Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
WASHINGTON - Tom Osborne briefly took off the Husker cap Friday morning to dive back into the political discussion.
The University of Nebraska athletic director joined a group of current and former House members in criticizing the congressional campaign financing system and pointing to a possible public financing solution.
Osborne represented Nebraska's sprawling 3rd Congressional District from 2000 to 2006, when he made an unsuccessful bid for the GOP nomination for governor.
Osborne stressed Friday that he was speaking only for himself and not the university. He said that in running for the House, he limited himself to small individual donations and refused to take contributions from Political Action Committees. But Osborne said he noticed that within weeks of being elected, his colleagues began earnestly raising money for the next election. They had to continually spend time on the phone soliciting campaign contributions, he said.
"This consumes a large amount of their time that could be better spent in the legislative process and serving constituents," Osborne said during Friday's conference call with reporters.
Osborne also said that the current system gives a great deal of influence to special interests. He noted a bill he supported that aimed to prohibit pharmaceutical drug companies from charging more for the same medicine in the United States than they did in Canada or Europe.
"Because of the amount of money that the pharmaceutical companies had poured into campaigns, we barely got it out of the House but couldn't get it out of the Senate," he said. "It was something that I thought made great sense and would have been good for the American public, but special interests certainly carried the day."
The call was intended to highlight support for the Fair Elections Now Act, which would establish a public funding mechanism for federal candidates who rely on a large number of small, individual donations.
The money would come from a fee on government contractors and from auctioning off unused broadcast spectrum.
Osborne said he is not sure that proposal is the whole answer but "at least this is a start."
