billydelancey

Yes, money is a corrupting force that needs to be removed from politics (personal opinion). I would love to see elections be publicly financed and donations limited and transparent. My personal belief is that we will never get rid of lobbyists and the solution is to have the same amount of professionals working for us as corporations have. Right now, for every dollar spent by public interest groups, 34 dollars is being spent by corporations of business groups.

One example I will give is recent efforts to raise money to donate to candidates who reject NRA contributions. This was supposed to counter their influence but has been unsuccessful. It is not the NRA's political contributions that members of Congress want. What's important is the NRA's power to tell their membership base to support or oppose a candidate in the next year's election. The NRA has a large supporter lists and they have the ability to single-handedly defeated politicians in elections. That is why everybody is so scared to oppose their policies.

So many people say this when I tell them about Lobbyists 4 Good! Here is my short answer:

1. Lobbying is protected in the 1st Amendment when it talks about the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. So even if Congress passed a law banning lobbying, it would be thrown out by SCOTUS.
2. We'll never ban lobbying because it is so entrenched in our political system. The best bet we can hope for is to make it as transparent as possible.
3. If you are going to change the system, you have to play within the system. That is what we think, or maybe I just got sick of all the people complaining without doing anything so that is why I started Lobbyists 4 Good.

My favorite solution is to implement a small donor matching system. The Brennan Center has done some great work on this and has found some promising results from local small donor matching programs.

One congressman who I have worked with and is now a lobbyist introduced a bill in the 80's that would have limited all donations to $200 no matter what. I always thought that was a good idea too but unlikely to pass.

https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/establish-small-donor-public-financing

No, we are trying to raise money from foundations that support Civic Engagement work. Right now it is self funded by me (I do some consulting work on the side) but we are running out of money. The independent contractor is great as he charges a small fee for now, which will increase once we get some more funding.