Democracy for Vancouver

Clinton does not admit that the money corrupts but at least he admits the time constraints caused by constant fundraisers diminishes Congress members’ abilities to govern. Maybe this is why Clinton II is laughing so much? She is delirious caused by sleep deprivation.

Clinton also mentions that taxpayers have not supported public financing of elections because they don’t check the $3 (used to be $1) box on their tax returns in sufficient numbers. Most people don’t pay any attention to that box and therefore it doesn’t get checked. If Congress had structured the law so that unless you check “no” on the box, the $3 goes to the candidates, there would be a whole lot more money in the public campaign coffers. In addition, the problem is not that there is too little raised for public financing, the problem is there is WAY TOO MUCH private money raised. Let’s get real.

You have to like the guy though even if you disagree with him.

Below the fold is a transcript of Bill’s remarks on public financing in the video.

Bill Clinton on public financing, as guest on “Daily Show with Jon Stewart”, Sept. 20, 2007:

I think that politicians have to spend too much time raising money. … I would go for publicly-funded elections and adequately fund them, at least for the general election.

If you had public funding and discounted advertising costs …. It’s ironic: most of the money is raised to get on the media. People feel if somebody gets on and I don’t I will get beat because there will be just one side of the story out there. You might have to have some … threshold to qualify for public funding.

Keep in mind that voters haven’t supported even public funding for presidential elections very vigorously (through check-offs on tax forms). Now most of the candidates are talking about having private funding in the general election, because the public fund will be so small because not enough of us check the box. A lot of people feel that politicians can raise money and they ought to do it.

One of the problems with Washington, with the gridlock in Washington … I was really glad to see you (Stewart) point out that … you can’t pass anything in the Senate with a majority vote except the budget. Anything else requires sixty votes, because of the filibuster.

These people in the Congress –much more than the President—are very strained by this system. When I was President, I lived above the store—I had no commute and was in the best public housing in America.

Suppose you’re a senator from a small state in the intermountain West. You’ve still got to raise a lot of money and you don’t have many people in your state. You may be out four nights a week on fundraisers for four of the six years of your Senate term. … Let’s say you’ve got to fly back and forth to California, Oregon or Washington every weekend to do your job and then when you’re back in Washington you’re doing this. You have no idea how many Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate are chronically sleep-deprived because of this system.

When I was a young man working in the U.S. Senate—I never will forget how different it was– the typical senator would come to Washington for seven months a year and work like crazy and stay in Washington on the weekend, not fly home …. They got to rest, they got to see their friends. They got to sit and meet with members of, let’s say the Senate, in both parties and talk through issues and read books and think. Then five months a year, three months in the summer and about two months at other times, they would go home and stay there and travel around their states or districts and listen to people. They had a certain balance and rhythm to their lives, much more like ordinary Americans.

I have an enormous amount of sympathy with the sheer physical strain on all these members of Congress. I think it makes them more edgy. I think it makes them more irritable. I think it makes them more vulnerable to being pulled back and forth by interest groups that want more conflict and less cooperation. I know that this is an unusual theory, but I do believe sleep deprivation has lot to do with some of the edginess in Washington today.

If we could find a way for them and their competitors—the challengers –to run for election without making them go out five nights a week in this endless hunt for funds so they can be on television when someone attacks them, I think America would work better.

[Transcribed by Jim Tuttle; questions and asides omitted]