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."55 responses total.
The question is clear. I was at the Dean national meetup night earlier this evening, and this was the main topic of discussion. I think most of us supported the idea of federal campaign spending limits and campaign finance reform. But it is also understood that Bush is raising so much money, $200 million plus, that the $45 million max guarantee from federal matching funds simply won't be enough. I think the ability of candidates to DECLINE to honor campaign spending limits and thus DECLINE matching funds, renders the concept ineffective. How is it fair if one candidate declines to participate in the system, while others stay within the guidelines? I think the present campaign finance laws are badly in need of an overhaul, and can't work as intended if any candidate has the ability to opt out. Either all candidates should be subject to the restrictions to get matching funds, or nobody should. If Bush is going to raise $250 million, what is a candidate like Dean who could raise significant funds if federal limits are ignored and matching funds declined, to do? I think it is generally accepted that since Bush has already opted out, that if Dean opts out, the current campaign finance laws are done with. The general idea is good, but the limits need to be raised to reflect the economic needs of campaigns-- $45 million won't cut it any more-- double it, triple it, but make it so opting out isn't an option in the future. But for this cycle, Bush has opted out and will raise so much money, that what choice does a candidate wishing to oppose him have? Dean is canvassing his supporters on the question this week, and I will vote that he should opt out, the campaign should decline matching funds, and raise as much money as possible through donations to compete. It is the only way, during this cycle, to come close to leveling the playing field. Campaign finance reform and spending limits must be revisited. It is a good idea-- I always check the box on my tax return-- but it is not working right. Not yet.
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.
Political candidates who say "campaign finance reform" don't mean the political system should be made fair, they mean it should be tilted in the direction of their own interests. There is no more cynical issue in American politics. I don't think the problem with political campaigns is that there's too much money involved. It takes a lot of money to run a political campaign. There's nothing wrong with that. We're picking the next leader of our country, a man who'll be making life and death decisions, and decisions on spending billions of dollars *per week* over *four years*, and we shudder when the very wealthiest campaign is going to spend a total of a dollar per American citizen for a whole campaign? That's unreasonable. It's *important* who is picked to be president. The money is insignificant compared to the impact of the presidency. I don't favor the "public funding" system, which allows only Republicans and Democrats access to FEC funding in exchange for their promise not to raise large amounts of money on their own. I don't at *all* like how the FEC has gotten the power to define who can air campaign ads. The main purpose of the 1st Amendment is to protect political speech, to allow people to speak out if they have anything to say. It is to protect the population from exactly this sort of limitation. I should, if I want and am able, be able to go out and raise the money and air a political ad saying anything I want, particularly during a political campaign. I should be able to air as many political ads as I want. So should anyone else. But that's what's being regulated. I hate that.
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.
WHAT A HYPOCRITE. Just a few months ago, Doctor How-weird was castigating any of his fellow candidates for even considering going outside of the government campaign funding system for whatever reason. Now, he's leading the charge in the opposite direction. This joker wants to be President? (And we'd like to know what he plans to do with the $10 million each that 2 folks recently gave to the Democratic Party for the campaign. Hopefully, he's gonna send those checks back to senders rather than be tainted. Yeah, right.)
money talks, adn Dean knows to follow the money.
That's the way the system works, and he's as entitled to use it as anyone else. I expect to be voting for Bush over any of the Democratic candidates, but I can't fault the Dems for using the money they're offered when Bush is doing the same thing.
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....
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kucinich useta sleep in a parked car, does that count? i'd like him except he's a vegan. pussy.
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Rule of thumb: the more money a political campaign has to spend, the higher the percentage which is wasted.
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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
I don't think reversing all of the Bush tax cuts is going to fly. He should focus on the cuts that only benefit the upper class.
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.
<remmers checks the accuracy of mr. klg's claim about the post office...> Looking in the Government section of the latest Ann Arbor phone book (delivered just a few days ago) under United States Post Office, I find numbers for the Main Post Office, the Arcade Station, and the Green Road Station. Those are all the branches I'm aware of in Ann Arbor. <guess mr. klg is full of it yet again>
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.
Mr. remmers, (Such crude vitriol! Think of your reputation.) We suggest that you might check the North Woodward Area telephone directory and turn to the blue "US Government" listing. It appears that approximately ninety percent of the branches, conincidetally and conveniently, have the same telephone number: ASK-USPS. How wonderful. And dialing one of the other numbers that we found greeted us with the alway entertaining: "The number you dialed has been disconnected." Perhaps you ought to make an attempt to connect and let us know what happens. klg
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He is for, against, and undecided. It all depends upon the group to whom he is speaking.
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. ;)
Re #19: The numbers given for the Ann Arbor branches are all different. My first clue that your assertion was fishy was my recollection that my wife actually did call our nearest branch the other day. Anyway, even if you're correct about your own local listings, it doesn't support your argument since the USPS is largely privatized (as gull pointed out in #18).
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(Here, watch how I stick klg on the pointy horns of a dilemma...) Of course we can't have health care run by the government. The same people who fucked up the invasion and occupation of Iraq will surely destroy the US health system. Right?
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When I called the number for our local post office I was greeted with a recording to call a national 1-800 number. I called, asked for the number for our local office, and was given it without further question. So, they'll give you the number but you have to ask. Who won? ;-)
Its official today: WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a historic move, Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean announced Saturday he is skipping public financing and the spending limits that come with it, hoping his money-raising power can help win the nomination and unseat President Bush. The 2004 race is the first time that candidates from both major parties will forgo the Watergate-era public financing system. Bush also is opting out, as he did in the 2000 Republican primaries and raised a record $100-plus million. Dean made his decision based on a high-tech tally of 600,000 supporters, whom he asked to vote by e-mail, Internet, telephone or regular mail through Friday. He announced the results at noon EST in Burlington, Vermont. Campaign officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said about 85 percent of the 105,000 supporters who weighed in urged the former Vermont governor to opt out. He becomes the first candidate in Democratic Party history to take such a step. At least two Democratic rivals -- Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and retired Gen. Wesley Clark -- also have been considering opting out. Like Bush in his primaries, Dean now can spend unlimited amounts on his campaign for the nomination and, if successful, through the summer before the general election season starts. Candidates who accept public dollars in the primaries can get up to $18.7 million in taxpayer money but are limited to about $45 million in spending. A campaign official said Dean has no plans to limit his spending through the primaries to that threshold, as some campaign finance watchdogs have urged. Lucrative Web donations Dean was the first 2004 hopeful to qualify for the government money. He told The Associated Press last March that he was committed to taking it, in part because he believed in campaign finance reform. He began to rethink that plan over the summer after his campaign saw an unprecedented flood of contributions over the Internet. In the latest three months of fund raising, through September, Dean raised nearly $5 million over his Web site in just over a week, astounding his rivals with a record $14.8 million for the time period. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe has urged his party's candidates to seriously consider turning away the government money, arguing that Bush removed it as a campaign issue when he did so in 2000 with no public outcry. McAuliffe and other Democratic strategists have worried that public financing's strict spending limit would leave their nominee low on cash after several bruising primaries. Bush, facing no GOP opponent, would have tens of millions left to spend next spring and summer. Bush already is closing in on $100 million since starting to raise money in May. The new campaign finance law also doubled the individual contribution limit to $2,000. That makes the government match of up to $250 for each donation less attractive. The program was created after Watergate to try to try to reduce presidential candidates' reliance on big donors. Congress has done little to it since, and even the system's supporters say it has failed to keep pace with the cost of campaigns. The system is financed by taxpayers who check a box on their tax returns to direct $3 to the program. Though marking the box doesn't increase their tax bills, only about one in 11 taxpayers do so, leaving the program short on cash when candidates get their first payments in January of the election year. Dean, with about $25 million raised through September, will need a continued flood of contributions to make up for the $18.9 million in government money he's turning away. No major-party candidate has ever skipped public financing in the general election, in part because that money covers a much shorter period. The nominees selected at the Democratic and GOP conventions next summer will each be eligible for about $74 million in full government dollars for the November 2 election.
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No, they don't, last I heard. Campaign contributions can only be used for campaign expenses. Of course, travel, meals and lodging are legitimate campaign expenses.
re: "#25 (scott): (Here, watch how I stick klg on the pointy horns of a dilemma...) Of course we can't have health care run by the government. The same people who fucked up the invasion and occupation of Iraq will surely destroy the US health system. Right?" My dear Mr. scott: Not right, sir. You are starting from a false premise. klg re: "#24 (tod): I think its too early to complain about a National Healthcare system without the specifics." Considering that which is known about socialized medicine in other countries, it is never too early to complain about the prospect of it being further imposed upon the citizens of the United States.
Klg, do tell... what false premise? You made a goofy comparison, I made an equally goofy comparison. Is the false premise failing to toe the Republican party line, perhaps?
No time now to teach you the rules of logical reasoning here, my dear Mr. scott. Please accept our apology. Warmest wishes, klg.
klg punts!
(We do not wish to run up the score, chap. Bad manners.)
Nope, klg lost and desperate to save face. Here's a hint: Leeron at least writes his own 1500+ word essays before demanding same from others.
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Re #31: You know, there are a lot of sound bites from conservative U.S. politicians about how bad the Canadian health care system is. But I've never met a Canadian who expressed a desire for a copy of the American system in their country.
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of course .. along with te poast office workers ..same plan options. adn civil service retirement (not evicerated like SS) too! go sell stamps! ,
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oh? but dean jsut got *tw0 of them* to endorse his over-reach! as for welfare-healthcare .. *local* control. werkx that way. nationalizing the mdical profession is teh death health care as we know it. but then, hillary wouldn't ahve it any other way .. in 2009+ is there a medical/doctors PAC (or is it the trial lawyers??? by a different name????)
Local control brings up some interesting problems with adverse selection. Essentially it becomes impractical for any state to offer a better program than its neighbors. I'm not sure a national system would be any worse than the current one, where my heath care is rationed by a for-profit corporation that I'm not allowed to sue.
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let the politicians chew up the ants and feed tehm to the grasshopperes, NOT!
re #43 ... ans what is 'adverse selection'?
"Adverse selection" is a big problem with insurance plans. It's when you have a plan that's much more attractive to sick people than to healthy people, so that your insured population ends up being mostly sicker than average. This is what Democrats are worried about with the current Medicare bill. It's likely that most healthy people will opt for the private insurer option, leaving Medicare with only the sickest of the sick and skyrocketing costs compared to the private plans. It pretty much sets up Medicare to fail.
(To relate this to #43 -- let's say Indiana decides to offer a really great single-payer insurance plan. Since people can move pretty freely between states, it's highly likely that all the sickest people from Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin will move to Indiana and bankrupt their plan.)
Re #47: Medicare is bound to fail anyway. There is no way that a fee-for-service system can remain viable with the combination of skyrocketing costs and the demographic bomb hitting its finances. Voting for such a program without cost-containment measures has to count as one of the worst mistakes (or crimes) of the Great Society. Since our country seems to be unable to address these issues before they become crises (see Social Security in 1983), it actually makes sense to precipitate the failure in order to get the required fixes done sooner and limit the damage.
(Sad, but probably accurate, Mr. russ.)
Re #49: The proposed scheme works against cost-containment, however -- which is exactly why the drug companies favor it. If Medicare alone were handling everyone in the Medicare system, it would account for a huge percentage of total drug sales and would have the leverage to negotiate lower prices. By successfully lobbying for a bill that divides up the Medicare population among a bunch of private insurers, the drug companies have ensured that no one entity will have enough bargaining power to reduce prices.
(Oh, we see. The government has more incentive to be cost conscious than private sector purchasers. What a quaint notion.)
You think that's a bad idea?
Re #52: Not necessarily more incentive, but more clout. Which is probably why the government is specifically *forbidden* to negotiate lower prices by the Medicare bill that's about to pass. The drug companies must have greased a lot of palms to get that one.
whore.
You have several choices: