Senate candidates raised 64% of funds from 0.04% of the population, the author says. | REUTERS Small donors offer power fix

Why has Congress allowed the real value of the minimum wage to fall 30 percent since 1968? Why is one in every three black children in America growing up poor? Why is Washington obsessed with deficit reduction when six in every 10 Americans want their national leaders to focus on job creation?

The answer to these questions and many others related to the raging inequality that has come to define American society is simple: The system is rigged.


In theory, an auto mechanic in the South Bronx should have as much political influence as a hedge-fund manager in Greenwich, Conn. Here’s what the real world looks like, according to political scientist Martin Gilens: “In most circumstances, affluent Americans exert substantial influence over the policies adopted by the federal government, and less well off Americans exert virtually none.”

That’s because a tiny number of wealthy donors determines, overwhelmingly, who runs for office and who wins elections in the United States. U.S. Senate candidates, for example, raised 64 percent of their campaign funds from just 0.04 percent of the American population.

That elite donor class then shapes the agenda in Washington, and the interests of that class are not the same as those of ordinary working people. Not surprisingly, the starkest policy differences between the rich and everybody else have to do with economic issues. In those instances, money doesn’t just talk, it fairly shouts. That’s why budget cuts are trumping job creation on the to-do lists of the high and mighty.

If the cherished notion of a free and self-governing America is to retain any legitimacy at all, we will have to correct the current grotesque imbalance of power between the wealthy and everybody else.

Fortunately, House Democrats are putting together legislation that would reduce the excessive power of big donors by vastly expanding the ability of ordinary voters to contribute meaningfully to candidates of their choice. It’s a public financing initiative in which voters contributing $5, $25 or $100 would see their contributions enhanced fivefold or more — turning $50 into a $300 or even $550 contribution for the grass-roots candidates of their choice. Poor and middle-class voters who have been effectively silenced by the big-money crowd would begin to have their voices heard. A similar system in New York City has worked well.

This effort could be a game-changer, a way to begin reversing the dangerous concentration of wealth and political power in the U.S. Naysayers will complain that proposals like this are doomed from the start because of the current makeup of Congress, especially the House. But that’s not so. Enhancing the impact of small donors is an important component of a broad, long-term effort to reduce the toxic impact of big money in an era of super PACS, Citizens United and rising inequality. Democrats in the House should be commended for pushing this initiative along. The public overwhelmingly supports major changes to our broken system.

A word of caution: House Democrats need to be scrupulous in tailoring their bill to small donors. Matching higher contributions, like $400 or $500, that are beyond most voters’ means would reduce the chances of bringing about the change we need. Fewer than one-half of 1 percent of Americans contributed even $200 or more to a federal candidate in 2012. For most African-American and Latino voters, giving even $50 or $100 is a heavy lift.

The goal should be to draw in the extremely large numbers of voters who can afford just a small amount, say $100 or less, and then expand the impact of those small donations with a significant match, like the current 6-to-1 match in New York City, or even higher. You want to get congressional candidates and others knocking on doors in neighborhoods they previously overlooked. You want to bring more blacks and Latinos into the mix. (The increasing importance of those voters can hardly be overstated.) When all is said and done, you want both the electorate and the donor pool to look more like America. What you don’t want is to allow the United States, the world symbol of freedom and democracy, to sink into the quicksand of oligarchy.

Bob Herbert is a distinguished senior fellow at the national public policy organization Demos.

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