 Aloha, and welcome to What's on Your Mind Hawaii. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. The title for today's show is Five Ways to Clean Up the Money in Our Politics. We've all heard the saying, money is the root of all evil. But in fact, the real verse is, the love of money is the root of all evil. And there's no better place where money is a necessary evil than in politics. Specifically, if you want to win an election, you are going to need a truckload of money. And it doesn't matter if you're a Republican, Democrat, or independent candidate. You're going to have to love raising money and spend a good part of your day doing it. Many Americans feel and believe that government is beyond their influence because they don't have thousands of dollars to contribute. And therefore, their ability to lobby for policy changes is left only for the rich and large corporations. In the past, we've seen successful efforts to reform money contributions. The 2002 McCain Fine Gold Act comes to mind. Thanks to this act, we had better disclosure where the money was coming from, and that soft money had its limits. Fast forward to 2009, when the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission turned our election campaign funding laws upside down and inside out. Our guest today is former US Representative Ed Case, who served the state well from 2002 to 2007. Representative Case recently wrote an excellent editorial in the Star Advertiser on January 7, outlining ill effects of money in our political system, and more importantly, pointed out five steps that can be implemented to reverse it. Thank you very much for coming on our show and coming on to a watch on your Mind Hawaii. Yeah, it's great to be on. Thank you for having me. I read your editorial, and I thought, boy, what a great topic, particularly in this day and age, and particularly given our last election, presidential election, and where we are now with the state constitution discussions. So well placed, well timed, and thought it was very well written. So thank you. Well, thank you very much. There's a lot of people in the country who care very much about this issue today. It's interesting. You take a look at what we all think of our government. And of course, we're at an all-time low. Some of them for just political reasons, kind of the cycle of politics in and out. But it's really what is really concerning our two things. First of all, the long-term ebb and public confidence in government, and more specifically, from my perspective, in the United States government and in the US Congress, where I was very privileged to serve Hawaii for five years. That confidence has been going down rapidly. I think when I was in Congress, and that was only about 10 years ago, public confidence was at an all-time low of about 25%. Now we're down to 15%. Maybe even lower. That's the number of people that have any real confidence in our government. Now I can tell you that there's a lot of people inside the Beltway in Washington that have a lot of confidence in government, because government's doing what they want. So what we're really talking about is what everybody else in this country feels. And what is of greatest concern, which is why I wrote this editorial, is not just the dysfunction in government, not just the inability of government today to get past the partisan divide, not just the deepening and broadening and angst and anger of that divide today. It is really something deeper. It's something that's nonpartisan, and it has to do with a basic increased conviction by many people that the actual system itself is broken. So we're not just talking about Republicans and Democrats fighting, we're talking about whether we can actually get our government to respond to us anymore because of the influence of money and politics. Let me touch on that one point, the erosion of confidence from the American public. And I have to ask the question, did that assist and aid in the election of Donald Trump? Specifically over two issues. One was his promise to drain the swamp. But two, the allure that I'm not receiving campaign funding from lobbyists in big money, I'm using my own funds to basically pay for my election expenses to become President of the United States. Did that, do you think those two points had an allure for not maybe for the independence of this country or maybe even middle of the road Democrats? Well, I don't think about it in partisan terms. I think that many, many of the elections today, not just in the federal side, but in the state governments as well. And this is proving out all across the country. They're not about Republican versus Democrat. They're really about insider versus everybody else, about outsiders that feel that they have no place in government anymore. So you talk about President Trump, but I could just as easily give you the example of Senator Sanders who was running the same campaign as Donald Trump, but on the other side of the partisan divide. So why did the two of them really overcome so many of the naysayers, so much of the inside political judgment about how they were gonna do? One of them, of course, won the presidency. Another one came pretty darn close to winning a Democratic primary. They was given no chance of winning. Why? Well, I think it's very, very obvious and you can't reach a different conclusion that that was driven by a large part by what I talked about earlier was just a lack of faith and an erosion of confidence in the system as at least its practice inside of Washington today. Describe the ill effects as you see it, of money or too much money in politics. Well, let's start with a basic. And I always wanna go back to this at the very beginning. I don't believe, and I don't think most Americans believe that lobbying itself is wrong. In fact, if I wanna go down and petition my government, that's one of the basic rights that we have, the ability to petition our government, that's lobbying. And I never minded when I was an elected official for 12 plus years, if somebody came to ask me or tell me what they thought I should do or what we should do. And it didn't affect me particularly whether they were paid or not to do that. It was my job to make the decision. It was their job to try to convince me. And so I think that lobbying itself is a right and we don't wanna get rid of lobbying. I also think that it's my right to contribute to my candidates and to my members of Congress if I want. And that's never been an issue. So this is not about the basic right to lobbying and money. This is about an over influence by both inside of government today. And the ill effect can be seen in a lot of different ways. One of the obvious ways that I wrote about in my editorial is that you have members of Congress going back to Washington and we're supposed to be going back there to legislate. We're supposed to be going back there to study policy and to hear from people on what the right decision is and to sit through committee hearings and try to grind out the compromises that are necessary for our government to work. And that's all takes a lot of time and hard work and energy. And that's what you should be doing in Washington, D.C. But increasingly because of the drive of money and politics and the drive to get money and spend it in campaigns, you find legislators that are going back there as I was when I first went back there. And I went back there 15 years ago now. And the advice to me was, OK, when you're on the ground in Washington, you should spend 25% to 50% of your time not legislating but raising money and talking to lobbyists who have a lot of money to contribute to you. So every Wednesday morning, every Wednesday afternoon, you go down to the local call center and just dial for dollars. That's a day taken away from legislating. That's not a lot of fun, is it? I'd rather sell in psychopedias back in 1958 door to door than dialing for dollars for a political campaign. I don't really know of that many members of Congress who like doing it. It's more a matter of how much can you tolerate it. I mean, some run for the hills from it and some are quite good at it. And I'm somewhere in between, I guess. I have had no problem calling up people and asking them to contribute to me. But when I'm doing that all of the time, when I'm forced to do that all the time, then that's a problem. The second problem, of course, is simply that that money is going in somewhere. That money does not come free. That money comes with expectations, with preferences. And it's absolutely inescapable that if you have too much money, you're going to get influenced the wrong way. I don't think people understand to what degree that pressure of influence, what the form of that looks like, specifically. And we all know that there's lobbyists, and lobbyists have influence and requests. But how does it come about? How does it actually meet your desk and? Well, let's say that let's just take a fairly blatant example. Probably one of the best systematic and deepest pocketed and deepest influenced lobbying groups is the pharmaceutical industry, Big Pharma. Big Pharma just throws out a ton of money on both sides of the aisle. Now, every once in a while, an issue comes along that that's their number one issue. You can take Medicare reform when I was there, health care reform. You can absolutely bet that there are special provisions in that bill that wouldn't have been there if that money had not been contributed. Do they write legislation, and then politicians review it and say, yeah, I change this or change that? Do they actually take the authorship of legislation? No, I mean, they don't take authorship, but they offer what they think should be the legislation. And I don't have a problem with that, by the way. I don't have a problem with somebody coming to me and saying, hey, I'm trying to achieve X, and here is some language that would achieve it. I have no problem with that. It's not my job to just accept that carte blanche. So if you're a legislator that is accepting that carte blanche, then I say that that's wrong. But if I'm taking it and sifting it and saying, OK, do I agree with this? Is there better way of doing it? I got no problem with that. It's the system itself that presents the problem, because when you spend all of your time responding to the pressures of political fundraising and money, and when you spend all of your time dealing with the lobbyists who contribute money inside of Washington as opposed to worrying about what's going on in the rest of the country, and when the system is responsive only to big money, that's when we have a problem. And that's the problem today. Just big money. I mean, I'm not going to mention big farm or whatever, but is there ever a situation where big money will sit in your office and threaten you if something doesn't go their way, either implicitly or explicitly? Well, the implicit threat is always there. How do they suggest it implicitly? You know, the great lobbyists, they never suggest it. I mean, they're just too smart to do that. But hey, come the next campaign, the next election, you voted against them. Well, you might find that you're not getting a contribution from them anymore. It's very subtle. I mean, I can count on one hand the number of overt threats I got. What did that feel like? What did that sound like? Get out of my office is the way I felt about it. I'll listen to you, but don't threaten me. So you've actually received, if you don't do this, I will do this. Very, very, very few times. So I don't want to represent it like that. It doesn't go down the way that most people think. It's a lot more subtle. It's a lot more indirect. But the influence is there and the responses to the pressure valves that are there. I want to read a quote from Senator McCain, John McCain's 2002 memoir. And I think he used to be a big leader in campaign reform. And this was interesting. I didn't have the whole entire quote, but it says, by the time I became a leading advocate of campaign finance reform, I had come to appreciate that in politics, suspicions were not always mistaken. Money does buy access in Washington, DC. And access increases the influence that often results in the benefit of a few versus the expense of the many. Well, that's fundamentally how most of us feel right now is that we don't have a seat at that table, that the decisions that are made are only really explainable if you explain them as decisions tailored to a very small group and very influential group and almost always a large money group. And that has been what has driven the confidence in our government to a low. And my problem and the problem of other former members that I've joined with in the Reformers Caucus to try to show the light on this a little bit more is that it's one thing to have the problem of dysfunction, but we always have believed that our democracy was strong enough to right itself. That our democracy, like a ship and a storm, it would come back to an even keel or it'd be inclined to an even keel. It'd be corrective action that could be taken by the American people, the American voters, to rise up and say that they didn't like what was going on and that you would have on occasion political revolutions over non-responsiveness from government. And the problem here is, for the first time in my life, I question whether the circuit is so closed that it's very, very difficult to. It's not going to be solved simply by electing some more Democrats or more Republicans. That's not the solution. You belong to a group which we want to talk about right after this break called Reformers Caucus. And so we're going to take that break. I'm Tim Appichelle with Former Congressman Ed Case. And we'll be right back. I'm going to the game, and it's going to be great. Early arrive and for a little tailgate. I usually drink, but we'll be drinking today because I'm the designated driver, and that's OK. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. I'm the guy you want to be. I'm the guy, say good morning. I'm the guy with the age that says, let's go. My name is Mark Shklav. I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11 AM. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii, not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea, aloha. Welcome back to What's On Your Mind Hawaii. I'm Tim Apachele, your host, and I'm here with former congressman Ed Case. And we're talking about money and politics. And before the break, Congressman Case basically was talking about a group that he belongs to called Reformers Caucus. And so Ed, would you kind of talk about that group and its mission and where it's been and where it's going? Sure. Well, the Reformers Caucus is an organization of now almost 200 former members of Congress and governors who all feel the same way about how Washington is working and the decline in confidence by the American people in Washington generally and in Congress specifically. And so a couple of years ago, really, this group started to coalesce around the idea that this was issue one. And we call it issue one. And all of what I'm talking about here can be found on a website, which is issueone.org. And we believe that issue one is money and politics. And we believe that issue one is the reforms that are necessary to try to curb the excesses that we believe have occurred and the damage to the country that has occurred as a result. And so this is a very fascinating caucus. Many of the people in this caucus, you would readily recognize people like former Senator Bill Bradley, some of the real lights of the House, some others like me who. Former Speaker Tom Daschle, I believe is part of that. Majority Leader Tom Daschle on the Senate side and many House members and governors on both sides, by the way. So if you take a look at the political spectrum of the members of this caucus, you'll go from far left to far right. How long has this caucus been in? Couple of years now. It is growing. More and more former members are joining it. I think it's about half-half Republican-democratic at this point. And we're doing what I'm doing here. We are trying to highlight the issue back in our home states or elsewhere. We are trying to encourage the Congress itself to do some common-sense reforms that we think will assist the process. And so we're using, I guess, the bully pulpit of our former offices to the extent that any of us have that bully pulpit to try to tell the American people that, hey, you're not alone. A lot of people that were there inside feel the same way. What is the reception that this caucus is receiving? Specifically, are you getting airtime on media avenues? Increasingly, increasingly, yes. And the caucus has now morphed a little bit into the next stage, which is a more active presence inside of Washington. So for example, the caucus, together with other like-minded groups and people, will put on presentations and conferences. There's a conference coming up, for example, in March, where many members of the caucus will come. And the media is paying more attention to this reform effort, because first of all, it's incredibly unusual to have a caucus like this around any issue. I really can't believe it. I've never really heard of it. And I'm going to assume that you haven't hired a lobbying effort to lobby the existing Congress. Well, there are people that are not former members that are part of issue one that are dedicated to this particular issue. And again, there's the example right there. There's nothing wrong with any of us lobbying Congress to try to get congressional reform of lobbying. That's fine. That's fine. That's not a contradiction. I mean, you've already done that, because you just told me before we went on air that actual existing members right now have formed their own caucus. And what has happened is the result. Well, what is, and just in the past couple of months, we've seen the formation of a caucus inside of Congress, so consisting of current members of Congress that agree with us and that are willing to introduce bills that will implement the policy directions that we want to take to try to reform the system. That caucus is a very small caucus so far. And in all honesty, that tells a little bit of a story, because we as former members are not in there. We're not having to go chase bucks and deal with lobbyists. And so to some extent, we have the freedom of expression. But inside Congress, of course, you're still reliant on that system for the money to win your reelection. And you mentioned the freedom to kind of opine about things that you normally wouldn't be able to do. It's a great, it's a great. I'm looking at Senator Flake. I'm looking at other Republicans that have decided not to run again. And yet now, their opinions about things are far more, how should I say, aggressive about what they feel and what they believe than before they were going to try to get re-elected. Yeah, and that's a little bit of the tragedy of the system in a way, because the system does tend to get you to stifle yourself a little too. If I look back at my time in office and focusing on Congress a little bit more, because I was quite outspoken as a state representative here in Hawaii. But as a member of Congress, I was a little more careful to be measured in my criticism and tones. And part of that was just learning my way in the system and trying to make sure that I was critiquing the right things. And part of it was that one of my jobs was to obtain what Hawaii needed. And that didn't take standing on the floor of the House and screaming. But I tell you, if I had to do it over again, I think I'd be a little bit more vocal. I think you could have your cake and eat it too. I was going to say, if there's an effort from the memberships of about 20 congressmen right now, and I'm sure it's going to grow, I hope it does. But given the reluctance to be a little bit more outspoken, what's the chances of success of legislation moving forward that would limit the power of lobbyists? I think the funny thing about reform is, and I've been through various types of reform in my legislative career, you think about reform as kind of this gradual process. That's not how reform happens. Reform is like a lurch every once in a while. It's like a rubber band. It builds up. But then sometimes it just snaps. And then you have the opportunity for reform. You talked about Senator McCain earlier, McCain fine gold. And you rightly recited it as an incredible leap forward in terms of campaign finance reform. If you had asked anybody six months before that happened, whether it was going to happen, they would have said, I doubt it. So that snapped like that. So I'm hoping that by building this pressure from the outside, we are hoping, by building, by people, for example, here in Hawaii, who might watch this show, calling up our members of Congress and saying, hey, I heard about this reformer's caucus. I really want you to support it. And we've got a full year of candidates here, including a first congressional seat. If that's an issue in that election that it's talked about and the candidates have to deal with it and commit to it, then that's a small success. So the five points that you mentioned in an editorial of how some reforms could look like, did that come as a result of the caucus, the reformed caucus? Or is that just kind of something you believe strongly in? No, I think we all got on the same page. We all agreed. We all believe in a fairly common message. And we believe that there are categories that we have to deal with in order to achieve reform. But let's look at some of those categories. I think the one that caught my, well, they're really very basic principles, but the impact is very, very powerful. And I think the one is everyone participates. And that's quite a concept. I mean, that's not happening. We're at 15% confidence of the American public because they don't feel they have a voice. Right, so there's a number of principles here. Everybody participates. Everybody knows. Everybody plays by the same rules. Everybody is held accountable, and everybody has a voice. Those are kind of the categories. And they're common sensical. But to tick off some of the realities and what we hope to achieve in those areas, everybody participates is about, hey, the system is being overwhelmed by big contributions. Small contributions just get lost in the shuffle. And is there a way that we can give a preference, give a benefit, give a credit, give an incentive to small donors? Because, again, you have examples from the last campaign where small donors really wrote a lot of the books on these, so it can work. Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign really was a lot of our small donations. Senator Sanders funded an entire successful, even though he- Did you find that surprising that he was that successful? I did not. The reason is because of what we talked about quite early, because I think that there is just a building, frustration in the country by most of us that's directed against the inside of the Beltway. And so I think that outside candidates at both the federal and the state level have a lot more of a chance today. People give them a lot better look. So he just happened to be in some sense- In the right place, in the right time. Exactly. Senator Clinton, for all her incredible achievements, was painted as that insider. And she had the access to a lot of these institutional dollars, if you will. Well, she was the benefit of big money. There's no question about that. Everybody knows, to me, this is probably one of the most important parts of our package, because we don't know today who is contributing. The transparency issue. Absolutely. Transparency is a critical- Which was overturned by Citizens United versus the Federal Election Committee, right? Well, what has really happened here is that, if you want to go back and say, okay, what's the right system here? What balances our right to lobby and our right to contribute against the problems of excesses of lobbying, excesses of contributions? And what you will find pretty fast, and we've already done this in McCain, we find gold and other laws, is reasonable limits and full disclosure. That's really what it comes down to. That you can contribute, but you can't overwhelm the system. And the U.S. Supreme Court has said it's completely legal to have reasonable limits. That's never been questioned. Transparency that if I contribute, everybody knows that I contributed. And that's an incredible problem right now. Citizens United basically stood for the proposition that corporations in their own right can contribute. Now I disagree with Citizens United, but it, so the problem there is that there's no limitation on corporate contributions, which wipes out most of the American people. The real problem is the combination of Citizens United with dark money, soft money. I wanted to get into all that and unfortunately we're running out of time. And I also wanted to talk about the ill effects of Citizens United Supreme Court decision. And I'd love to have you back on the show again to talk more specifically to those points. We have run out of time. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. And I wish you very much success, not only with the caucus, but your other endeavors trying to reform our system. And we all tip of the hat to you. So thank you so much for coming on our show. Not just one person. It's 200 right now and another 20. 250 million people need to say this is, you know. Okay, thank you so much. I'm Tim Apachele. This is What's On Your Mind Hawaii. And I'm here with former congressman Ed Case. Aloha.