Brennan Center for Justice

There will be a hearing today
in the House of Representatives' Committee
on House Administration
beginning at 11 a.m. The hearing will be live
Web cast by streaming
video.   

The House Administration Committee
will hear testimony from four members of Congress, including Democratic
Caucus Chair John Larson (D-Conn.), two election experts, and the Speaker
of Maine House of Representatives, in support of sweeping campaign finance
reform legislation, the Fair Elections Now Act (HR 1826). 

Introduced by Rep. Larson and
Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), the Fair Elections Now Act (FENA) would
allow congressional candidates to run for office with a mixture of small
donations and public financing. In addition to Larson and Jones, the
committee also will hear testimony from Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine),
Maine Speaker Hannah Pingree (D), Connecticut elections administrator
Jeff Garfield, and Arn Pearson, vice president of programs at Common
Cause.  

In a press release issued this
morning by the coalition of reform groups supporting passage of FENA,
Susan Liss, Director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program noted
that "The Supreme Court is fully behind voluntary public financing
systems. This is the best way to advance a robust system for more public
participation in elections."   

Also today, an advertisement
from prominent business leaders
ran in print in Roll Call and on-line in Politico calling on politicians
to enact a system of fair elections. The ad, which includes signatories
from Crate & Barrel, Sunnyvale Farms and other large companies,
and calls upon Congress to "terminate" the "mutually wasteful,
degrading process" of fundraising, saying that, as business leaders,
they are: 

on the receiving end of
Senators' and Representatives' endless fund-raising calls. And trust
us: we hate getting those calls every bit as much as they hate making
them. Each hour in 2008, campaigners for federal office got on the horn
and raised $600,000. That's $14 million each day, $100 million each
week, $5 billion for the year! Elected officials spend so much time
dialing for dollars it's as if they're moonlighting a second job.
With the economy, health care, energy and so many other issues at stake,
who has time for that?  

The ad has already garnered
some press
attention and notice. Law & Order star's Sam Waterston
also paid
a visit to several key Capitol Hill leaders
yesterday to drum up support for the measure. (Waterston's very moving
speech to our own campaign finance conference in May is on-line here.)