Support tax credit for small campaign donations

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in McCutcheon v. FEC to strike down overall, or aggregate, contribution limits to candidates and political committees. Their decision in the McCutcheon case will empower a tiny group of less than 3,000 elite donors to spend an additional billion dollars in our elections through 2020.

This isn't the way it should be. In our democracy, the size of your wallet shouldn't determine the strength of your voice in our political system.

Fixing this mess will take a constitutional amendment to overturn the wrongheaded Supreme Court decisions, including McCutcheon and Citizens United, that have let a flood of big money into our elections. But that's not enough - we also need to give more power to ordinary small donors to return democratic influence to where it belongs.

We applaud U.S. Reps. Gutirrez, Kelly, Foster, Schakowsky, Quigley, Rush and Davis for supporting the Government by the People Act, which would enable more Americans to support the candidates they believe in with a tax credit for small contributions, and match these small donations six to one so that candidates can be competitive by raising money from their voters, instead of relying on out-of-district big donors. We call on the rest of the Illinois delegation in D.C. to support this act to reclaim our democracy.

Dev Gowda

Darien

Advocate, Illinois PIRG

Public Interest Research Group