It starts with campaign finance reform.
One of the biggest issues for me is campaign finance reform.
We need real campaign finance reform to loosen the grip of special interests on politics.
The number one lobby that opposes campaign finance reform in the United States is the National Association of Broadcasters.
Let's not overlook, though, what we do know about the campaign finance scandal, and the fact the Chinese were involved in our presidential campaign and our congressional campaigns.
Every major federal campaign-finance-reform effort since 1943 has attempted to treat corporations and unions equally. If a limit applied to corporations, it applied to unions; if unions could form PACs, corporations could too; and so on. DISCLOSE is ...
As dismayed as Americans are with the influence of the special interests that finance election campaigns, they've been reluctant to embrace the alternative: taxpayer-financed elections.
We campaigned on the fact that we were going to have to take difficult decisions because of the state of the public finances. When we got into government we discovered that actually the public finances were in an even worse state than we thought.
I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing.
Well, paycheck protection is an important ingredient for a successful campaign finance reform measure.
In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.
But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.
Tom DeLay may or may not have broken campaign finance laws, but he did his best to look like he was breaking them.
I don't think I would have to run a campaign that's financed like General Motors.
I think we have to look at the whole way campaigns are financed. The No. 1 problem is PAC and special-interest money.
Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.
When you look at the money spent by labor unions for Democrats, it comes as no surprise the Democrats crafted a campaign-finance 'disclosure' bill with the thresholds adjusted to exempt unions.
I certainly want campaign finance reform. I just wish this would do it in a way that would stand up to a constitutional challenge.
There's enormous progressive activism and, more often than not, success at the grassroots level - everything from living wage campaigns to efforts to finance our elections are having terrific success.
Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.
In fact, corporate and union moneys go overwhelmingly to incumbents, so limiting that money, as Congress did in the campaign finance law, may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.
