If You Ever Wonder Whether We Really Need Public Financing of Elections in this Country

Here's a must read article from Al Franken about the need for public financed elections...

That's me during "call time," which is basically what candidates for public office do all day. The guy on the right is Kris, my call time manager. It's his job to sit with me for hours at a time and make sure I'm "making the ask" on every call. For instance, he's currently pacing behind me reminding me to make another "ask" in here. Here it is, Kris: please click here and give me money. Okay?

While I'm sitting there with Kris, I often think about how badly we need public financing of elections in this country. We need it because I should be out talking to Minnesotans about the issues that matter to their families. We need it so that I can spend my days meeting with policy experts and reading up on legislation and working with progressives all over the state to build a movement that can take on Norm Coleman next fall.

And we need it because members of Congress are too beholden to special interests, and that costs taxpayers, big time. The Medicare Part D prescription drug bill, which might be the most corrupt piece of legislation in history, was a huge giveaway of taxpayer funds to the big pharmaceutical companies. The 2005 energy bill handed billions of dollars of our money to big oil companies, essentially just for the hell of it.

Did the Republican majority pass those bills out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. They passed them because they rely on huge PAC checks from these big corporate interests to fund television commercials calling Democrats "big spenders."

Let me select a totally random example: Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman (R-PHARMA). In the first fundraising quarter this year, he raised around $1.5 million. About a third of that came from PACs -- tobacco, coal, insurance, etc. Over the course of his career, he's taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Oil and Big Pharma. And, of course, he voted in favor of that horrible drug bill and that horrible energy bill.

I'm doing things a little differently. In my first fundraising quarter (which was really only 45 days since I announced on February 14), I raised around $1.35 million. But instead of relying on PACs, I relied mostly on small contributions from over 10,000 donors (over 90 percent of whom gave less than $100), more than twice as many as Coleman. (I should point out that you can help, too, by clicking here. See, I'm learning!).

Franken uses energy and prescription drugs as examples, but to make any meaningful change on almost any issue you first must start by reducing the influence money has in the political system.

Currently people are turned off by the political system because it often times so obvious our elected officials are bought and paid for. We need to restore our democracy by giving voices back to the people.

In Iowa, we have a chance to make our voices heard in the next legislative session by helping get Voter Owned Iowa Clean Elections (VOICE) bill passed. Contact your local legislators and tell them to support clean elections.