Monday, January 31, 2011

Republicans in the US House, with support from Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) and few other Democrats, gleefully stabbed the presidential public financing system in the heart, draining its funds for other purposes. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) was the only Republican in the US House to agree that the program is broken but insist that it should be repaired rather than gutted. Today, I followed a truck up a hill with a bumper sticker that read: “WWRD: What Would Reagan Do?” Coincidently, Rep. David Price of NC gave the answer during last week’s debate on the floor of Congress. Price pointed out that Ronald Reagan, the upstart from the West, enrolled in the public financing program during the 1976 primary and it helped him leverage his popular support into a larger platform for a campaign that kept growing; without it, he would languished. No matter. Republicans now want to kill a bipartisan reform program that stands in the way of privatizing another slice of the election process. It’s unlikely the US Senate will go along. Meanwhile, reformers are preparing to introduce legislation to fix the presidential program as well as a new version of the Fair Elections Now Act, even if those bills also fail this term, like the House’s action.