Wouldn’t it be nice if every time you thought about helping a candidate run for public office you weren’t first asked for money? Wouldn’t it be nice if even the poorest individual could run for public office if he or she was the most qualified? I know it sounds like a dream land. The wonderful reality of this story is that it actually exists in a handful of states.
Even presidential elections have public financing, though it needs to be updated. What better way to improve our democracy than to ensure any individual, no matter his or hers economic background has an even chance to serve this country than the wealthy. With mandatory publicly funded congressional elections this dream can be realized. The real difficulty is whether or not this would be a positive change to promote democracy and of course whether or not we can pay for it. View full article »
This is a contention point which will have difficulty finding agreement. The idea of putting more of our tax dollars in the pocket of politicians seems a bit distasteful. Nonetheless, in the broader context of improving the value and image of Congress it starts to make sense. Let’s look at it this way, if we want the brightest minds of the world working to improve our country, not making money for Bank of America or Google we need to pay them a competitive salary. We need to make it worth their time. The CEOs of the world should look at being in the United States Congress as the epitome of success. There are many ways to do this and one is to make sure their time spent in office is worthwhile financially.
