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Public Financing in Democratic Debate

A snippet from Sunday night's Democratic debate:

Joe Biden:...If you want to do away with the interest groups, go to public financing of elections. Let's cut through all this malarkey. (Loud Applause). That is the bottom line. As long as there are massive contributions pouring into the system, you're going to get these earmarks in the middle of the night that have nothing to do with the people's interest. So if you want to [eliminate earmarks], reform the system. Make a public financing system. That will change the earmarks.

This was the only mention of public financing of elections in Sunday night's debate. From the sound of the audience applause, it seems like a popular issue in New Hampshire.

Why don't candidates make more of an issue out of this? Would it be too hard to both advocate public financing while simultaneously seeking big contributions? If you ask me, Joe Biden is a great candidate to do it--but he shouldn't be the only one.

Update from Josh Zaharoff: Al Franken did just that on Huffington Post with a marvelous job of promoting public financing while campaigning.

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Tags: public financing, joe biden, election 2008, earmarks, money in politics, clean elections (all tags)


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