johnwaltzforcongress.com

Time to End Pay to Play Politics

For far too long our representatives in government have set the needs of Americans aside due to the pay to play campaign finance system currently in place. We can put the power of government back in the hands of citizens with comprehensive campaign finance reform and creating a public finance system.

Geoff Davis has been widely known to be a key player in pay to play politics, which includes the Transit Authority of Kentucky who are seeking a no-bid contract to acquire $1,584,000 for a bus replacement program. In turn, Dale Furtwengler, who sits on the TANK Executive Committee and his wife, awarded Davis with $23,800 in combined contributions. Another is Ashland Inc. who is seeking over $6,000,000 in funding requests. The award for Davis in this case comes to a total of $27,500 from the Ashland Inc. Political Action Committee for Employees since 2004.

Most recently, the lobbying firm PMA, whose focus is securing defense earmarks, was raided in February 2009 under suspicion for corrupt political campaign contributions in return for taxpayer funds. Information released as part of the subsequent investigation revealed that Congressman Davis created $6.8 million in earmarks in exchange for $6,000 in campaign contributions.

In recent news, we see Senator Joe Lieberman threatening to filibuster the current health care reform initiative because he opposes any bill that includes a government run insurance program. In the state he is supposed to represent, 62% approve of the public option, which begs the question who does he represent. According to OpenSecrets.org, Lieberman has received $1,036,070 from the health insurance industry and $612,540 from the pharmaceutical industry. Again, we can see pay for play politics trumps the needs of a politician’s constituents.

All of these examples shine a spotlight on the issue of pay to play politics that enable companies and individuals to secure no-bid contracts in exchange for contributions, which only serves to create the opportunity for corruption and abuse. As your Congressman, I will fight for the Fair Elections Now Act, which will require a Congressional candidate to raise $50,000 via a limit of $100 maximum donations and a minimum of 1500 donors within the candidate’s state for an exchange of $900,000 in public financing. This will finally put our government back in the hands of Americans and out of the hands of lobbyist who have a stranglehold on Washington D.C.