President Biden’s 48 Year Mission to Enact Public Financing of Elections and H.R. 1/S. 1

As President Joe Biden this week celebrates his successful first 100 days in office and as the Senate heads for a showdown on S. 1, the For the People Act, Biden holds a unique position on one major portion of the Act.

President Biden has been a national leader in the battle for public financing of elections for nearly five decades, a record unmatched by any other Washington officeholder. S. 1 and its companion bill passed by the House last month, H.R. 1, will fulfill Biden’s longtime mission by creating a new, small donor, public matching funds system for federal candidates, financed without the use of any taxpayer revenues.

In June 1973, in the middle of the Watergate scandals, Biden, who was then a 30-year-old new Senator, testified before the Senate Rules Committee that “there is an absolute need for us to begin to finance elections for all federal offices.”

Public financing, Biden explained in his testimony “would allow candidates — incumbents and challengers alike — to compete more on the basis of merit than on the size of the pocketbook — free from potentially corroding dependence on… special interest backers.”

Biden asserted that the enactment of public financing “is the swiftest and surest way to purge our elections system of the corruption, that, whatever the safeguards, money inevitably brings.”

Biden concluded his testimony by saying, “I think if there is nothing else that I am able to do in the one term that I will be in the U.S. Senate,” except “to make some little impact on moving us toward the public financing of elections, I would consider my stint in the Senate a success.”

Biden introduced his own public financing bill and in 1974 helped lead Congress to create a new system of public financing for presidential elections.

The presidential system worked well for the country and for presidential candidates for decades. Almost every major party candidate participated in the voluntary system for seven presidential elections. Every president elected from 1976 to 2004 used the public financing system.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote in 2006 that “public financing of presidential campaigns, instituted in response to the Watergate scandals of the early 1970s, was that rare reform that accomplished exactly what it was supposed to achieve.”

The system broke down in the 2000s only after the dramatic growth in the costs of presidential campaigns had greatly outstripped the benefits provided to participating candidates, and Congress failed to modernize the system in response.

Senator Biden continued for decades to advocate for public financing of elections. In 1990, he joined with Senators Bill Bradley and John Kerry to introduce legislation to create a public financing system for congressional elections. He continued to sponsor public financing legislation throughout the 1990s.

In 2001, during Senate floor consideration of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, Biden explained in stark terms his support of public financing of elections. “Either all of America decides who runs for office,” he said, “or only a few people. It’s as simple as that.”

In 2015, Biden said about public financing of elections, “If you could do only one single thing, only one, to increase fairness, equity, opportunity to middle class. Pass rational gun control, deal with immigration, etc. What would it be? I can tell you one thing I would do. It would be [to] get private money out of political process.”

In 2016, Biden again spelled out why he felt so strongly about public financing, saying, “If you want to change overnight, instantaneously, the electoral process in America and the way we handle issues, have public financing. I guarantee you it would change overnight.”

In April, 2020, presidential candidate Biden again endorsed public financing in endorsing the reforms in the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S. 1):

A first priority of a Biden administration will be to lead on a comprehensive set of reforms like those reflected in the For the People Act to end special interest control of Washington and protect the voice and vote of every American.

Forty-eight years after he first announced his desire as a new Senator “to make some little impact on moving us toward the public financing of elections,” and one year after he said the reforms in the For the People Act would be a first priority for a Biden Administration, President Biden must now do everything he can to complete his 48-year mission.

On July 4, 2021, two and a half centuries after our country was founded, President Biden should sign into law the For the People Act to repair and revitalize our democracy, protect the sacred right to vote, and establish a new non-corrupting system for financing federal elections.