It violates free speech, blah blah blah.

That's what they'll say when they ignore another great idea.

You know, back in 1994, term limits were all the rage. How about bringing them back?

Shout it from the rooftops.

Dare the opponents to argue against it. Why is their scheme better?

Sounds good so far.

I still like my plan better though: members of Congress are selected the same way jurors are. It's representative, and term limits are built in.

I quite like those ideas. Pale Rider is right thought, "It violates Free Speech" somehow.

Plus, the "members of Congress cannot take anything of value from anyone other than a family member" legislation they'd like in return for raising the salaries of congressmen/senators - my cynical mind immediately thought, "then those individuals with the most corrupt/corruptible families will be the ones on top." I mean, it's a pretty tight loophole, but a loophole just the same.

That said, I wouldn't oppose it myself. It would go quite some distance in fixing the current system.

As long as "members of congress" includes their staffers and other people who work for them who make real, important-to-the-country decisions as well...

Interesting, but there's no way in hell that congressional incumbents are going to make it HARDER for them to win.

Not bad, buy why conflate the public financing of campaigns and lobbyist gifts? Why not start with a complete gift ban for all elected officials and staff? There is no need for any member of Congress to get presents, none.

I've never understood why members of Congress, if they hate begging for money so much, haven't already passed some sort of public-financing law. Can anyone explain that to me?

Term limits: bad idea. It's good to have experienced legislators. We should be fixing the law so that incumbents can be beaten when they deserve to be, not just kicking out all incumbents.

Back to the drawing board!

I find the proposal to hike the salaries of representatives by more than 2.5X during a time when many workers are facing lay-offs, loss of benefits, etc, and when the govt is cutting back essential programmes unconscionable. If these people want to make out like bandits, why don't they focus on making $ in the private sector?

There's also the issue of the ripple effect - e.g. the precedent for other elected offices.

Gonzo asks, "why conflate the public financing of campaigns and lobbyist gifts?"

Answer: because both are legal ways of bribing elected officials that should be illegal.

See today's WaPo for a story on a loophole in the current Republican lobbying-reform bill that further ties the two together.

what I'm unclear on is what happens in a three way race? does the incumbent get money matching both challengers, or just one? which one? Is this applicable for the primaries as well, and exploratory committees? I think it needs some work, although it is certainly interesting.

I don't see how the pay hike is a necessary companion to the ban on lobbyist gifts. Do they really bring in over $100,000 each on gifts?

I don't see how the pay hike is a necessary companion to the ban on lobbyist gifts.

There's good logic behind it--raise their pay and they'll be less greedy and not feel compelled to steal.

Wait a minute...

A time frame for campaigning would be nice perhaps 90 days.

So a Party puts up a strawman against the incumbent in a primary. The strawman rakes in the graft, the incumbent doles out the favors,

The Treasury doubles the strawman's take, and all the money is used to sell the incumbent's message, right up until November.

Incumbents wind up with a Treasury-doubled warchest to use against the real challenger from the other Party

As I said before, why not jsut enforce the laws already on the books. Kos agrees. Do what the Republicans do, just call for the enforcement of existing laws. It's easy. Otherwise we get sucked into a GOP trap. Win the 2006 elections first and then clean up congress.

I'm sure there are kinks I haven't figured out yet, but at the very least, this proposal would be worth debating; if we can't have our elections publicly financed, this is at least a good way of getting PART of the elections publicly financed.

Whether any sitting Congressman would vote for it is, of course, a whole different question. Will $400k per year be enough to buy his vote? Some of them have been bought for a lot less.

Preston--

They fly on corporate jets. Do you have idea how much that costs? It's probably true that the average congressman doesn't 200K in gifts and treats, but 100K doesn't seem unlikely to me.

My favorite example is Bob Dole. He grew up lower middle class, spent his entire life in public service, and retired from the senate a very rich man. Liddy was part of that--but women with Liddy's money only marry rich men.

I've lived under such rules when contracting with state government, and it is simply silly in some ways. You do get friendly with people, and it's normal human intercourse to pick up a bar tab or give someone a book that you think would interest them. But the big problem now is that there is no working definition of a bribe. This proposal would make it very clear.

As for their salaries, one of the things that is profoundly irritating is how cheaply these guys sell taxpayer dollars. The ratios are sometimes 10,000 to 1.

The proposal is good. Seriously, sign it into law.

Not allowing sitting officeholders to run for higher office is a bad idea, however. It would serve to make things safer for incumbents because it would cut down on challenges. Somebody in the state legislature would not run for the national legislature because they would be quitting a sure thing for an improbable thing.

How many congressmen actually do it for the gov't salary anyway? Most are already wealthy, and/or could earn far more in the private sector. Many DO earn more after their terms are expired as lobbyists, speakers, consultants, board members, etc.

I work with businesses all the time where the management is prevented from accepting any form of gifts or meals from vendors. Why should congress be any different or held to a lesser standard?

What's the point of passing new legislation when the Repugs are going to break it anyway? Aren't they breaking the law now? Why will that change?

The only way to clean up Washington is to boot the lying, incompetent Republican criminal scum out of office.

While we're at it, isn't there a proposal out there somewhere to increase the size of the House to about 1,000 members? So that each member represents a much smaller number of constituents than before.

There was some sound, pro-democracy type reasoning behind it.

Okay, a challenger has to raise his money out there in the field, while the incumbent just sits there in his office and waits for the taxpayer check to arrive.

For an incumbent, what's not to like? If he wins, the challenger has to do it all over again, while the incumbent just waits for the next check.

You people are supposed to be reality-based. Get a clue. As long as the government has enormous control over how business is done in this country, business will find a way to influence it, either out of corruption or sheer self-defense.

I do have a question.

If I raise money donations and start running advertising for whatever candidate I feel like, what are the implications?

Most of the time, it's a benefit to the public to have its leaders away from Washington. What would these characters do with all the free time on their hands if rules like these were imposed? They seem to have plenty of time as it is to pass a bunch of crap about which they should be embarrassed. Maybe if they spent the time they have now better I could get behind this proposal. Surely, it would be nice thinking our congressmen weren't owned. But if they've got to give up the fundraising, couldn't we give 'em some busy work to take their minds off the task at hand? Please?

This proposal is going nowhere.
So why bloviate?

However this is as good a time as any to affirm three things:

1) Obama better get his ass out of the Senate quick. Being in congress is the quickest way to besmirch one's good name. Congress is a cesspool.

2) If the Democrats run another Senator in 2008 they deserve to have their asses whipped.

3) Clark is the only way they can win.

I've said it before, and I'm saying it again. The problem is not the money per se, the problem is using the money for access.

The solution is to make the system 100 percent anonymous. You can give money to a campaign but you can't tell the candidate, so you're money won't be buying you access, it will just be supporting someone you believe in.

FEC has an account for each candidate. You send money to FEC account. FEC does not let candidate know who gave. It's a crime for you to tell candidate (or officeholder) that you gave him money, because to do so is essentially bribery--seeking his/her favor in return for your money.

Lobbyists would like it, because they couldn't be strong-armed by candidates any more. Challengers would like it, because campaign money would indicate support of their positoins, not buying of access. Would officeholders like it? Maybe not, because they couldn't use their power to extort campaign contributions. Instead they'd have to depend on the attractiveness of their ideas. And it sure looks like they are bereft of those.

And after that we can ban all corporate participation in politics in any way at all, a sort of immune response against parasitism.

This proposal like others doesn't really address the key problem: the position of congressman has become an expensive piece of property, and senatorial positions are even more expensive. It's a classic supply and demand issue. You have a limited number of items and a large demand. No matter what Rube Goldberg type law you pass, someone will find some way to circumvent it.

To cut to the core of the problem, representatives are in districts more populous than anything the founders ever envisioned. It's impossible for a congressman to truly represent any district, particularly when they're as carved up as they are now, some stretching for hundreds of miles in length. To stay in office means he has to buy tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars) worth of print and broadcast advertisement. One way or the other, they're going to get that money.

It's time to look at significantly increasing the number of congressmen, and perhaps even upping the number of Senators per state. Increase the supply and you'll reduce the price, and you'll return the representatives to some kind of human contact with their constituents. That way they won't be required to raise oodles of cash to stay in office, and they'll be more responsive to their own voters.

I'm beginning to like the idea of increasing the number of Congressmen and Senators. After all, when the number of Senators was chosen, what was the average population of a state?

Would it also be a good time to look into going back to the way Senators used to be selected by the states, instead of direct election? There may have been a good reason it was originally arranged the way it was.

I like it. It needs work, but it's good.

And I think saying "money is not a problem" is, well, to be polite, completely out to lunch! It's THE problem -- in just about every issue which comes up in this and most other discussions of American society and politics.

Increasing the number of senators to around five per state, even in states where that would be more than the number of representatives is a really practical idea.

The scale of work and responsibility a single senator has nowadays is so incredibly greater than it was in 1800 it's no mystery why government is so often so oblivious and unresponsive.

koreyel,

Clark/Bredesen '08 ;)

Remember, it's not the money. It's the power. Any attempt to address the influence problem without recognizing that fact is going to be like trying to fix a leak in the bottom of a bathtub without turning the faucet off first.

Money follows the power, and it's non-partisan. Most corporate donations switch parties quite handily as power switches from one party to the other. If the Democrats were running both houses, how much cash do you think Abramoff would have been giving Republicans?

Giving aid, comfort or money to a public official should be instant treason, both for the giver and the receiver.

Thats how you end that.

And have a low threashold for assumption of guilt.

Sovereignty resides in the people, not in the corporations or any would be usurper trying to buy influence.

Also:
Allow for spending caps. Politicians would eventually push down the caps because they don't like whoring themnselves out.

Also:
Continue with limits on contributions. In the area of free speach fair speach is just as important: No ones voice should be able to drawn out other voices.

You can lobby your government all you want. You just can't give them aid, comfort or money - just your opinions.

Not a bad idea.

I'm only worried about those districts where the challengers would be money-poor, and the base salery of a congressperson would dwarf the locals.

Having come from a rather poor area of a rural state, it's not an unusual worry.

But aside from that... Seems like a good idea.

There is the first problem,How is money free speech.

So far, only Derek Copold has written anything here that makes any sense, and that includes Carville and Begala's proposal.

Cal Gal,

I like the proposal you discuss except for one thing- I don't think you can overcome the problems with speech restrictions. It just seems unconstitutional to me to prevent person A from telling person B that he made a donation to the fund.

How does this do anything other than solidify a 2-party system? Furthermore, it destroys any real possibility of a competitive primary.

Elections don't always have 2 candidates, and in cases where there are more than 2 the incumbent will get a outrageously unfair advantage (the sum of all opponents fundraising?)

Clearly this needs some more thought.

Pale Rider said "raise their pay and they'll be less greedy and not feel compelled to steal". Was this meant to be taken seriously? If I am not mistaken, Congressman make $165,000 a year and they just decided to magnamiously vote themselves a pay raise. Just as one should not require a religious dictate to realize that it is wrong not to steal, Congressmen [and women] certainly should already be aware that it is a crime to engage in larceny. Carville and Begala thinks that it is a great idea to raise their pay to a whopping 400 grand so they can curb their supposed inherent desire to steal? There are a great many people in this country and elsewhere who wish they were making 165,500 grand a year. To claim that House members need a gigantic increase so they will not be tempted to steal is beyond ludicrous.

I like the public financing aspect. I'd rather my congresswoman and Senators focus their time more on legislating and talking to real constituents than constantly asking for money.

But we should decrease the campaign season. Howard Dean was campaigning for two and a half years. The vanishing voter project suggested that compressing the primary season and shifting it's conclusion to the summer would help increase voter turnout. Plus, you won't have to spend as much money since you won't have enough time. And the govt. should make a deal with telecom companies to get discounted rates. The last presidential election used nearly a half a billion dollars just from the candidates and respective committees. That's absurd.

Term limits are bad, they prevent good, honest legislators from doing a good job. And experience and knowledge is a great quality to have. California's term limits are absurd. The first couple of terms are usually spent learning the rules and getting knowledgeable about the specifics of the issues and laws.

So sick of this "buying politicians is free speech" crap.

You can't bring a megaphone into church, you can't yell fire in a crowded movie house, and you can't scream that meat tacos are murder in the 7-11. So why the hell is it "free speech" for people who have money to buy a louder voice during elections?

Interesting. Two additional objections:

1. Howmuch does it cost? I might be inclined to support it if Democrats much cut spending on THEIR OWN PROGRAMS (education or Medicare or something) - no tax increases - to pay for it. In fact, we can be pretty sure that the cost will be much more than the projections. So IMMEDIATELY CUT spending equal to three times the projected cost.

2. The ban on incumbents raising money ONLY BEGINS once Democrats take control of Congress. No fair trying to screw Republican incumbents because they control Congress. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing even when Democrats control Congress.

If the Democrats were running both houses, how much cash do you think Abramoff would have been giving Republicans?

Clearly a GOP shill. Abramoff is a life long Republican dedicated to making the GOP the majority. He'd be giving just as much to the GOP if the Dems ran both houses. Anyone who read the slightest, teenie bit about Abramoff and the K-street project would know as much.

I guess I should expect as much from the author. I'm not even saying Dems are immune to corruption, but there is no way Abramoff would be giving to the Dems and helping them win.

Government funding of elections is the answer. If you don't like this proposed system, you'll always have money be the true voice Congress represents.

Political donations are themselves considered "symbolic speech" and protected by the first Amendment, so you'd need an Amendment or a new Court holding.

So it isn't going to happen, although it is the only answer to keep a representative Democracy at all representative of people rather than wealth.

I actually support ARD, Aleatory Representative Democracy. That is, representatives choose at random from the citizenry. You'd have to have councils, and they couldn't just be a few people, you'd need probably 49 people in order to ensure you didn't get a group of wackjobs. Then have that group decide laws by majority rule. Let them pick a President. Make service obligatory, pay them very well, say 100 million or something so they'd have no reason to take bribes, limit them to a single term.

Increasing the relative number of congressional representitives would also reduce the disproportionality of the electoral college. Increasing the relative number of senators would do the opposite.

Doubling the size of the house could be a good idea though. At a minimum it reduces the efficiency of bribery by increasing the number of people one needs to bribe. Throw in smaller districts meaning cheaper campaigns and more grass roots effectiveness vs mass media marketing. Seems like smaller districts would be a bit harder to jerrymander as well. Whats the downside? Paying for more congresspeople and staff? That would be made up with one bridge to nowhere not built.

There are two main issues I see with this:

1) What if an incumbent has 3 or 4 challengers? Does he/she get credited with some percentage of the sum raised by all of them? Won't an obvious move here be for the party of the incumbent to fund a "shadow challenger" out the wazoo, who them drops out of the race, leaving their incumbent with a much bigger war chest than his "real" opponent?

2) The problem with any limitation on fund-raising is that it's automatically a "rich guys get to run the country" law. Once you ban any gifts except from family, the ones with the wealthy families are in pole position.

That being said, the basic premise is outrageously brilliant. If the kinks can be worked out, I love it.

gq,

The point is that the donors Abramoff was coordinating for would have much less incentive to donate to Republicans if the Republicans were out of power. The donors may pick a different lobbyist to work with Democrats if Abramoff was simply unwilling to do so, but the money would find its way to where it could do the donors the most good.

we can be pretty sure that the cost will be much more than the projections

That's probably true if the GOP is making projections. Last time I checked, Clinton did pretty good, and even exceeded his projections re the deficit. The last time I checked, Iraqi oil is not paying for our adventure there, Medicare is costing more than projected, the tax cuts are costing the economy more than projected...that's ALL GOP doing.

Re the free speech issue, remember that, under Buckley, CONTRIBUTION limits are Constitutional and not abridgements of free speech (although this proposal is more than a "limit" - it is a complete ban), but EXPENDITURE limits are unconstitutional.

For those of you wondering why expenditures are speech, consider a law banning expenditures by the New York Times Company, Washington Monthly Company and The Nation. The Times, WashMonthly, and Nation can say whatever they want, but cannot spend one dime. Would that be an abridgement of their freedom of speech?

Stochastic Representative Democracy is another way to refer to a government choosen at random. Aleatory actually suggest "luck" with randomness, stochastic, is more formal, term regarding to random probability.

How does this stop Roger Clinton from taking $200,000 to get his brother to give some crook a pardon??

How about we just let Congress spend money on what is specifically called for in the Constitution....then the gravy train for the lobbyists would dry up.

The donors may pick a different lobbyist to work with Democrats if Abramoff was simply unwilling to do so, but the money would find its way to where it could do the donors the most good.

Yeah, go with that. See how it pans out.

The fact is, you're using the terms 'money' and 'donors' too generically. Try 'bribe money' and 'criminal' and 'perpetrator' and 'felon.' See, the felon, who turned out to be a criminal perpetrator, gave bribe money to the Republican.

But I can understand how you want to cloud and confuse the real issues. Plenty of Democrats have broken the law. But we're talking about 2006 right now. I'm sure you're going to bring up Abscam or the House check writing scandal.

Let's talk about the Minority Leader of the Senate tried to strangle a guy who tried to bribe him.

See the difference? The Republican takes the bribe and the Democrat kicks the ass of the guy who tried to bribe him.

If raising the salaries and putting money into the campaign funds fixes the current situation, I am all for it.

None of this will be fixed without serious campaign reform. This isn't just about lobbying.

Simple solution. Campaign contributions go to a clearing house so that the candidate is unable to know who contributed to their campaign.

No free speach issues.

No quid pro quo.

I don't know what fantasy world people live in if they expect people to go along with obligatory service as a representative. It's not as easy as one thinks. There is a lot of info one needs to know to run this country--even a medium sized city. It's absurd to think that someone with no interest at all in governance would do a good job--heck, even people who actually want to do the job often do it poorly.

I wouldn't want someone who was chosen at random to be a surgeon to operate on my child. It's dangerous. What if you we get a constantly bankrupt person to be in charge of economic issues. That's absurd.

BTW, the disproportionality of the electoral college is the fact that every state has two senators regardless of size and the winner-take-all system most states have.

tbrosz: If the Democrats were running both houses, how much cash do you think Abramoff would have been giving Republicans?

Even more, to help his buddies take control of the power.

What part of "Abramoff is a Republican loyalist" don't you understand?

Granted, some Democratic interests might replace Abramoff in the equation, but it wouldn't be Abramoff.

Talk about getting a clue!

As long as the government has enormous control over how business is done in this country, business will find a way to influence it, either out of corruption or sheer self-defense.

Government is evil, blah, blah, blah . . . government regulation is evil, blah, blah, blah . . . we should let businessmen running nuclear power plants self-regulate, blah, blah, blah . . . because we know they business be trusted to be honest, to keep the public health and interest in mind, to protect their workers, to serve their customers instead of themselves, blah, blah, blah . . .

tbrosz = absolutely clueless as to the evil big business has visited on the people of this country over the last two centuries.

It's the penalties that need to be stiffened up, not the fatcats' wallets. Does anyone really think 400K (or any amount) is enough to stop the urge of the bribe-hungry crooks to keep sucking on the K-street teat? Pshaw.

How about they get a finger or thumb cut off for every "donation" they accept in exchange for whoring out our government? At the very least, they would all end up with cute pirate nicknames like "One Thumb Tom". Yarrr.

Why not do what the Brits do? Don't bother limiting campaign contributions: limit campaign SPENDING. Let each candidate give, say $5,000 to the League of Women Voters to prepare and distribute a detailed biography/dossier. What else does a voter need than objective information about the candidate? No more TV bites, negative ads, etc. Just the straight information, please.

Not bad, buy why conflate the public financing of campaigns and lobbyist gifts? Why not start with a complete gift ban for all elected officials and staff? There is no need for any member of Congress to get presents, none.

Let's talk about the Minority Leader of the Senate tried to strangle a guy who tried to bribe him.

He was wearing an FBI wire at the time, which tends to improve one's behavior when approached by someone with some cash.

Term limits: bad idea. It's good to have experienced legislators.

Term limits: excellent idea. We need to have an electorate that is experienced in self-governing and that can't happen if the pool of candidates is limited by the advantages that incumbents have.

We need term limits because we need to counteract the tendencies toward oligarchy that happen in any organization. Without explicit mechanisms to insure that a permanent oligarchy doesn't arise we are left with it's prospect as inevitable.

Political experience and competence (the result of experience and learning from that experience) must be distributed as widely as possible, if we're going to maintain any semblence to a democracy.

That's why I find (nearly) all the objections to California's proposition system feeble. Yes, it is subject to extremists and abuse, but without the experiencing the results of bad decision making no political body, whether it's the State Legislature or the people themselves, can possible learn from their mistakes.

I have an idea and I am sure it has many holes in it, so shoot away.

But it seems to me a very honest solution is to make the statement that:
You either like a politician and support thier positions OR you seek to change that politicians opinion. But you cannot do both. Any individual or corporation that contributes directly or indirectly to a lobbyist is not allowed to contribute funds directly or indirectly to a politician. and vice versa.

You either like them the way they are and support them OR you seek to change their opinion. But you cannot do both.

How about this as an addendum or modification or whatever:

Upon election, each member of congress submits a list to the GAO or whoever. The list is of folks who are likely to give the congressman gifts by virtue of being longtime friends or business associates. The list is limited to 50 names. The congressman can accept gifts from these people but may not vote on legislation that would positively affect them or their representatives in any direct fashion, and must not introduce legislation that would positively affect them.

GQ-
I don't know what fantasy world people live in if they expect people to go along with obligatory service as a representative. It's not as easy as one thinks. There is a lot of info one needs to know to run this country--even a medium sized city. It's absurd to think that someone with no interest at all in governance would do a good job--heck, even people who actually want to do the job often do it poorly.

I wouldn't want someone who was chosen at random to be a surgeon to operate on my child. It's dangerous. What if you we get a constantly bankrupt person to be in charge of economic issues. That's absurd.

So you assume our elected representatives are experts, like an MD? Get real. Have you not noticed all the white, rich, Christian, males that make up our elected officials? Do you think they are better representative of our country?

I contend, first, if a random group of people can give someone the death penalty (the jury system) why can't it vote, in a large body for legislation? Second, the experts in government are NOT the elected officials, but the un-elected professionals that run government, that woulnd't change.

How can you be in love with a system that gives you GW Chimp and a Hollywood actor for President? Are they experts? Do they know more than a group of randomally selected citizens, sufficiently large to guarantee diversity of opinion? I think not. Although maybe bodybuilders like Arnold, or pro wrestlers like Jesse Ventura, or Sonny Bono's ex-wife are what you think good officials are made of. Not me.

I can't tell if this is a good proposal or not.

But here's what I *can* tell: If by some chance it *is* a good idea, it will be buried by a $40 million advertising campaign that says:

"What kind of idiots think Congress deserves to have their salaries doubled?"

End of story. Period. Forget about it. Ain't happening.

On the issue of increasing representatives. The UK's lower house, the House of Commons, has 646 representatives for 60.5 million people. That works out to about 93,500 people per MP. In the U.S. we have 435 reps for 300 million people, or 689,600 people per rep. That's larger by a factor of seven. To match UK's rate of representation, we'd need to increase the size of the house to 3,045. Admittedly, that seems like a lot of reps and it will introduce some new complexities, but this is the 21st century, and there's nothing unmanageable about it. Heck, I'd say go ahead and knock it up to 5,000 just so we can outdo the limeys.

We could be more conservative with the Senate and increase it to say 4 or 5 senators per state. That would give the electoral system some more flexibility, while still retaining a bit of states' rights.

I like Cal Gal's idea of anonymous campaign donation. Whether or not the details she specifies will work isn't important. I think it would definitely be a step in the right direction.

Limit Congressional pay to the median income with no acceptance of any contributions.

I am glad someone brought up term limits. If you think office holders are being bribed with campaign donations, then single terms of office are the cure. If you wish to run for a different office, you must resign the office you hold first.

For the House, Senate, and presidency, this will require a constitutional amendment. I would support it.

Yancy Ward wrote: It just seems unconstitutional to me to prevent person A from telling person B that he made a donation to the fund.

That may be true, but if person B has no way of learning the source of his campaign funds, person A can save his money and simply lie about having made the donation. And person B knows that person A can do that, and person A knows that person B knows that, etc. At that point, what is the likelihood that person B will go out of his way to do any special favors for person A?

Man, I would love to be a Congressmens family member under this proposal. Then I could take my cut of whatever I got to give to my Congressmen family member.

Will have 1800 Roger Clintons running around

Please no more reps.we have a hard enough time trying to keep what we got honest.

Beale,

I agree with your logic completely. Indeed, I would expect the disclosure of donations would greatly exceed the actual funds donated. Like I wrote, I like the idea, I just don't see how you stifle or why you need to stifle the donors.

I hate the proposal. The first clause suggests, as has been noted, that congress steals because it's underpaid, which is nonsense. The article itself says that higher salaries means an increased likelihood they'll agree to go along with dropping campaign contributions, but that's nonsense, too, for several reasons. First, one would think the opposite: the greater the financial stakes, the more they'll want to be reelected. Second, no one would be voting on a tradeoff sent down from on high by God or James Carville but on a proposal with individual clauses, and they'd be better able to choose to ditch limits while keeping higher salaries. Third, this suggests they need to be weaned from begging for money becuase they love it, but in the very next paragraph the authors say they'd love a chance not to beg for money. Sloppy thinking somewhere. (Of course begging for money is an effort, but it hasn't prompted campaign reform.)

The second clause, it's been pointed out, may have problems with the courts and with not favoring exactly the incumbents who'd vote on it. But while one could perhaps still plea for an ideal of public funding, why then the third clause?

And as for that clause, wow, is that wild. Besides that it backs off of public funding, it reminds one of all that's wrong with the system: funders would wield a lot of power. The clause would also strain the reform to the financial breaking point. Bad enough that, the courts think, matching funds would have to allow for (and so meet) the personal expenditures of Bloomberg types. But now it'd also have to meet what corporations and lobbyists can donate. Ouch.

I couldn't craft a worse reform proposal if I put my mind to it.

Just let the republicans stay in office get rid of elections then there won't be any cheating slimy dems to worry about.

tbrosz: As long as the government has enormous control over how business is done in this country, business will find a way to influence it, either out of corruption or sheer self-defense.

So, the options are:
A) do not control business, or
B) do not control business

That seems to be what your statement boils down to. I think there are plenty of data points showing how just allowing business to do whatever it wants, is, shall we say, sub-optimal.

the U.S. Treasury would credit the incumbent's campaign account with a comparable sum
Gosh, why shouldn't I like this?

Politicians don't run for office for altruistic reasons, they run for office for the power (this is largely, not universally, true). And you are expecting them to police themselves? Wake up. The thought of lobbyists coming to them because they are powerful enough for lobbyists to come to is why they get up in the morning.

As for this proposal, let's have a little thought experiment. Think of all the ways a lobbyist could grease a politician without giving them anything. Kid need to go to college? Aunt Betsy need a good retirement? Brother Jake looking for a boat? And what was that family loophole?

You could try attacking the source: since power corrupts, limit the power. Cut the Federal government back to what is enumerated in the Constitution. Otherwise, our congresspersons will either design in, or find loopholes in anything they pass; because they don't want to pass it.

And oddly enough, I can see lots of you laughing over the PorkBusters thing from the right, since it involves such a small percentage of the budget. But what percentage of the lobbyists are represented there?

Funny thing about term limits - George Nethercutt (R-WA) ran against Tom Foley in 94. The 2nd Amendment group poured a ton of money into the race to defeat Foley because of his Brady Bill vote - Part of Nethercutt's platform, and one which he highly proclaimed, was that he would abide by term limits voluntarily. Won, re-ran, but, when his term limit came into play, he announced that, as he was just learning his way around Congress, it would be an injustice to his district to step aside. Although his Democratic opponent made this a big issue, Nethercutt was re-elected. Across the state line in Idaho, Rep.Chenowith (R-ID) stepped down because of her promise to not exceed term limits, not withstanding the heavy rumors of an sexual affair with a married man. She did have some honor, you know.

If they are going to raise the salaries of Congress, could they also raise the level of pay, make them full time employees and lower the age limit for referees in the NFL? I'm beginning to believe that our reps in Congress and the NFL refs are some of the finest individuals money can buy. Perhaps, Morelli will run for Congress.

I think Carville's and Begala's proposals are close enough - nothing they propose would be worse than what we have now.

I also think our legislators and officials need to be investigated much more than they are. There should be something like a fourth branch of government perpetually investigating the other three. It would never lack business.

I agree with Derek Copold that both houses should be much larger. Likewise the Supreme Court. Nine justices is ridiculous. Ninety would be better.

In principle I agree with Craigie that selection of citizen legislators by random lottery would be better than election of professional liars by deceived voters. But that change would constitute a revolution - not worth the upheaval in my opinion.

Less revolutionary, but still unlikely, we should consider how much America's extreme income inequality and lack of governmental oversight of corporations contributes to the problem. Concentration of wealth inevitably causes a parallel concentration of political influence. All the governments generally considered the least corrupt have very high taxes and very intrusive regulation of corporations. Unfortunately, the effect of billionaires and corporations buying the government is a downward spiral; so I personally am not optimistic about any of this.

The problem is not with existing laws, it is with the culture of corruption. How about this one. The airwaves are bought and paid for by the media companies. What if we simply said that in exchange for the right to own and make money off the airwaves most of the time, during the months leading up to an election every candidate would get X hours free air time from every licensed media outlet. The time would have to be made available during peak viewing or listening hours. The cost of television adds (the real cost in running for election) drops like a rock and candidates who want an advantage could spend their time on non-televised or non-radio events. Give as much as you want to a candidate. He can spend it on everything but television and radio. Field leveled.

Please no more reps.we have a hard enough time trying to keep what we got honest.

Actually, having more of them helps keep them honest. First, they're not as valuable, and thus not as worthy of bribing. Second, the more people you have in a certain circle, the harder it is to form conspiracies. Third, even if a congressman is "turned" by contributions or outright bribes, the damage he does will be limited.

I would think having separate rules for incumbents and challengers would face a serious "equal protection" challenge.

And in this era of discontent with the Congress, coming out in favor of a RAISE for them is a political non-starter.

Kevin: So let's talk. What do you think?

I think it's a practical idea that will have to wait until after the 2006 elections to have a snowball's chance in hell. And even then, extraordinarily doubtful.

I've often wondered why the heck Congressmen and Senators are so fearful of their constituents' reactions that they continue to pay themselves so miserably. And now that it's become widely publicized how much time they spend fundraising -- and the kinds of conflicts of interest those efforts introduce -- it's clear that a bold change needs to take place. In a city (D.C.) of extraodinarily mediocrity, fear, and diffidence... fat chance!

Derek, maybe you already know that arguments very similar to yours for a large legislature were made by Spinoza in his unfinished Political Treatise. If I remember right, his formulas would give us a congress of around 5000 voting members.

gq
"BTW, the disproportionality of the electoral college is the fact that every state has two senators regardless of size and the winner-take-all system most states have."

Yea, thats why the disproportionality exists at all, but the degree of disproportionality has also been increasing over time since the size of the house was frozen.

Consider an absurd case: there are 1 million representatives and 100 senators. The disproportionality in that case would be negligable because the senatorially derived electoral votes would be such a small portion of the total.

To a first approximation (because the senate is already quite a bit smaller) if we double the size of the house we reduce the dispropotionality by half.

"If the Democrats were running both houses, how much cash do you think Abramoff would have been giving Republicans?"

Really I think the Republicans would be getting just as much, but the Democrats might started getting parity.

Who is the Minority Leader who tried to strangle somebody? I totally missed this.

Actually, Gary, I had no idea, but it's nice to know that I'm in agreement with ol' Baruch.

Or... we could all move to a country where democracy really works?

Yancey: I agree, there's no need to prohibit donors from telling politicians whatever they want to tell them, so long as campaign finance laws require that all contributions be given to a clearinghouse that is prohibited from disclosing their sources.

One side benefit of such a rule: candidates could spend less time fundraising and more time campaigning, the result being that you and I would have more opportunities to see the candidate live and in the flesh without having to pay $500 or $1,000 to get in the door.

Maybe it's not implausible to create a third house of Congress, to deal exclusively with some category of issues, like foreign affairs?

The ideas have merit.

1. The gift ban would be similar to the one that governs nearly all federal employees already. They can't even accept a free cup of coffee.

2. Financing. Interesting. What would happen if a megawatt "personality" ran against an incumbent, but raised very little cash. Who has the advantage here?

Decrease their pay and benefits. The pay and benefits (pension, medical insurance, etc.) for public service employees should be slightly less than a lower-middle class job in the private sector. Ideally they should have about the same level of job security.

Repeal any legal exemptions that they have created for themselves. Any law they pass for others to obey must also apply to them.

I will ask my question again.

If I, a private citizen, gathers funds from like-minded people, and ran whatever advertising I desired for whatever candidate I chose, what would be the implications for Carville and Begala's system?

If I remember right, his formulas would give us a congress of around 5000 voting members.

Cool...then we can redesign the Capitol Building to look more like the Galactic Senate chamber in Star Wars. I'd love to see the Congresscritters on those little flying platforms.

Money does not buy speech, speech is free, money buys an audience, and there is nothing in the Constitution that says I have a "right" to an audience.

Free speech is about * individuals * saying what they want to say without interference from government, period. It has nothing to do with financing an ad during the Super Bowl.

I think Buckley v. Valeo is an abomination. If it's illegal to bribe a policeman, if it's illegal to buy marijuana, why is it legal to buy a congressman? After all, all you are doing is asking for a change in (or exemption from) the law on your behalf.

And this would in no way prevent corporations from advising congressman on how to vote. You could always submit letters, legal memoranda, etc. for or against a particular bill. Presumably, if it was good advice, it would be heeded.

The death of our country is due to the fact that money rules all - see outsourcing, pension dumping, and, as Exhibit A, our thoroughly corrupt goverment.

Buckley v. Valeo should be overruled, and the sooner the better. It is an unconscionable exercise of judicial activism.

I also like the idea of increasing the size of the House of Representatives. But we have to remember that increasing the size of Congress will proportionally increase the power of the Executive branch.

It might be a good idea to move to a parlimentary system where the chief Executive Branch officer is elected by the majority coalition in the Legislature.

The general outlines are decent. I'm not sure I agree with details, and of course to avoid being struck down it would have to be implemented, at least in part, via a Constitutional amendment, which would have to be crafted so as to permit such regulation, not be overspecific, and not have collateral harmful effects on free speech.

YES!!! I think it is a great proposal. The point isn't whether or not it would ultimately be upheld by the Supreme Court, rather, it is an awsome political position for Dems to take.

Or... we could all move to a country where democracy really works?

And wait for it to collapse under the weight of its own corruptibility?

Does true democracy--or a true republic, if you will--have a natural life span like other forms of government? Are we seeing the end of it?

No do it the other way, the party with fewest members in congress gets to pick the president. Kind of like when you were a kid and had to divide something, one divied it up, the other got to pick.

This proposal is great for several reasons. First of all, it's bold. It's the kind of thing that will get press, the people would support, and GOP fight tooth and nail to defeat. In that sense, it's like flag burning. Each time we put it up there and they kill it, we look good, and they lose a little blood. Secondly, if it DID pass, the Democrats would have the advantage again because it would shift the power base from entrenched special interests to average voters. Thirdly, it says throw the bumbs out, and that means the party in power.

I don't know about that 80% matching contribution...seems too arbitrary. The matching contribution should be equal, minus documented adminstrative and operating costs in generating the contributions. Obviously, this would mean that campaigns would have to keep their books and report them in realtime.

Further, I'll go read the whole thing now, but I am still strongly in favor of contribution limits per contributor, including the actual candidate in terms of donating to his own campaign. Just this reform combined with the banning of fundraising by sitting politicians outside the defined election period would clean up most of the mess.

Does true democracy--or a true republic, if you will--have a natural life span like other forms of government? Are we seeing the end of it?

I don't know if I would put it that way. But I think it's true that, unpoliced, if you will, democracy (and every other form of government) will degenerate into a kleptocracy. Something about human nature, power, and vacuums, I think.

What we ought to do is not only increase the number of representatives (5,000 seems a bit unwieldy, I'd prefer to keep it at 1,000 to 2,000 members, though I see why people want more) but nationalize the House of Representatives (not the Senate). Of course, this requires redesigning or eliminating the electoral college, but that's not a bad thing, IMO.

By "nationalizing", I mean draw districts with equal population without regard to state boundaries. This eliminates, once and for all, disproportionality in the House due to widely disparate sizes of states. Small states remain protected by their disproportionate representation in the Senate.

...nature, power, and vacuums, I think. Posted by: craigie on January 18, 2006 at 4:54 PM

I believe that the phrase your looking for is, "Nature voids a power vacuum".

Err, or something like that.

Don't worry Shortstop, it may seem bad right now, but I think we're seeing a few glimmers of hope.

Something I wrote in the first Drum thread asking for suggestions...

...we limit contributions to a set maximum (say $100), and we limit contributions to the defined "electoral season" (for the particular seat)...as for rich candidates, there is no reason why they should not be subject to the same rules as other donors, even if they are donating to their own campaign. A rich campaigner will only be able to donate to his own campaign the same amount as anyone else. There is no violation of free speech, since we should define dollar donations as something other than speech, and realistically a public office is not intended to be a "seat of opportunity", or a "vehicle for personal ambition and success", but instead a public service. The actual seat and election are owned by the people (the constituents in each district).

No contributions will be allowed period from persons or organizations that are not based in or pay taxes to the district.

Lobbying will have the same restraints as political campaigns, in that any registered lobbying interest may only spend $100 gratuities on any particular piece of legislation. This should be enough to pay for lunch...

Obviously, the $100 is a limit I'm throwing out there arbitarily, and you can substitute your own dollar figure both for candidate contribution limits and lobbying limits (the same would apply to political party contributions as well), though the idea is to keep it at a "reasonable" level for most of the populace.

As for political parties, they will have the same limits, per donor, set annually, and will be prohibited from transferring money directly to candidates. Contributions can and should be used to increase party infrastructure and reach out efforts between and during election seasons, but these contributions must be kept strictly separate from candidate finances (strict accounting will be necessary to avoid penalties).

Finally, for political organizations raising consciousness about political issues, it's not clear that we can or ought to limit these contributions (intellectually and constitutionally), since it is not directly related to a public seat or campaign, but we should always maintain the strict separation, as with political party organizations, between these contributions and candidate contributions/finances (aside from the legal limit they would, as a single donor, be able to contribute as any other).

...if you really think about it, there is no purpose to allowing contributions to political candidates outside of an electoral race except to influence the candidate directly, which in other words is bribery. We can allow lobbying, with limits so that it keeps to a direct relevance and educational task, but we should not allow special interests to donate to a candidate throughout the time he is doing his job. There's no real reason for allowing it, and it puts challengers in the next election at a clear disadvantage. Of course, to keep things fair, prospective challengers would not be able to raise funds to be spent directly on the election campaign either between elections (note: though it is this complication that the plan outlined by Begala would address with the matching funds to the incumbent).

This would obviously require a legally mandated and defined "election campaign season", which ought to be shorter rather than longer.

I'd add that funds could be raised outside the "campaign season" in terms of generating publicity and winning a primary, but once the candidates were determined and the ballot printed up, the strict limits would apply, and a candidate would only be donate to his own campaign the same legal limit as any other donor.

All of this is brainstorming, basically thought up in a moment in an earlier Drum thread, so I'm sure there are flaws...it was just food for thought that day. I haven't thought it all the way through, or about it deeply, beyond just typing up some initial thoughts contemperaneously.

While I like Carville's rhetoric and courage to battle Republicans, I still think he earned his way in one of the most corrupt states as a political advisor. I do not think paying already successful people such a large amount will do much to prevent the kind of corruption that goes on in Congress. I think it would be better to keep their wages closer to the average or median household income in order to better determine where their other wealth is coming from. Pay them $400K/Yr and you will assume they all drive expensive cars and live in expensive housing due to their wages rather than graft. Also, my Congressperson and Senators do not deserve such a large pay rate. If they want to earn that much money, they can start a business, invent something, be a movie star, a sports star, or franchise a fast food concession. I see no reason why politicians should be paid as well as Saudi princes.

Make it easier to follow the money rather than more difficult.

I also like the idea of increasing the size of the House of Representatives. But we have to remember that increasing the size of Congress will proportionally increase the power of the Executive branch.

No, it increases the power of the Chief Executive relative to the median individual member of the legislature, not the Executive Branch relative to the Legislative Branch.

It might be a good idea to move to a parlimentary system where the chief Executive Branch officer is elected by the majority coalition in the Legislature.

I don't think it would. Though, OTOH, extending both the terms of both the House of Representatives and the President to a 6 year maximum term without an intervening election, but allowing either a majority of either house of Congress or the President acting alone to call new (and simultaneous) elections for both the President and House of Representatives earlier (but not sooner than, say, 1 year from the prior election, or 4 months from the date the elections are called) might be interesting.

I'd be tempted, though, with that model to create a third house of Congress, the "Popular Assembly", selected ,by lot, from among those who actually voted in the last general election. The Popular Assembly would have only the power to veto -- requiring a 2/3 vote of the relevant other house(s) to override -- any law, treaty ratification, or confirmation vote passed by the other two Houses, or the Senate, as appropriate, plus the power to call new elections on its own (it would, of course, be as fully empowered to conduct investigations in support of its legislative function as either of the other houses.)

The Popular Assembly could be very big; its powers being largely negative and for oversignt rather than being required to take positive action in order for the nation to continue functioning, it would need to be regularly responsive, only capable of being roused to action by abuse.

In a lot of ways, I kind of like the idea of allowing challengers to fundraise, and giving matching public contributions to the incumbent, because it solves the problem of forbidding a sitting representative from fundraising while on the job. The main problem with this, however, is that it assumes and seemingly institutionalizes the Republican and Democratic parties as the only two parties that matter, unless the public matching contibution to the incumbent is just determined from the challenger with the most fundraising (which inevitably is likely going to be one of the two main parties, but it's not set in stone).

"And when it is campaign time, incumbents would be under a complete ban on raising money. You read that right. No president or member of Congress could accept a single red cent from individuals, corporations, or special interests. Period."

We already have this in Wisconsin, and we just convicted 5 legislators. More to come. Still, the slime on the swamp thickens, as the watchdog agency is a toothless lapdog, and neither the Dem governor or the Repub legislature are the least bit interested in reform.

The Popular Assembly could be very big; its powers being largely negative and for oversignt rather than being required to take positive action in order for the nation to continue functioning, it would need to be regularly responsive, only capable of being roused to action by abuse. Posted by: cmdicely on January 18, 2006 at 5:14 PM

Is that essentially what the Judiciary supposed to be?

Granted it has no active power, i.e., the Supreme Court can't strike down a law without someone with standing brings it to them. But otherwise I've always had the impression that the Judicial branch acted as a supervisory branch on the other two.

Maybe we should admend the Constitution to give the Judiciary the ability to act independently instead of having to wait for someone to file suit.

In a lot of ways, I kind of like the idea of allowing challengers to fundraise, and giving matching public contributions to the incumbent, because it sol