The remarks below were given by Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer today on a press call announcing the formation of the
Declaration for American Democracy coalition. The coalition is made up of 100 national organizations that have pledged to fight for democracy reforms beginning in the next Congress.
Opportunities for major political reforms do not come along very often.
However with a broken political system, a corrupt campaign finance system and a scandal-ridden Washington today, the stage is set for major reforms.
This coalition has formed to seize the moment.
This is the largest coalition ever created to address a wide range of democracy reforms at the same time. We want to show that there is an holistic approach to solving the problems that are seriously undermining our democracy.
We expect our coalition to only grow as time goes on for the reasons you have heard today about substantive agendas being repeatedly blocked. We have a rigged system in Washington that serves the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of ordinary Americans.
A couple of facts to illustrate: In the 2016 elections,
just 100 individuals gave $1 billion to Super PACs to influence our national elections, an average of $10 million per donor. Altogether, wealthy donors gave a total of $1.8 billion to Super PACs for the 2016 elections.
In 2017, the Trump tax bill provided grossly disproportionate benefits to these wealthy donors, according to
data provided by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
The Center found that “the largest cuts as a share of income [are] going to taxpayers in the 95th to 99th percentiles of the income distribution.”
The Center also found that by 2027, “83 percent of the total benefits” will go to the top 1 percent of the income distribution, while more than half of all Americans—53 percent—would pay more in taxes.
The democracy reform agenda includes, among other issues, campaign finance, voting rights, nonpartisan redistricting and executive branch, congressional and judicial ethics reforms.
For example, one of the reforms would match small contributions made to congressional candidates with public funds at a 6-to-1 ratio. This would dramatically increase the role of small contributions in our elections and allow candidates to run competitive races without becoming obligated to big money funders.
If the Democrats win control of the House in November, Democratic leaders have publicly committed to making a package of democracy reforms the first order of business in the new Congress.
This would become the first battle for our coalition and passing this package of reforms will lay down a marker for the battles ahead.
We recognize that this will be a difficult fight and will take time.
But we have a campaign finance system today that takes us back to the gilded age and robber baron era, a voting system that takes us back to the poll tax and voter suppression era and a redistricting system that allow representatives to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives.
The very health and integrity of our democracy is at stake in this fight to repair our political system.
We are prepared to fight this battle for as long as it takes to win.
