Are you satisfied with your government representatives? Do you think they are more concerned about the welfare of their constituents or the welfare of their campaign donors? Do politicians spend their time working for your welfare or collecting campaign contributions? With Congresses approval rating at an all time low, the chances are you are not very satisfied.

I think the number one reason that Congress has performed so poorly is the undue amount of power that special interest groups have over them. The average Joe citizen that gets up and goes to work each day does not have the time or money to influence their politicians. And there is no dedicated political pressure group that supports middle America. There are however political pressure groups that do have time and money to influence public opinion. And of course there are the lobbyist with their briefcases full of money, suggesting to Congress how they may want to vote on an issue in order to get the lobbyists support. Some of these lobbyist and pressure groups are generously funded by foreign governments that are not friendly to the U.S. Never the less, they are still able to leverage a lot of support to benefit themselves at our expense.

In 2000 the average amount of money that was raised to win a House of Representatives seat was $931,416. And to win a Senate seat it cost on average $7,589,341. In 2004 the number was $1,148,809 and $7,206,001 respectively. The Senate seat stayed relatively the same between 2000 and 2004, but the House seat went up in price. I'm pretty confidant that in 2008 those figures will be even higher. That is a lot of money to spend in order to land a job that pays around $165,000 a year. Is it any wonder that the members of Congress are either celebrity millionaires or party loyalist who moved up the ladder by accommodating their parties special interest groups? I encourage everyone to visit opensecrets.org to find out more about Congress and especially the Money Behind the Elections page and the Price of Admission page.

The number two reason that Congress can keep getting themselves reelected despite their low approval ratings is the problem with redistricting. Congressional boundaries are suppose to be based on population and geography. The district boundaries are supposed to be redrawn every 10 years after the national census is taken. The problem is that Congress is in charge of creating the new boundaries. And Congress learned along time ago that it is a lot easier to stay in office if they redraw their district to contain a majority of voters from their own party. What this means is that every 10 years the partly that is in power will redraw the districts to ensure that they stay in power. A good example of this is what happened in Texas in 2003. At the time the Texas legislature was controlled by the Republicans who introduced legislation to redraw the states congressional boundaries. The proposed plan would basically result in the Republicans leveraging boundaries so they could win an additional 3 -5 congressional seats. You can read about this particular case on CBS News and Discriminations.us. Just in case you get the idea that only Republicans are involved in what is called political gerrymandering, you should also check out Fairvote.org and Adversity.net.

So how can we get a truly responsive government when the wolves are guarding the hen house? I believe first of all that we need to have some kind of public financed funds to even the political playing field and give more opportunities for third party and independent candidates to compete. I also think that there should be a cap on campaign spending that is based on the seat that being sought. After all, if salary caps are good for sports to help maintain fair competition, why not a campaign cap in politics? I also believe that political action committees (PAC) should be eliminated, and only individual donors from the district in question can contribute a maximum of $200.00 to the campaign in question. And the person running for the seat could contribute no more than say $100,000 of their own money. I would recommend that public funds would be given to a candidate based on how much individual money they can raise. for instance, you could offer $2.00 of public money for every $1.00 of individual contributions the candidate gets up to the cap for that seat (Their own personal contribution would not count).

So for instance if Bob was running for a congressional seat that had a $900,000 campaign cap and he added $50.000 of his own money, he would have another $850,000 to raise. Lets say that Bob was able to raise $300,000 dollars for his campaign. The public funds could kick in an additional $600,000 but since he has already collected $350.000 for the campaign and the limit is $900,000 then Bob would get $550,000 dollars in public money. I know most people don't like the idea of giving candidates public money for their campaigns but would you rather have them beholding to corporate and special interest groups or the people they are supposed to represent?

The next thing is to take redistricting away from the politicians. Redistricting should be given to individual bi-partisan panels who's decisions are open to the public. The individuals that are selected from the panels should be far removed from any political favors that could be used to influence their decision. I also believe that districts should be based on geographic, and economic conditions and not based on political affiliation.

We must have meaningful campaign finance reform and redistricting reform in order for the people to take back control of the government.

- Thomas Paine 2

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