The Hill picks up on a nice piece of speculation from the New York Times. Is this really a possibility?
Money-in-politics reformers are seizing on reports that President Obama is weighing the possibility of issuing an executive order to force companies doing business with the federal government to reveal their political spending.
If Obama issues this order, as The New York Times suggests is likely, it would be a rare offering from a president who came to office talking a big game on campaign finance, but who has disappointed reformers who say he has done nothing to stem the avalanche of special interest money into elections.
While the most significant actions to curb the influence of money require either Supreme Court action or legislation passed through Congress -- and Obama faces a Republican Party determinedly opposed to either -- the executive order on disclosure is a unilateral move that reformers have been urging for years. ...TheHill
Ann Ravel, who has been a chair of the Federal Election Commission, is somewhat skeptical. "The problem with money in politics isn’t the sheer amount being spent. Instead," she writes, the problem is a political system in which the overwhelming majority of political contributions come from a tiny number of individuals."
In the first part of the 2016 election campaign cycle, just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed nearly half of all the money that was raised to support the presidential candidates. Meanwhile, a huge number of people around the country are so disillusioned with government that they don’t even vote, let alone contribute to political causes. ...Time
Yesterday a Republican representative from Florida had this to add:
On Tuesday, Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) rolled out a proposal to, at the very least, mitigate the impact of fundraising on members of Congress: banning all members from personally soliciting campaign funds. Under Jolly’s proposed legislation, which he calls the “Stop Act,” lawmakers and candidates would still be allowed to attend fundraisers and communicate with donors, but they could not specifically make the ask for money. “If the American people understood how much time their representatives were expected — in some cases required — to spend raising money, it would shock their conscience,” Jolly told the Tampa Bay Times, adding that some members of Congress spend 30 hours a week dialing for dollars. ...ThinkProgress
By now five key justices on the Supreme Court and their fans may be listening for the distant clackety-clack of tumbrils rolling.
