Should Campaigns be Financed by Taxpayers?

Should Campaigns be Financed by Taxpayers?

Here is an interesting debate: Democrats support tapping into taxpayer provided funds to finance campaigns, while Republicans vehemently oppose it. What is interesting is that this idea is pushed by New York’s “anti-corruption” commission. Is it just me, or is there a paradox in the suggestion that the government should fund political campaigns, coming from a committee tagged as “anti-corruption”? They defend their move by stating that “the state would get fairer elections, reduce big-money dominance, and encourage more people to run for office while reducing the power of corporate and other special interests.” This may be the case IF in order to level the playing field, campaigns would be blocked from accepting donations from outside sources, such as third party PACs. However, campaigns are expensive (when factoring in gubernatorial elections, it could ascend to hundreds of millions of dollars) and it would be detrimental for NY state’s finances if it had to allocate millions of dollars towards making sure that everyone dipped out of the same bucket and no one got more or less than each other. While this is fair, as Democrats say, Republicans are right in pointing out that this practice would drain resources allocated for public services such as the funding of federal employees and organizations (schools, transportation, etc). Democratic Sen. Ruben Diaz makes a valid point that this move wouldn’t “clean up Albany” as Senate Democratic leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins insists, by asking, “how can any politician in good conscience accept public money for his or her campaign when so many of their constituents continue to struggle to support their families?”Even if moral conscience was not taken into consideration, it is very likely that both sides of a future election facing this restriction would exhaust the resources provided to them. What happens then? And if they are allowed to fundraise for supplemental resources then what is the point of providing governmental funds in the first place?! Additionally if one of the candidates is an incumbent, he or she can have many types of qualified expenditure covered by the government, thus further tilting the election. The case for public financing is not ideal for either situation. In the end it is the hardworking taxpayers that lose out, by wasteful “regulations” such as this. It is rare that I support stances taken by the GOP, but I must agree on the dissent raised in this issue. If anything, hopefully Governor Cuomo will reconsider his support for this measure. It doesn’t seem like a smart practice to adopt at the moment––or even ever.

The original article: http://online.wsj.com/article/APf333c1ac30c84cff94241244f02f9d7a.html

Here is an additional article on this with more “numbers”:

http://ivn.us/2013/12/10/publicly-funded-campaigns-clash-independent-expenditures-new-york/