The end of Federal Campaign spending limits?

Nov 6 07:54 UTC 2003

Text of speech by Governor Howard Dean, presidential candidate, given 
today at Cooper Union in NYC.  The subject is campaign spending limits:

"Today we are in a space rich with our nation s history, a place where 
citizens have gathered for more than a century to debate the great 
issues of the day. 

From this platform and at this very podium Abraham Lincoln spoke nearly 
150 years ago as a presidential candidate. When Lincoln came here, he 
did not shy away from talking about the greatest threat our republic 
faced at that time the terrible institution of human slavery.

It was his belief in the dignity of all people, and his conviction that 
a government of, by and for the people should not perish from this 
earth, that drove him to challenge his country to be better than it was.

We do Lincoln justice to remember what he fought for, and we honor his 
memory when we do not limit ourselves to small aspirations, but 
confront the greater challenges that our nation faces.

In this age, what is at stake is American democracy itself. The flood 
of special interest money into politics is corrupting our democracy and 
rewarding those leaders who sell off our country to the highest bidder. 

Too many of our leaders have made a devil s bargain with corporate and 
wealthy interests, saying  I ll keep you in power if you keep me in 
power. 

And in all that our government touches -- our economy, our environment, 
our energy sources, our health care system, and even our foreign 
policy -- our leaders are serving their contributors  interests at the 
expense of the public interest.

The great question is, how do we run a campaign which best challenges 
the corruption of the old order and the influence of organized wealth?

I am standing here only because of you-- as politicians across the 
nation wonder how we did it. The answer of course is that you did it.

Today our campaign faces a choice -- and the people who built this 
campaign will be the ones to make it.

I am asking you to decide whether our campaign will decline public 
financing or accept federal matching funds.

This campaign has been an amazing journey for me and the hundreds of 
thousands of Americans who have joined our cause. We have started a 
debate to bring meaning back to our politics. We have used technology 
to bring people back into the political process. We have launched a 
campaign not just to win an election, but to revive our democracy and 
help restore our role as an idealistic moral force in the world.

Over the past six months, this campaign has shocked the political 
establishment. We demanded a debate on the wisdom of war in Iraq. We 
questioned the rationale used by this President to lead our country 
into a pre-emptive war, without the sanction of the United Nations and 
without the support of many of our greatest allies.

This is a campaign that now asks the President to explain the 
misleading and faulty intelligence he put before the American people. 

It is a campaign that demands to know why we continue to risk the 
safety of our forces in Iraq by refusing to work with the international 
community.

It is a campaign that demands from this President and the Congress 
accountability and that not one penny of the funding for Iraq s 
reconstruction goes to line the pockets of Halliburton or any of this 
administration s other friends.

And the American people responded. You have responded by joining 
together and organizing in over 850 Meetups around the country. You 
have responded by sending emails, writing letters, making phone calls, 
and knocking on doors. You have responded by volunteering for clean-
ups, building houses with Habitat for Humanity, donating food and 
providing disaster relief.

Almost half a million Americans have joined our campaign. You shattered 
the record for a Democratic candidate by raising 14.8 million dollars 
last quarter making over two-hundred thousand contributions at an 
average of just 77 dollars.

These numbers send a message to the political elites. They send a 
message to the special interests that fund too many campaigns and pay 
too many lobbyists  salaries. They send a message to the establishment 
that the American people will no longer accept business as usual. It is 
time for real change, not just the rhetoric of change.

You have given us a great gift. In politics today, members of both 
parties are beholden to those who fund their campaigns. An election 
system relying on oil money can t talk honestly about energy. An 
election system relying on pharmaceutical money can t talk honestly 
about health care reform. 

But through hundreds of thousands of $77 donations, you did something 
no one thought possible. You freed this campaign from being beholden to 
anyone but the people themselves.

But this is what we face:

In the last two elections, politicians, political parties and interest 
groups have spent 5.1 billion dollars. Those billions came from less 
than 5% of the public. And before this election is finished George Bush 
plans to add 200 million dollars more from large corporate interests.

Where does all this money come from? Well, in the last six years, 
despite massive corporate scandals and the crash of the NASDAQ, the 
financial services industry managed to find almost 168 million dollars 
to influence the political process.

A pharmaceutical and health products industry that can t afford to sell 
our seniors cheaper prescription drugs did manage to find 60 million 
dollars to influence our elections.

The oil and gas industry got the best deal. It only needed to give 64 
million dollars to be able to sit in Vice President Cheney s office and 
write our energy policy.

Last year the Congress passed the McCain/Feingold law. It was supposed 
to take the corrupting influence of large corporate interests out of 
our political process. 

Yet not even before the ink was dried, President Bush betrayed this 
bill s intent and spirit. George Bush announced he would bypass the 
matching system and raise 200 million dollars for a primary election in 
which he faces no opponent. 

George W. Bush calls his most powerful money-bundlers  Pioneers  
and  Rangers,  who bundle together hundreds of thousands of dollars in 
contributions.

The bundlers are people like James Harless, Chairman of International 
Industries, a coal industry group, who put together 355 thousand 
dollars to get George Bush elected.

They are people like Steven Letbetter of Reliant Resources, who put 
together 214 thousand.

They are people like Frederick Webber, former president of the American 
Chemistry Council, who bundled another 221 thousand.

They are people like Walden O Dell, a 2004 Pioneer, who is also 
manufacturing electronic voting machines to count our votes, and has 
said that he is, quote,  committed to helping Ohio deliver its 
electoral votes to the President next year. 

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the majority of 
reconstruction contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan went to George Bush s 
contributors. 

They gave him the money, and he gave them the contracts. 

This is not a liberal fight or a conservative fight. People of all 
ideologies believe our government has been bought and paid for. So many 
Americans have even given up hope that anything can ever be done about 
it. They believe our government, which was once in the hands of the 
people, has been taken away from us.

This is not about Democrats and Republicans. It is about our democracy 
and our republic. 

The present campaign finance laws were an attempt to remove the 
influence of special interests in our politics. Many in Washington talk 
about reform. You have done it. Our campaign has removed the power of 
special interests and placed it into the hands of the people, more 
successfully than any campaign in history. 

The Bush campaign has done the opposite. They are placing power in the 
hands of the special interests more blatantly and dangerously than any 
campaign in history. 

The Bush campaign is selling our democracy so they can crush their 
political opponents. We cannot let this happen.

This is the one Democratic campaign which has the opportunity to fight 
back against the onslaught of the Bush attacks between March and 
August -- spending caps would leave a publicly financed Democrat broke 
by next spring. 

A Democratic nominee with no money is exactly what the Bush campaign is 
hoping for. Ours is the only campaign with a chance to defend itself 
during those five months.

We have the opportunity to match the Bush campaign dollar-for-dollar. 
But that s not what s incredible.

What s incredible is, we can match his 200 million dollars of special 
interest money with 200 million dollars of our own raised through 
millions of ordinary Americans donating whatever they can afford. 

This is the first campaign in decades to be able to give the people a 
choice between a President who awards tax giveaways and government 
contracts to political contributors, and a candidate who is owned by no 
one -- except the American people.

No one else could claim that. And this opportunity is not possible 
because of anything I did. You made it possible. Which is why it is 
your decision.

And who could have anticipated that a campaign which began with no 
money and little support would be forced to make this choice? We 
shouldn t be in this position. No campaign should. We should have 
public financing that works in this country.

We have two choices. The first will be for us to decline federal 
matching funds. It will mean walking away from 19 million dollars. This 
will place the burden of funding the campaign entirely on our 
supporters, but with the knowledge that this may be the only way to win 
this election and reform our political system.

The second choice will be for us to accept public financing. 
Unfortunately despite the law s best intent, it will hinder our reform 
efforts while rewarding the Bush campaign s attempts to further 
increase the power of special interests. It will cap our spending at 
$45 million, giving the Bush campaign a spending advantage of $170 
million, which they will use to define and distort us from March to 
August. 

So today, we are sending ballots to all of you who have joined this 
campaign, and you will vote on whether we should decline public 
financing or accept federal matching funds. 

The vote will end Friday at midnight and we will announce results 
Saturday at noon.

In our political system, there are three ways to effect change in our 
country. The first is through Washington politics, with status quo 
solutions. But our problems will not be solved by those who created 
them.

The second way is for a shining figure from outside Washington to come 
in and rescue the people. But time and time again, we ve watched the 
outside hero become the Washington insider. Promises are broken and the 
people are forgotten.

But there is a third way to change America. It is built into our 
Constitution, and it comes from our oldest tradition. It is for the 
people to change the system for themselves.

I am putting this decision in your hands -- to prove that while this 
President may let his most powerful contributors shape his policies, 
the next President will be beholden to only the people.

Only when the people have regained control of their government can true 
campaign reform be enacted.

But no matter what happens with the vote that begins today, nothing can 
change the story of how this campaign has changed politics you have 
already written that story. 

We are at a critical point in our history. We face a crisis where the 
political process is not working for most people and in fact, works all 
too well for the very few.

Politics is dominated by cynicism instead of hope. Americans have 
become alienated from political life at every level. Far too many 
people have become convinced that politics is not the solution, but 
part of the problem. 

But real change has always come from the bottom-up. Through the 
American Revolution, the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, the 
civil rights movement, America has changed when the people have changed 
it.

We sense that something has gone wrong in politics today -- but we must 
also understand that we have the power to stand up for what s right. We 
have the power to rise and meet the challenge as other Americans have 
done before us. 

We must join the first generation of our republic, which fought for 
self-government against a political establishment that seemed immovable.

When Lincoln spoke here, he said,  Let us have faith that right makes 
might. 

Our campaign is a movement to prove once again that right makes might. 
It is a movement to reduce the influence of privilege and organized 
wealth on the political process so that we may liberate government to 
freely debate and try to resolve the great issues of our time.

If we succeed, as I believe we will succeed, we can establish a 
government whose only concern is the welfare of our people and the 
security of our nation."

response 2 of 55:

Nov 6 15:17 UTC 2003

I think Dean should decline matching funds.  It's his only chance to compete
with Bush's spending, and principles don't mean much if you can't get
elected.

response 4 of 55:

Nov 6 16:41 UTC 2003

The problem, of course, is once the person is elected they have a whole
bunch of companies and special interests who have bought access, and who
will now be coming back wanting favors.  Study after study has found that
this works out well for them -- they almost always get *some* benefit from
the politician they helped elect.

response 6 of 55:

Nov 6 17:57 UTC 2003

money talks, adn Dean knows to follow the money.

response 8 of 55:

Nov 6 19:19 UTC 2003

klg, dean was willing to stay within the funding system, but only if all the
candidates including Bush did.  Bush has raised so much money outside the
system that everything has changed.  When one candidate has over $200 million,
you can't expect other candidates to accept rules that will only allow them
a max of $45 million in matching funds.  Even if Dean raised $45 million and
had a $45 million match, that is $90 million, which means Bush would still
outspend him by more than two to one by being outside the sytem.  Dean simply
looked at how much Bush raised and changed his mind.  I think he'd still have
been glad to stay within the system, if Bush had.  But Bush opted out.  I
think the match limits need to be substantially raised in exchange for new
rules that say that NOBODY can opt out.  

And who are these people who donated $10 million each to the Dean campaign>?
klg still reads the weekly standard and rupert murdoch's publications like
they are the bible.  Only the liberal media is biased right and not the
conservative media?  please....

response 10 of 55:

Nov 6 19:51 UTC 2003

kucinich useta sleep in a parked car, does that count?

i'd like him except he's a vegan.  pussy.

response 12 of 55:

Nov 6 20:27 UTC 2003

Rule of thumb: the more money a political campaign has to spend, the higher
the percentage which is wasted.

response 14 of 55:

Nov 7 01:31 UTC 2003

tod, Dean wants to make health care overhaul his main priority.  He and his
wife are doctors and share a practice in Vermont.  Dean wants to reverse all
of the Bush tax cuts and use the funds to overhaul health care and fix the
medical system.  Dr. Dean is your candidate

response 16 of 55:

Nov 7 17:31 UTC 2003

re:  "#8 (richard):  klg, dean was willing to stay within the funding 
system, but only if all the candidates including Bush did."

Oh, really???  You wouldn't have a quote handy to back that up, Mr. 
Richard.


re:  #14 (richard): Dean wants to reverse all of the Bush tax cuts and 
use the funds to overhaul health care and fix the medical system.  Dr. 
Dean is your candidate."

HA!  Medical care brought to you by the same people who deliver the 
mail!  Have you, Mr. richard, tried to call the Post Office lately???  
The branch offices are not even listed in the telephone directory any 
more!  Will How-weird do the same for doctors?



Dennis the Menace from Cleveland claims he lived in a car while growing 
up.

response 18 of 55:

Nov 7 19:28 UTC 2003

Not to mention that the Postal Service was mostly privatized several
years  ago.  Any failings can be laid at the feet of the private sector.

response 22 of 55:

Nov 7 20:50 UTC 2003

So I assume klg's argument is that we're better off trusting our health
care to the private sector, the people who brought us Enron. ;)