voter didn’t use the voucher? The money
would pass to his or her party, or, if an independent, back to this public
funding system.
Fifty dollars
a voter is real money: more than $6 billion an election cycle. (The total
raised in 2010: $1.86 billion.) It’s
also my money, or your money, used to support the speech that we believe: this
is not a public financing system that forces some to subsidize the speech of
others. And because a campaign would have to raise its funds from the very
many, it could weaken the power of the very few to demand costly kickbacks for
their contributions — what the Cato Institute calls “corporate welfare,” like
subsidies to ethanol manufacturers, or tariffs protecting the domestic sugar
industry. Cato estimates that in 2009, the cost of such corporate welfare was
$90 billion. If cutting the link to special interest funders could shrink that
amount by just 10 percent, the investment would, across a two-year election
cycle, pay for itself three times over.
You can continue to deny that who funds your campaigns has a
substantial impact on the way you vote. Hell, many of you and your colleagues
appear to believe that climate change is a hoax and are unmoved by any overwhelming body of evidence that
contradicts your ideological views, whether or not they are motivated on
kissing the asses of the special interests you serve.
A dedicated few have raised the banner to fight special
interests. Buddy Roemer believes in comprehensive campaign finance reform and
ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. However, the media that
hosted the debates, whose funding via commercials is held hostage by the
corporations that make up special interest groups, systematically denied his
ability to participate in the debates. Among the developed world, only in
America can a former governor and congressmen with views dangerous to special
interests and greatly beneficial towards public interest and our nation not even
get a chance to express his views in
a more public forum.
Another, Arnold Hiatt, the chairman of Stride Rite Shoes,
has donated millions of dollars supporting the cause of campaign finance
reform. In 1996, he was the Democratic Party’s second largest contributor,
funding the campaigns of 40 congressional candidates who supported campaign
finance reform.
You are in a unique position to join these early heroes.
Should you still feel apprehensive
about the entire idea, Professor Lawrence Lessig’s excellent book, Republic,
Lost, just may convince you otherwise. If you want a shorter read, I
outline some of Professor Lessig’s most important points and added in a little
bit of my own analysis in a 15-page blog post:
http://rallytorestoresanityandfear.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-case-for-second-square-deal-kicking.html
I thank you for your consideration for reading this rather
lengthy letter.
Sincerely,
An extremely concerned constituent
