Help paying for health care. Repairing crumbling roads and bridges. Gun safety laws. Action on climate change. A realistic immigration policy.
Citizens want action on all these issues and most people agree on the solutions. Yet nothing happens.
Presidential candidate Tom Steyer thinks he has the answer and the answer is not who gets elected but the need for basic structural reform. His reform agenda doesn’t make for a catchy slogan and Steyer won’t be the Democrats’ nominee to face Donald Trump. But his ideas strike directly at why the actions most American want don’t happen.
Steyer’s government reform agenda includes:
Repeal Citizens United
Corporations aren’t people. The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United must be overturned and public financing of campaigns should become the law of the land.
Restructure the Federal Election Commission
The FEC is an independent agency that oversees our elections — but it has been plagued by internal dysfunction. Reform includes changes to its budget, commissioner composition, independence from other branches of government and penalty enforcement.
Congressional term limits
There’s a widespread perception that the longer an elected official serves in Congress, the less connected they are to their constituents — and the more beholden they become to corporate interests and lobbyists. Limit service to 12 years in the House or Senate.
Election reform legislation
The For the People Act, the Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Native American Voting Rights Act, already approved by the House, need Senate approval and the president should sign them into law.
Independent redistricting commissions
When partisan elected officials draw district lines, the electoral maps they draw rig the system in their favor and attempt to suppress and dilute the votes in communities of color. Independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions should draw these boundaries, and eliminate racial gerrymandering.
To see why these issues are important, let’s look locally at our local member of Congress, Tom Emmer. This examination is not meant to pick on him or single him out. Emmer is a pretty typical incumbent representative. Like more than 80 percent of incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, Emmer is in a safe district where he’ll get re-elected. Most incumbents capture about 65 percent of the vote. (In his last three elections, Emmer won with 56, 66 and 61 percent.)
Incumbency boosts fundraising as well and it’s helped Emmer, as it does all incumbents, of both parties.
The financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, with insurance companies, securities and investment firms, real estate interests and commercial banks providing the bulk of that money. In this election cycle, it accounts for $220,043,185 in campaign spending.
Not surprising, and pretty typical, Emmer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, received $324,250 in contributions from financial services donors.
A close look at Emmer’s fundraising shows while 59 percent comes from PACS, only 4.5 percent (or $47,984) comes from individual contributions of $200 or less.
How can an individual voter’s voice be heard, when big business, with millions of dollars to spend, channels money to incumbents in safe districts?
It’s not only Congress. With the presidential election a year away, the money is piling up. Through the last reporting cycle, Trump has raised $204 million. Eighteen of his Democratic opponents have raised a total of $242 million.
While Steyer is a longshot to be president, he offers significant reforms to take big money out of elections and increase voter participation that will remove barriers to actions most voters say they want.
