Candidates are increasingly dependent on the very, very wealthy.
I'm a regular politician and I'm proud, by the way, the vast majority of our money comes
from working people, not from the rich, but if I'm a normal politician who needs to raise
$20, $50 million, where am I going to go? I'm going to sit down with the wealthy, I'm
going to go to the country club, I'm going to do my fundraisers at fancy resorts and
I get to know those people. But that's the whole point of this corrupt campaign finance
system. If you're going to contribute a million dollars to my super PAC, well maybe it's you're
a hell of a nice guy and you like to participate or maybe you want something. I think you want
something and you and I are going to become really good buddies so I can do your bidding.
In other words, the millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the
political process and they own the politicians that go to them for money.
I worry very much, and I say this from the bottom of my heart that we are moving very,
very quickly from a democratic society, one person one vote, to an oligarchic form of
society where billionaires will be determining who the elected officials of this country
are. I'm going to do everything I can to stop that.
Ezra Klein: When you say you want to see elections be publicly funded, do you want to cut the
ability to privately fund them?
Bernie Sanders: The first thing that I want to do is overturn the Citizens United Supreme
Court decision, which is a total disaster. Free speech does not equal the ability of
people to buy elections and what I've said is if elected President of the United States,
any Supreme Court nominee I make will make it very clear that he or she is going to vote
to overturn Citizens United.
Second of all, I think what you want to do is at least make sure that candidates who
are running will have as much money as their opponents who may have unlimited sums of money.
Thirdly, I think there are various ways, and we're going to come out with a position on
it, various ways that you can approach the issue. One way which I find intriguing is
that you basically provide $100 for every citizen in the United States of America and
you say to that person, "Here's your hundred bucks, you can make a contribution, you can
get a hundred dollar tax credit if you spend $100 on any candidate you want." I think that
would democratize very significantly the political process in America and take us a long way
away from these super PACS controlled by billionaires who are now buying elections.