Public Funding of Campaigns. A Way to Win Back Our Democracy? - General

Ever since the passing of the controversial Citizens United bill, allowing our politicians to be bought and sold by corporations, a debate has been under heavy debate; the public funding of presidential campaigns. Essentially, presidential campaigns would be funded by tax payer money. The candidates would be given a set amount of money to campaign with. The idea is that if the rich are allowed to give millions of dollars to a candidate, they will serve the rich. If the candidates are merely given a set amount of taxpayer money, the idea is that the candidates will hopefully serve the taxpayers. What is the opinion on facepunch? Would you be willing to give up the freedom of who you choose to financially support, for an even playing field? I'm on the public finance side. When corporations donate millions to these candidates through super pacs, the candidates constituents are no longer the voters who elect them, but the corporations themselves.

I remember doing this is Politics classes in college, [I'm British, but the course was American politics], the opinion was that the idea was solid, but there are loopholes in this legislation that mean the rich will still be able to donate a lot of support in smaller, several payments. But I don't think this was needed. To be honest, and as a third party, I think the politicians, well the Senators and Congressmen, are plenty representative. Compared to the UK, your politicians are less bound by party lines and are more answerable to the populace of their state. Most politicians in the US generally take into consideration the concerns brought forward to them. So they say at least. So if only the rich tend to ask for favours, then they only help the rich. If the average citizen doesn't say what they want BEFORE any legislation is discussed, well the politician is limited on what they can do. Calling that you don't support a bill after it's gone through its long procedure is redundant. But I digress, hopefully this bill will make the United states more democratic in the sense it removes the notion that one party represents one group of Americans and not the whole country, for example the idea that the Republicans are for the rich and the Democrats support the minorities. Hopefully this will make the manifestos the primary issue when it comes to who a person votes for.

Yes i think that all lobbying/financial support of parties should be made illegal and be severely punished.

The top 10% own 90% of the income in the United States. Too much power is concentrated to only a few individuals.

Spending large amount of money only works if people are ignorant. Anyone who votes based on adds and/or a single source (candidates own website) are the only people effected by big spending... problem is that this describes a large portion of the US population.

[QUOTE=sgman91;36293473]Spending large amount of money only works if people are ignorant. Anyone who votes based on adds and/or a single source (candidates own website) are the only people effected by big spending... problem is that this describes a large portion of the US population.[/QUOTE] That may be something extremely hard to fight. We could improve it by further funding public education; improving public education being something that conservatives are currently fighting/making worse. There will pretty much always be people with short attention spans who don't care a great deal about politics or follow politics until they hear about what's killing everyone's children.

So what the government should do is to steal even more of people's money (taxation) and force them to pay for candidates' campaigns, including candidates they don't want representing them? [QUOTE=znk666;36283332]Yes i think that all lobbying/financial support of parties should be made illegal and be severely punished.[/QUOTE] So if some grassroots organization makes phone calls, writes letters, and tries to meet with elected representatives to try to influence their decisions on issues, as is guaranteed in the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition_in_the_United_States"]first amendment of the US constitution[/url], they should be severely punished? That's what lobbying is. And if you make financial support of parties illegal, the same result occurs, the rich guy will still have more money than the other guy. Now one guy has millions of dollars to spend on an election and the other guy has 50 grand. What candidates need to do is come up with better policies and make more convincing arguments rather than complaining that "democracy died" because they lost an election, and that more government regulations are needed to come in and save the day.

[QUOTE=znk666;36283332]Yes i think that all lobbying/financial support of parties should be made illegal and be severely punished.[/QUOTE] Lol what? So if I want to support a political party I should be severely punished? [editline]12th June 2012[/editline] And in essence even if the politicians got huge amounts of money from corporations it shouldn't matter since it's votes that matter. But of course the public are fucking stupid so they will be duped by retarded TV commercials and news outlets.

First of all, you guys need to look a bit into how the campaign funding process works. Let me look at my government notebook. Money and Elections -Sources of funding: small private contributions. Only about 10% of people donate. -donation limit per person is 2,500 per election. So technically, you could donate to Romney in the primaries and another 2500 for the general election. 5k -Self financing -PACs political action committees, political arms of special interest groups. [b]Buckley v Valeo 1976: Money is speech. Cannot limit private expenditures or limit a candidate from spending their own money gained through business or other non-donated ways.[/b] -Big one right here. You'd be violating the 1st amendment. FECA (Federal election campaign act) Created FEC (Federal Election Commission) REGARDING SUPER PACs: Citizens United v FEC: Try to limit soft money expenditures. Speechnow v FEC: Raise as much money as they want. FEC duties: Timely disclosure of finance data (candidates need to report it) Limits on campaign contributions (2.5k) Limit expenditures (Regarding SUPER PACs) Provide PUBLIC FUNDING for several parts of election process. By the way, Super PACs can raise money without legal limits. So long as they do not coordinate with the candidate. Super PACs are made up of interest groups, maybe corporations, and wealthy individuals. I believe a lot of you are freaking out at stuff that doesn't happen. It just seems like it does because things like this "SUPER CORRUPTION IN GOVERNMENT CAMPAIGN SPENDING" are all hyped up and people automatically think that it's true if they see this enough times. yeah, there is some corruption in Congressional campaigns that needs fixing. But Public Funding is already available. For your information, if a candidate takes the "Public funding" option, they cannot raise additional funds for their campaign. However, their Super PACs can still do so through private expenditure. However, not many candidates take the public funding because even the least-wealthy of candidates can raise more money than the meager 10 million or whatever the FEC gives to them.

Campaigning funds made by tax payer money? What if I, the taxpayer, do not like any of the candidates running? What if the third party candidate doesn't get any funds because he's a third party? And wouldn't politicians just keep on piling more and more taxpayer money into the "campaign account", even if they get an "equal share"?

Politicians can't put more money into the publicly funded FEC account. It just doesn't work that way. So many checks and balances that it's almost impossible to let a raise get through... if that's what you're talking about. Paying taxes isn't an option. No matter what it goes towards. The people who don't support the war still pay taxes that support the war. It's all apart of democracy. If we don't like it we need to get out there and protest for change. Otherwise, the representatives and the majority win in this case. Third Party Candidates still run up until the General Election. If you've ever looked at a ballot, sometimes there will be multiple third party candidates that you've never heard before. People have to meet requirements to get the funding and I guess most third parties don't. However, if the electoral college was altered to adding 108 delegates to whoever wins the majority, (Can't remember the name) third parties may get more of a chance.

I'd rather not take such an authoritarian stance on this, for it's the LAST direction this nation ought to go. I believe that corporations ought to be able to donate as much as they want, and citizens ought to be given the same liberty. After all, as Mr. Sun AND HIS 4,000 FOOT-LONG FUCKING TITLE said above, money and its expenditure is, in a way, speech, and under the US constitution that's protected.

In Australia, when a party gets a seat in parliament, they start getting money to fund themselves. I think this is good as it lowers corruption. I also support parties having to, by law, declare what corporations donate to them

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;36295783]Campaigning funds made by tax payer money? What if I, the taxpayer, do not like any of the candidates running? What if the third party candidate doesn't get any funds because he's a third party? And wouldn't politicians just keep on piling more and more taxpayer money into the "campaign account", even if they get an "equal share"?[/QUOTE] You pointed out the biggest negative point in my opinion, is that you are funding all candidates, which may include candidates you may not want to support. However, I would rather my tax dollars go to an even playing field. If corporations can donate as much money as they want, the will simply buy politicians as they have been doing for years now.

You guys are ignoring the fact that a large portion of political money doesn't go to the candidate, it goes through PACs. Tons of adds are put out by these PACs every political season and aren't directly connected with any candidate.