Presidential Public Financing
The Presidential public finance system allows qualified presidential candidates to receive matching funds for small donations in exchange for agreeing to a spending limit during their primary campaign, and for the parties' nominees it provides a block grant to pay for their entire general election campaign as long as they receive no private contributions after the conventions.
The program is designed to rein in out-of-control spending by the presidential campaigns, provide candidates with enough funds to run a viable campaign and minimize the leverage special-interest money has in the process of electing a candidate to country's highest office. Common Cause has strongly supported the presidential public financing since it's inception in the 70's - a post-Watergate initiative hailed for decades as the best way to rid politics of the corrupting influence of money - and is urging Congress to pass legislation to fix a system that is now on the verge of collapse.
The problem with the presidential public finance system is that the rules that have been in place for three decades have become out of sync with modern presidential campaigns, leaving the incentives to opt into the system too weak for most candidates -- for the first time since its inception, both of the major parties' nominees opted out of receiving primary matching funds in 2004 and went on to raise a record-breaking $500 million before accepting their respective nominations. In 2008, it appears that the leading candidates will forego public funding in both the primary and general election and will raise more than a billion dollars before the election is over in November 2008.
An additional problem is that the Presidential Election Campaign fund, which is financed through a check-off on federal tax forms, could become insolvent in 2008 if all the candidates chose to take public funding. Click here to see Frequently Asked Questions about the presidential public finance system.
Common Cause is working with the Presidential Public Financing Reform Project, a coalition of reform groups including League of Women Voters, Public Citizen, Public Campaign US PIRG and Democracy 21. The goal of the coalition is to push Congress to pass legislation that will reform the system so that it is adequately funded and can serve its original goals.