Views » June 11, 2009

Buy Back Our Government

By Joel Bleifuss

Porn rentals, duck islands and moat-cleaning are among the frivolities British members of Parliament have charged to their expense accounts. The people of the UK are appalled. It is estimated that the scandal could cost more than half of Britain’s 646 MPs their seats in the next election.

Hyping the outrage, the New York Times’ John F. Burns writes of “an upsurge in public anger over venality that seems to have run like a virus through the House of Commons.”

But when it comes to living large with the public’s money, members of Parliament have nothing on members of Congress.

First, a baseline perspective: Last year, members of Parliament earned £61,000 ($93,000) and on average claimed £135,000 ($214,685) in expenses. In the United States, each member of Congress was paid $174,000 and allotted between $1.3 million and $4.5 million for official expenses.

Then there is the question of legal bribery. British election law strictly regulates campaign contributions, the vast majority of which are made to political parties, not individual members of Parliament. Not so in the United States.

During the 2007-2008 election cycle, banking industry employees and bank-sponsored political action committees contributed $152 million to candidates for federal office. On June 3, The Wall Street Journal reported that in the first three months of this year, a coalition of 31 financial institutions spent $27.6 million on federal lobbying and contributed $286,000 to members of Congress who sit on the committees that oversee the banking industry.

It was money well spent. In April, for example, Congress voted to weaken regulations on how corporations calculate the worth of the assets they hold. As a result, troubled institutions like CitiGroup were able to post a $1.6 billion profit in the first quarter.

There is a remedy to such legal graft.

The Fair Elections Now Act is currently before both the House and Senate. The legislation would set up a system to finance congressional campaigns with a combination of small dollar individual contributions and public monies. The idea is to get special interest dollars, and the expectations that accompany those contributions, out of the legislative process.

Here’s the catch: Few people have even heard about the proposed legislation, and there is little popular pressure to get it on the books. The networks ignore campaign finance reform, probably because their lobbying arm, the National Association of Broadcasters, oppose it.

The only network to cover the story when the bill was introduced on March 31 was Fox News. Naturally, these fair and balanced reporters gave most of the airtime to America’s civics teacher, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R- Ky.). “Tax money to pay for our bumper stickers, balloons and attack ads,” sputtered McConnell. “It’s the ultimate outrage.”

But a recent survey by Lake Research Partners and the Terrance Group found that 67 percent of those questioned would support giving qualified candidates a limited amount of public funding if they agreed to stop taking large contributions. Furthermore, 79 percent of Americans see large campaign contributions as a roadblock to solving America’s economic, healthcare and energy problems.

Apparently the public would rather suffer the “outrage” of buying Mitch McConnell’s balloons than allow private corporations to buy their government.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  There are no comments on this article yet. Start the discussion below.

• register a new account »Posting Security

  To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.

  Username Password

    Remember me
  

  Retreive lost password »

Also featured The Somalia Crossroads
Auto Task Force Outsources Jobs
Can a Union Divided Stand?

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by Joel Bleifuss

• Block ’Em, Sock ’Em
  Across the country progressive groups are mobilizing to support legislative initiatives, but to… morePosted on July 9, 2009
• A Specter is Haunting Dems
  Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) had every reason to free himself from the wing… morePosted on May 12, 2009
• Bailout Bandits
  In these days of "bank stablization plans" (bailouts for fat cats) and "overseas… morePosted on April 16, 2009
• Building Utopia
  A new documentary profiles the rise and fall of a Depression-era utopian experiment in the Bronx.Posted on April 13, 2009
• To Boycott Israel…or Not?
  Naomi Klein and Rabbi Arthur Waskow debate whether divestment will bring peace to the Middle East.Posted on March 30, 2009