The Republicans are responsible for Abramoff. The Democrats, as much as the Republicans, are responsible for the financial mess that we're still suffering. And this is the Democrats' dirty money problem: For despite compelling documentaries like Gibney's, it is the blunder of financial mis-regulation that is going to get America's attention over the next three years, not Abramoff. - Lawrence Lessing
If the Democrats really want to get ahead of this populist storm, they need to demonstrate that they learned something real. They need to leverage this crisis into real and substantial reform. There is such reform in a bill in Congress right now -- The Fair Elections Now Act, with almost 150 cosponsors in the House, and 17 in the Senate. That bill would produce campaigns with small dollar contributions only. The most anyone could give a candidate is $100. That $100 gets matched 4 to 1 by the government. Small dollars become big enough dollars -- big enough to wage an effective campaign, yet small enough to make it impossible for anyone to believe that money is buying results in Congress. America will recognize that it can't trust Congress behind the wheel of critical national policy, so long as it remains under the influence of large campaign cash.
