The Cure for Citizens United
/By Bill Maher
A recent New York Times poll shows that almost everybody hates Citizens United, that 46 percent want to “completely rebuild” our campaign finance system and another 39 percent want to “fundamentally change” it. How come there’s no apparent clamoring for complete public financing of campaigns? Isn’t it the only thing we can do at this point? We’ve tried nibbling around the edges; it’s only made things worse.
For politicians, I don’t think the bar should be calling for a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. The bar should be calling for complete public financing. Citizens United is misunderstood – the root of the evil was there before it existed – and some other nonsense could easily replace it.
But let’s say we used the taxing power in the Constitution to give each party’s general election candidate a billion dollars, each senate candidate five to ten million or something depending on the size of their state, and each house candidate a million. It would be the greatest investment this country ever made. Our elected officials wouldn’t be beholden to individual sugar daddies and lobbyists, and could spend their time on things other than telemarketing.
Isn’t this the most obvious thing in the world? Why is it still seen as a leftist fringe proposal?