Midlands Voices: Congress needs to address huge money in campaigns

Edgar, a former member of Congress from the Philadelphia area from 1975 to 1987, is the national president of Common Cause. Cavanaugh represented Nebraska’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981.

As former members of Congress, we can remember the pressures of raising money for a re-election bid. At the time, that task felt formidable. Today, those same fundraising goals would get us laughed off Capitol Hill.

That’s because running for Congress has become a high-dollar industry of consultants, experts and expensive television advertising.

Consider this: The winners of House elections in 1976 spent an average of about $87,000 on campaigns, or about $308,000 in today’s dollars. In contrast, the average House winner in 2008 spent $1.3 million.

Why should you care, especially if you have no plans to run for Congress?

Because the high cost of campaigns, and the pressure on our federally elected officials to constantly raise large sums of money, is undermining our democracy.

We have a campaign-finance system in which large donors, as well as those who can “bundle” lots of smaller checks and deliver them to a candidate, are far more valued and coddled than average voters by our representatives in Washington. What’s more, the public loses out when our elected officials spend their time raising money rather than working for us on key issues.

In a sense, you can’t blame members of Congress for the outsized role of big donors and special interests in our government. If a person or an industry raised $25,000 or $50,000 for you, you’d be sure that the donor got his phone calls returned, you were paying attention when his issue came up for debate and you would fight hard for what he wanted.

But big-money lobbying leaves out of the political process the voices of hard-working, conscientious Americans who don’t have the means or desire to make large political contributions. And our democracy is not supposed to be based on money.

There is a better way.

It’s legislation called the Fair Elections Now Act, and it would slow the fundraising arms race by allowing congressional candidates to run for office on small donations and public dollars.

The bipartisan bill is modeled in part on successful state laws in Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, North Carolina and elsewhere, where hundreds of candidates from both major political parties have agreed to spending limits and to accept only small contributions from individuals in exchange for limited public funding.

Republican and Democratic candidates alike say those programs allow them to spend more time meeting with constituents and talking about issues, instead of fundraising.

And once they are in office, they can focus on the job they were elected to do and stop worrying about the conflicts of interest created by accepting large contributions from those with business before Congress.

In a nutshell, Fair Elections for Congress would work like this:

U.S. House candidates would have the option to run for office with a mix of small contributions and limited public funds. To qualify, candidates would be required to take no contribution over $100 — and no PAC money — and would have to demonstrate broad public support by raising 1,500 small contributions totaling $50,000 from their home state.

Once they qualify, participating candidates would get an initial grant and then could earn a 4-to-1 match on in-state small donations, up to a limit. The small-dollar fundraising could continue after the limit is reached. (A full summary of the bill can be found at http://www.fairelectionsnow.org.)

The time is now for Congress to act. As Congress wrestles with major issues like health care, climate change and regulation of the financial markets, the fundraising pressures get in the way of deliberative lawmaking.

Members of Congress can’t do their jobs when they’re constantly distracted with raising money to keep their jobs.

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