In a letter sent today to members of the House Administration Committee, a group of 38 organizations and individuals with expertise in governance issues strongly opposed bills being considered tomorrow by the committee to terminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). (See below for a full list of the signers of the letter.) The group of organizations and individuals strongly oppose HR 133, a bill to terminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund and HR 634, a bill to terminate the EAC. In the letter, reform groups urged the committee members to reject both bills. The letter said, “At stake is the survival of the public financing system for presidential elections and a commission that plays a vitally important role in standardizing and modernizing election administration.” Reform groups oppose HR 133 because according to the letter, “It vitiates an important check on special interest money by eliminating public financing for presidential campaigns.”
The letter says, “The current public financing system does not work because Congress never modernized the system to account for greatly increased costs in the financing of presidential campaigns. The system needs meaningful reform, not repeal, and should be updated to accommodate the new realities of campaign fundraising after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United.
The letter continues, “Big money in elections, especially after Citizens United, is corrosive to government accountability and representative democracy. Now is the time to upgrade our presidential public financing system to empower small donors. Eliminating the presidential public financing system will ensure that the presidency is in the hands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals and special interest groups.”
Full Article: 38 Reform Groups Oppose Efforts by House Admin. Committee to Terminate Presidential Public Financing & EAC | YubaNet.