ALERT

U.S. Democracy Under Siege

Senator Durbin: “What is at stake in this debate is the future of this democracy.”

Senator Schumer: “We have a poison that is in the roots of this great tree of democracy. If we can no longer get our best young people going into government, and if we can no longer have the citizens believe that [our] debates are being divided by firmly held beliefs rather than by who is manipulating, controlling, or contributing to whom, then we can’t survive as a democracy. We will wake up one morning and say: We don’t have the kind of democracy that the Jeffersons and the Madisons and the Washingtons and the Jays believed in and put together for us. [This] is a debate that goes to the core of whether this Government will ultimately survive.”

Senator Thompson: “There is something inherently problematic with giving large amounts of money to people who write the laws, especially when donors of that money are affected by the laws that are being written. That is not a novel concept. That is something historians back in the 19th century were talking about. They were talking about the downfall of the Roman Empire.... ”

Senator Feingold: “Both parties aggressively engage in this big money auction. It is an arms race where the losers are the American people. We must stop the cancerous growth of soft money before it consumes us and ultimately the remaining credibility of our system. Does anyone think those donors get nothing for their generosity? Does anyone think the principle of one person/one vote means anything to anyone anymore if somebody can give a half million dollars? The growth of soft money has made a mockery of our campaign finance laws. It has turned Senators into panhandlers for huge contributions from corporate patrons.”

Senator McCain: “It is now legal in America for a People’s Liberation Army-owned corporation in China, with a subsidiary in the United States of America, to give unlimited amounts of money to an American political campaign. We confront a very serious challenge to our political system, as dangerous in its debasing effect on our democracy as war and depression have been in the past. Those of us privileged to hold public office have ourselves to blame for the sickness in American public life today. It is we who are the defenders of a campaign finance system that is nothing less than an elaborate influence peddling scheme in which both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder.”

Senator Wellstone: “Come on. You are not going to try to argue on the floor of the Senate that we don’t have a problem with systemic corruption.... The fact is big money has hijacked representative democracy. It violates the very principle that each person should count as one and no more than one. This debate is about whether or not something we all value and love, which is our representative democracy, is going to continue to be able to function. I think people in our country are counting on us to vote for democracy.”

Excerpted from the recent Senate debate on reforming the campaign finance system. The reform failed to get the required support.