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Would ‘every small dollar donated’ be matched 6 to 1 under the House Democratic plan?

Lutherf

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...nated-be-matched-under-house-democratic-plan/

Yeah, the article is more than a year old but the bill being discussed just passed the House and this provision is still in it, apparently.

The idea is that there would be a :Freedom From Influence Fund" established that would provide a 6:1 match for small donor campaign contributions up to $200. You donate $200, the fund donates $1,200, the campaign gets $1,400. According to this article (because trying to find the exact text in this monstrosity of a bill will take more time than I have) the tradeoff is that the candidate can't accept any donations in excess of $1,000. That's great. Big donors no longer have the influence they used to and small donors have a LOT more influence...right?

Well, not necessarily. Whereas my original cap on an individual contribution to a congressional campaign was $2,700 I can now easily make that contribution $7,000 if I play my cards right and nobody looks too hard. I can easily make a $200 donation from my personal account using my home address. I can make a $200 donation from a different credit card and use my office address while changing my registration name from, for example, "David John Smith" to "D. John Smith". I can make a cash $200 contribution using "DJ Smith". I can make two more contributions using other name variants and addresses. Is that legal? No. Am I going to get caught? Probably not. Heck, if I want to I can hand out money to all kinds of other people and have them do the same thing. If I really don't mind being sleazy and happen to be running for office I can pay a "campaign marketing manager" $10k and have that person use their "marketing skills" to convert that $10k into a $60k profit for the campaign.

So that's a potential problem and it's probably conspiracy theory stuff because we know that no campaign actually engages in finance fraud. Politicians are generally the best among us and only have the interests of the nation in mind. But there is another problem. The fund is supposed to be financed by a surcharge on corporate penalties and fees. That's great because it isn't coming out of taxpayer pockets...well, at least not directly, but it does create a political incentive for regulators to impose these fines. I mean, no regulator would EVER think "kickback" but if they happened to be the one to get the penalty on "MegaCorp" pushed through and that earned them a director's position then so much the better for them, right?

This bill is MASSIVE and it covers stuff I hadn't even thought of but this aspect strikes me as being REALLY problematic.
 
I don't know about the merits of this plan specifically, but your argument against putting an end to massive financial influence on Politicians is that some people MIGHT put in an ungodly amount of effort to give a bit more than perhaps they originally could?
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...nated-be-matched-under-house-democratic-plan/

Yeah, the article is more than a year old but the bill being discussed just passed the House and this provision is still in it, apparently.

The idea is that there would be a :Freedom From Influence Fund" established that would provide a 6:1 match for small donor campaign contributions up to $200. You donate $200, the fund donates $1,200, the campaign gets $1,400. According to this article (because trying to find the exact text in this monstrosity of a bill will take more time than I have) the tradeoff is that the candidate can't accept any donations in excess of $1,000. That's great. Big donors no longer have the influence they used to and small donors have a LOT more influence...right?

Well, not necessarily. Whereas my original cap on an individual contribution to a congressional campaign was $2,700 I can now easily make that contribution $7,000 if I play my cards right and nobody looks too hard. I can easily make a $200 donation from my personal account using my home address. I can make a $200 donation from a different credit card and use my office address while changing my registration name from, for example, "David John Smith" to "D. John Smith". I can make a cash $200 contribution using "DJ Smith". I can make two more contributions using other name variants and addresses. Is that legal? No. Am I going to get caught? Probably not. Heck, if I want to I can hand out money to all kinds of other people and have them do the same thing. If I really don't mind being sleazy and happen to be running for office I can pay a "campaign marketing manager" $10k and have that person use their "marketing skills" to convert that $10k into a $60k profit for the campaign.

So that's a potential problem and it's probably conspiracy theory stuff because we know that no campaign actually engages in finance fraud. Politicians are generally the best among us and only have the interests of the nation in mind. But there is another problem. The fund is supposed to be financed by a surcharge on corporate penalties and fees. That's great because it isn't coming out of taxpayer pockets...well, at least not directly, but it does create a political incentive for regulators to impose these fines. I mean, no regulator would EVER think "kickback" but if they happened to be the one to get the penalty on "MegaCorp" pushed through and that earned them a director's position then so much the better for them, right?

This bill is MASSIVE and it covers stuff I hadn't even thought of but this aspect strikes me as being REALLY problematic.

HB1 would be the biggest check on federal corruption in years. The GQP, which is fueled by that corruption, is freaking the **** out! :LOL:
 
Wow, what a racket!

I run for office. Friends and relatives each contribute $200. Let's say 20 people do. I then get $24,000 that I can use to hire my wife as my political consultant. If I can get 100 people to, I get a S120,000 to hire my wife with. Awesome!

I bet just thru our commercial website we could raise at least 1000 contributions, falsely claiming it was running for some crusade relative to our products - and then I can give my wife $1,200,000.00 - free money! But that is the new America, isn't it? How to get free money.

A relative in Texas was hit by the freeze. Froze some pipes. FEMA gave him $5000 - with 2 more checks coming from the feds, plus a check from the state. He had to provide NO receipts and no estimates - just filled out a form online and a 10 minute phone call. He's doing the work himself and his total costs will be about $200. He'll pocket all the rest - about $10,000. Multiply that by millions. All in the new "free money" USA - as a hamburger now generally is at least $10 in most sit-down restaurants - and prices/inflation rising rapidly.

Maybe the Mrs and I might be running for federal office as our patriotic duty to collect our free money for the good of the country if that provision becomes law. I have no doubt we could use our extensive website network for at least 1000 contribution and maybe many times that many. Just curse all the rules of the government vowing to eliminate them and the contributions would flow in, particularly if we did the racket of giving something for "free" - no contribution required - but asking for contributions in doing so. If we did that, I could realistically see as many as 10,000 contributions - worth $1200 each in addition to the $200. $1.2 million - free money from the government, while "giving" contributors $500 in retail value, costing us $200. Everyone wins with free money!!!
 
There is NO limit to how many ways Democratic politicians come up with to massively steal public funds. EVERYONE knows 95% of those "matching funds" would go to incumbents. The REAL effect will be to even more entrench incumbents, not bring in low income challengers. Just more outright theft of public funds by Democratic Party incumbents.
 
Why do the voters need $1,200.00 of the public trust to convince by random advertising?
 
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