policies, the question of whether you were deliberately increasing the deficit by $850 billion or $600 trillion was not something that was really going to affect the outcome of that particular debate. there was a deliberate policy choice that we need to expand the deficit here over the next couple of years to try to get some beneficial affect in the economy. so if the feedback affect of that was baked into the official score, then people would have to go into their talking points and, you know, scratch out number one and put a different number. >> but it would have looked like a smaller price tag and that might have paved the way to a bigger fiscal stimulus. >> perhaps unless you're up against some -- you know, arbitrary threshold like the t word as opposed to $999 billion, the political forces -- the

political balance, i don't see is fundamentally changed. i mean i think back to tarp. >> that was my next question. >> and some internal conversations about a, how much money do we need? b, how much money do you think we can get away asking for? you know, $500 billion. well, maybe maybe not. but if you're asking for 500, you mine as well ask for 700, just don't ask for $1 trillion. the people who thought that tarp was terrible policy or were shocked wiby the price tag, i think would have been efvery shocked at $500 billion as they were with the bill that actually went up. >> well, i think that -- i'm not sure that you would really get the help that you would need. i am a huge advocate if you know my work, i'm a huge advocate of temporary fiscal intervention in

a spirit of the times that we faced in the heart of the great depression. i think the global results of austerity which is contraction of that is exhibit a what good fiscal policy looks like and what bad fiscal policy look like including implications of that which are on your front page of your paper today. but i think because of the bias built into -- i don't know but to me they are bias, the way these rules are scored. i'm not sure how much help you would get because cbo correctly i would say, views this as pulling the man forward. so you get some demand in the quarters where the policies are in place but then you pay for it later typically within the ten year window. here is where i would say -- this is not at all calling out cbo because they are just

falling basic rules of economics. i think many of the crowd out and crowd in estimates about interest rates and their impact on growth are wrong and becoming more incorrect over time. the reason i think that is because of changes in the dynamic of global capital, of loanable ableable funds throughout the world of capital markets. i think the extent to which cbo diminishes growth in later years, relative to stimulus impacts in earlier years, are too large. for example, i don't think that cbo does a very good job of estimating the amplified impact of fiscal stimulus when the federal reserve is at the zero lower bound. it's a very big deal. the multipliers go up by a factor of two or three based on some of the research of this so those dynamics make it look like fiscal policy isn't as affective

as it is -- stimulus fiscal policy. >> what i am hearing is cbo should improve the quality of its best judgment not that we should ignore their best judgment. >> i guess -- that's definitely a fair interpretation of what i'm saying. they definitely should. my point is that of the earlier panel which i think what i was kind of getting at this fundamental question do we have enough knowledge to do that in a method that improves our score. no. yes, in terms of analysis. i would answer your question we should do that in terms of analysis but we're not there in terms of choosing a score. >> i want to turn to the audience -- we'll have times for a few questions at the end about tax but i would like to start with people who have a question about the nontax bills. tell us who you are. >> i'm vick miller independent fiscal economist. one of the things we knew working was that we wanted to get the assumptions out of the way so we could argue policy at the house. here we have a rule that's a

house rule. rich cogan has pointed out will have impacts not on the spending side but also on the revenue side. and steve has said this will be taken care of in the budget resolution. are you assuming that the senate will implicitly assume this for its budget reasons. >> i don't have knowledge of that what i meant to say to the extent the official scoring process incorporates micro economic feedback then any bias that is introduced in terms of spending versus revenue if in fact beneficial spending produces a revenue serge in later years the strict rules of the budget right now do not allow you to mix and match spending and revenues. but a budget resolution if that is a preferred policy does allow that. that was the only point i was making. >> anybody else on spending? anybody want to -- nobody, anybody?

>> it's really important. really. >> do you guys want to wait. >> the gentleman there in the back. by the doors. by the fire alarm. please don't touch it. >> i'm basil, i have a question. what was the rational behind the house ignoring spending in its rule. i just think it should be made explicit. >> i don't think it's quite right to say they ignored spending. what they say it would imply to mandatory spending and entitlements but not to appropriations. >> and i have no hand in creating that rule but my own -- my own guess as to why they went that way if is offirst of all as a practical matter, annual increases of at least $40

billion in any appropriatated program are extremely rare. it's unlikely anything would be triggered at that point. appropriations are one year at a time things. and so the budget rules don't take into account future affects of appropriations as it stands out. so you might produce an analysis that's interesting about appropriations but the way the budget's rules are structured it would have no impact on the enforcement of budget limitations for that bill. >> exactly right. if you think about the bias that creates -- i think chi was talking about education spending that boosts productivity certainly arguably in later years. well, since it is allocated year by year, cbo couldn't score it. that would create a negative bias in terms of which spending would have a positive growth affect. >> again, this is a distinction between what is inadequate with the current system.

to have information about what happens to our economy when you spend more on education to the extent we can get that information, is very interesting. the fact that we have budget rules that count a dollar in the tenth year the same as a dollar in the first year and completely ignore a dollar in the eleventh year, yeah. that's a process that is in need of improvement but, you know, having analysis that does show us what happens in those years still helps people figure out how to vote on the economy. >> questions on anything. eric. >> very small technical question. in looking at the affordable care act jared mentioned job lock and i'm sure that labor supply issues are taken into account. since the purpose of the act was to improve access to health insurance and the health of the population, is there any way that that gets factored into

estimates of productivity or can be factored in? >> i think the answer is aspirationally but i don't know what the evidentiary basis for that is. >> thanks. this is a question, i didn't get to ask my panel. there was a great discussion of how private sector agents will respond. individual businesses, et cetera. there's a little discussion although it's not framed this way how the federal government would respond. the whole finance issue is if you had a nonrevenue mutual proposal what does the government do to make up the budget short fall? >> i want to ask about both state, local and foreign governments. suppose we did something like limit the deductibility of state and local taxes, you would expect that to have an impact on state and local governments. they would have to respond somehow. if we cut the federal corporate

tax rate. you would expect other countries respond and to offset some of that impact. the question is how comfortable are you with how far we go in estimating policy maker responses other than the federal government? >> do you want to respond to that. >> well, i think -- no, i guess not. >> can't help you. >> don, do you want to respond. >> i will take a crack at that. so when i was at cbo, i sat in meetings where we tried to predict the behavior of other parts of government. so we had meetings where we tried to predict whether the supreme court would judge a particular provision to be constitutional or not. we had lots of meetings where many laws are written where they delegate to the administrator of a program.

the opportunity to make a choice about how to run the program several years in the future. you have to collect evidence, sometimes see what they have said in public assuming they are already in office and you do a best judgment of how is this person going to behave. if you go down the micro route you've got to put in your thinking a model of how the federal government will respond because it just isn't appropriate to assume the fed is going to maintain a constant course. i think you have to do the same thing with overseas government u.s. already do it with state and lobale al local governments. the big issue is how will governments respond to the changes in health policy. there's lots of estimates where cbo does somewhere behind the scenes somebody is deciding these 25 states are going to do x and these 25 are going to do y. you have i have small levels of doing that.

the goal is to do it in all the cases that matters. if there's some response out there, you want to incorporate it with the sole exception of future legislation because if your goal is to score the legislation in front of you you do not want to be in the position of predicting what future legislation will follow. a, that suggests which i think has been a theme of this thing is that there's a limit of what you can do to models. >> do you think asking the jct and cbo adds an excessive layer of uncertainty and judgment and will make the estimates less useful or not. >> it's hard to have an in general. i think there will be some cases where it's yes and some cases where it's no. i think cbo has been very strong where there isn't a strong evidentiary base of one way or the other.

health it, tort reform. there's a whole bunch of issues where people on one side the institutional is to go with the smaller zero affect. i think had a we will see with dine aprilic scoreynamic scoring is somewhat similar. >> i thought don's initial answer to the question was very good and very comprehensive. i agree with it but i think at the end of your first comment not the one you just made you gave a pretty compelling reason why we shouldn't accept models that close the fiscal model because they de facto assume legislation. legislation that either that either raises, cuts transfers raises taxes. i'm saying when you're in that situation where you have to close the fiscal model in order

to get it to converge you have to make sujsassumptions about how debt doesn't explode to gdp. >> but does that apply in the ten year window? >> if you make that assumption does it apply in the ten year window. >> it can. >> it can apply in the ten year window but because the decision makers in the model have perfect foresight they can observe what you do outside of the ten year window and they'll have a behavioral response to that. that's the way the model works. it's hard to find something that will have no affect. >> do you want to add anything? >> okay. i think we're out of time. i want to a, remind you all that the tax policy center has an event on january 30th in l.a. on international tax but will be web cast.

we here at the huchings center will touch on a lot of these issues marking the 40th anniversary of the congressional budget office. what they do well. what don't they do well. what challenges do they face. secondly, if you look at the piece of paper, put it in the recycling container at the back and third, join me in thanking all the participants but particularly the people from cbo who came -- i mean from jc -- i tried to get cbo but they pled because their forecast is coming out this afternoon they can't do it. i want to thank the people from jct, it's not easy to stand up and answer these questions and not know what tom is going to say when you get back to the office. i think they did an excellent job so thank you all. [ applause ]

some live programming to tell you about. at 10:00 a.m. eastern, the senate finance committee hears from u.s. trade representative michael froman. he'll testify about obama's trade policy agenda for the year ahead. that will be live on cspan. >> here on cspan three, the select committee on benghazi holds its third public hearing as part of the investigation into the 2012 consolute attack in libya that killed four americans. that's scheduled to fin atbegin at 10:30 a.m. eastern. now a look at the role of nn political campaigns including the recent 2014 midterm elections. speakers from several public interest groups discuss the

impact of the 2010 supreme court ruling in citizens united that allows unlimited spending on political activities from outside groups. we also hear from a state lawmaker who talks about his use of public financing to get elected to connecticut's general assembly. this is hosted by the group public public citizen. it's just under two hours. >> all right. sorry for the delay. sorry i didn't know any jokes to fill the lull. we're going to go back. as i was saying i'm very thrilled to welcome everyone to this important event five years after citizens united. what are the costs for democracy? this is an important event again kicking off a week of activities, we're going to be here in d.c. and around the country throughout this week raising the zint's citizen's united anniversary, the terrible consequences this decision has had for our country. an unprecedented number of organizations have come together to share original research as

more and more americans have concluded the issues that they care about just won't be dealt with in a political system that values the money of a few over the voices of america. more and more nations have pryize prioritized the way zikss decisions are made understanding that special interests are truly hijacking our elections. the outrage they are feeling about this is really fueling a movement creating change and more collaborativeeive efforts like you're seeing today. this cooperative action can be seen in the statement of unit we're putting out today. over 120 organizations have signed on to this statement of unit with supports reforming our democratic processes and removing changes around public disclosure financing and

overturning the affects of citizen's un ietd. you can find the statement of unit when you come in. also up front hard copies of the new research that we're putting out today and can be found electronically on a new share web partal get money action.org. >> without a doubt the biggest winners in the midterms were the corporate entities special interests and billionaires who funded them. the losers are the 300 million americans whose voices are silenced by money. today's event is about that. it's about the highlighting of this problem. we're going to be discussing as well, much needed solutions. the first panel will dig in on the numbers. we will talk about the 2014 midterms. the second we'll focus on real world implications of our

solutions. so with that, we will turn it over to our first panel. we have a great line-up to discuss some of the biggest trends and issues at play in the 2014 midterms. we'll start with karen sshshanten and go to ian and taylor from public citizen and brendon fisher from the center of media and democracy and we will close with the president of justice at stake. karen, over to you. >> good morning. i'm karen, a policy analyst at an organization where we're working for an america where we all have an equal say in our democracy and hooeequal chance in our economy. so wraps up of congressional spending often focused on the total amount of money that's raised and spent by candidates

in these races. one reported receiving contributions of $1.3 million. on the winning side they contributed over $7 million in contributions contributions. that works out to $3300 a day on the senate side. even more important than the total funds that are being raised in these competitions is where that money is coming from. of the clue to the $1.5 billion in total contributions to candidates starting receiving in 2014. more than 2/3rds came interest contributions from wealthy donors. if you're the candidate faced with the prospect of having to raise thousands of dollars a day.

if you focused exclusively on raising from small donors giving $200 a day or less then you'd have to secure at least nine unique donors each and everyday if you're running for the house. if you were running for the senate you'd need at least staen 17 17 a day. >> so it's unsurprising that most candidates end up collecting the vast majority of their money from wealthy donors rather than from smaller spending average donors. we looked at the large donor and small donor break downs in a targeted sample of 25 races

where the partisan maker for the district doesn't sort of already incline the race in favor of one party's nominee over the other. what we found is the candidates who are really doing well in these races are overwhelmingly drawing their funds from large donors. in some the top candidates got more than 80% of their contributions from large donors and 47 of these 50 got almost 9.5 out of $10. the limited role for average voters in funding complains hasampaigns has limited function. my colleague adam will be joining us later in the program to describe some of these effects. one of our partners, dan smith is also here today to tell us

about some of the specific candidates who have been affected by the current role of money in our politics and even given current limitations on campaign financing we can find unique ways to solve these problems. thank you very much. >> thanks. so they say give yourself a minute a slide. if everybody can promise not to blink for next five minutes i think we'll be fine. we looked at spending in senate races. the reason we looked at the senate is because it has been up for grabs in all three elections since citizens united. that tends to increase outside spending. what did we find. the story is outside spending has increased. in fact candidate spending,

spending by spending by a tiny number of wealthy donors who can afford to give in excess of the contribution limits that karen was talking about and dark money is playing a bigger role which creates risks for corruption and influence that's hidden by the public. money spend by organizations who hide some or all of their donors. this chart shows ten of the most competitive senate elections in 2014. the bars are candidate spending, percent candidate spending. you see the heavy line is 50%. in those top four which include north carolina the most expensive legislative election in u.s. history, candidates

spend less. most of the outside spending comes from superpacts. superpacts depend enormously on large donors. i mean, the numbers that karen talked about in terms of candidates are far more extreme in the superpact world. they get less than 1% of the money for donors, in the five or six range. in 1 billion, about 200 people in the entire country were responsible for that. one of the things we see is these groups that can take by a single candidate not subject to

contribution limits. taylor is going talk about these later. where do they get their money from. they get almost 2/3rds of their money from double dipping donor who give the maximum directly to the candidate and turn around and give however much they want to the outside group knowing all of that money will be spent on the candidate. again, dark money has increased over the past three cycles, money where we don't know where it's coming from. on the left here you see how much money it makes up not coming from parties. a majority comes from unknown sources. if you look at all of it, dark money is still a significant chunk, well over a quarter 28% of election spending in competitive races. that's a big chunk of money. still a minority but a big chunk of money. it leads to numbers like these.

looking just at the 11 most competitive senate elections in 2014, the winners in these elections, just the winners, 11 people who took office this month in the senate had $131 million in dark money behind them. tillas took office with $131 million behind him. the voters do not know. does tom know who spent that money? >> i don't know. >> is he going to give legislative favors that the people who gave him that money. we don't know and the voters won't be able to hold him accountable in six years. i wanted to say that the world has severely weakened to the cornerstones of corruption we're

now living in a world where rich and secretive donors have a greater influence than ever before. i will stop there. thank you. [ applause ] the good morning. i'm taylor with public citizen. today i am going to discuss one of the most obvious and controversial things that anybody would say today. in terms of how our elects are financed, it may also be the most important. many of the outsidethings, public citizen has sought to show these things in two different ways. the first is by tracking the

spending by groups that devote all of their resources to benefitting a single candidate. this trade does not definitively prove that the group has ties to the candidate. if the group chooses to help one out of many. the second method we have used is to track the spending of groups that we deem to be party aligned. we've only cat egegorized groups of party lined as party aligned if they have not only spent their money on one party but if other evidence suggests that they are solely committing to furthering a parties advantage. for instance if a group was led by former employees of the senate majority leader and

indicated a mission of protecting the majority in the senate of that's the group that we would categorize as party aligned. today we're releasing our private report. we found that 45% of all superpacts work just for one candidate. we also found that eight groups would be party aligned spent 31% of and 45% was spent by outside groups in the election. by these measures alone we can show that nearly half of the spending by outside groups wouldn't meet most people's definition of independent. what this means is the citizen united decision has fail bid the very logic that it laid out. it may be contrary to most

people -- most causal observers impressions but the supreme court and citizens united endorsed the thrust of presidents that permitted campaign regulation to stem corruption. >> the court simply found that independent expenditures do not threaten to cause corruption because they are independent. but what we now know is many of the independent expenditures are not independent. they are being mad by groups affecting as unregulated extensions of the parties and candidates that. again, nothing i have said is particularly controversial or in dispute. this is a reality.

some blame poor coordination laws. i will close by simply saying given the extraordinary challenge of crafting a coordination law that could truly trigger that. if that is their last line of defense, they are in trouble. thank you. [ applause ] >> hi, my name is brendon fisher. i'm general council with the center of media democracy. as taylor said there's a lot of groups that have been pushing the envelope by forming these single candidate pacts that technically avoid coordinating but others have asserted that the coordination rules really don't apply at all. the most glaring example of this is wisconsin where republican and democratic prosecutors have been investigating possible coordination between governor walker's campaign and independent groups like wisconsin corporate growth which

spent millions in the elections and funneled more to other groups. the walker campaign have fought back not by arguing coordination but allowing that the rules don't apply unless they have the words vote for or vote against. if this were the case, there would be nothing stopping a candidate, special interests from speaking favors but public scrutiny could curry faf withvor with candidates without facing questions from the media. in fact this is what happened in wisconsin. as a result of the investigation, we later found that an out of state mining company that wanted to build -- mine in the state made a $700,000 secret donation to

public growth. so i raise this not because it involves a high profile politician but could be used nationally and books timintimidate and that's been consorted into a politically motivated witch hunt by democrats against republicans. how did this happen? how did this bipartisan investigation get reframed in such a way? the key to this thing surrounding the probe has been a group called the franklin center for government and public territory. they funded watchdog.org. >> it has produced an astounding

160 stories but failed to disclose that was launched and funded by eric okeef who's a director for wisconsin growth and filed the lawsuit certifying that coordination is perfectly okay. it has also not closed that its director of special projects is the president for citizens for strong america, another group implicated in the probe which was entirely funded by wisconsin and was sited to a wisconsin reporter as evidence that it was politically motivated. experts say that he probably should have never been on the

case at all. so it was unanimously reversed by the seventh circuit and an unanimous opinion saying that the future of this rests with the wisconsin supreme court. two of the groups potentially facing criminal liable have been the dominant spending, but this investigation could be decided by justices who were elected to the bench by precisely the same groups that are facing criminal liability and arguing against these groups at all.

i think that makes a good transition to bert's presentation. >> good morning. my name is bert, i'm executive director for the group justice at stake. i'm glad if brendon finished where he did because if you came here and you heard that this is a problem with money affecting public policy and presidential races and senate races but at least our courts are safe. an explosion in money and judicial elections is pressuring is at stake. what we call the new politics of judicial elections has become a grave and growing threat to justice in america.

our state courts handle this and because they are now being transformed presses judges to be accountable to big money politics instead of the constitution. last year an elected supreme court justice that she frequently writes her opinions in the morning. until very recently our elected judges haven't had to raise huge war chests or cater to interest groups or respond to hard ball attacks but in recent years, judicial elections have become a play ground for big money and

hard ball politics. in this document from 2000 to 2009, the amount of money going into state elections more than doubled. more than $200 million. we've now seen a couple of dozen states have their records smashed. citizens united poured gasoline on this fire. we're in a situation where judicial elections occur in a new world where cash is king. it is an arms race with business groups on the one side fighting it out against plaintiffs attorneys and unions. on the other our judges are trapped in a crewsible. they are raising millions dollars from people with business before the courts and parties and outside groups much of it undisclosed. much of it goes for ads that we're trying to show you here.

let's see if we have a play button. do we see a play button. am i missing it? >> as entertaining as it would be to reenact these adds i will tell you what's been going on with -- we got it here? all right. we appreciate patience of the web audience here. sorry. >> so she could side with radical environmentalists. and joy's re-election is bank rolled by the same lawyers who profit from the cases she oversee as judges. pat joyce, groovy for them. bad for us. >> we want judges to protect us

when child molesters sued to stop electronic monitoring of their locations, supreme court justice robert hudson sided with a predator and his right to privacy and took the side of a molester. >> the first ad i threw in for fun. the last ad is like what you will see. in 2014 we saw many groups, law enforcement alliance of america,

trial attorneys raise millions of dollars the koch brothers are beginning to spend in supreme court races, judicial elections are broken. if they are not fixed we're going to move to a system where justice is for sale. almost 9 out of 10 americans believe this money is acting on this. we're now seeing scholarly research commissioned by the american constitution society showing that as campaign cash rises, judges are starting to tilt toward prosecutors because of adds like he just saw. there's good news. the challenge is a three branch

challenge. next year the state, instead of making a personal plea for donations to someone who may appear before them in court. when money affects public policy that stinks. when money affects a decision in the courtroom, the constitution of the united states has just been violated. the most important democracy issue currently flying under the radar of american politics is whether our courts of law can remain fair and impartial or whether they will be accountable to a growing tide of partisan and special interest pressure. money and justice do not belong in the same sentence. thank you. [ applause ] thanks so much to our great panel. we have a couple of minutes for questions now. there will be a mic that's going around so if folks could just raise your hand and say who you're with when you ask your question.

i'm the first out of this group? okay. i'm with get money out in mary land and the maryland committee to amend. we have a rally on the 27th to support senator jamie rasmond. constitution american law professor. state senator who has released two bills to amend the constitution using article 5. through calling a convention of the states. also shareholders disclosure or shareholders united bill. so i was hoping you could address those, especially the campaigns around the country to

amend the constitution to reverse citizens united, reclaim voting rights, democracy, all of that. we're hoping maryland will be the fourth state after vermont illinois and california to pass this resolution out of the 34 that will be needed. >> great. anyone want to take that? >> i think it might be a question for you. >> okay. well, just to frame up what you said i think we've highlighted a lot of problems here. later in our discussion, we're going to dig in on some of the solutions but certainly you're highlighting a couple of key ones. so jamie raskin is a huge champion and certainly the constitutional amendment movement is a key part of what we're trying to do. we're excited about the progress that we've made. 16 states have supported

amendments to the constitution. the other piece you mentioned, so shareholder support and disclosure, i think, is a real important solution. jamie raskin is a pioneer on that front as well. one of the pieces that the citizens united decision was premised on is disclosure. the decision said right there that shareholders could have recourse recourse. they could leave companies if they didn't like how their corporations are spending in politics. obviously we don't know how corporations are spending in politics. we need disclosure to shareholders so we can make that decision. >> thanks. as a student act visitiveist from our goal is to mobilize students against these efforts.

one the challenges that you guys presented so well -- there's a lot. how do we frame this without it being esoteric or difficult to understand. the grandeur is huge. billions of dollars is hard to grasp when you have $20 in your pocket. my question to you as experts, as we begin to create materials for our students to lash onto, if there's one antidote whether it's speaking about judges, what should our target as the most daunting and troubling part of this entire problem? >> does anyone want to take a crack. right there on the same row with you is scott swenson one of our message message gurues might be able to take one of these questions as

well. >> i think you have to be compelling in the way that we're trying to be here today and nail home the ironclad case. for some audiences that will be very important but you're getting to something even more important which is this has to be connected to people's everyday lives. you have to have real world examples of why this made a difference for someone's lives. those will often be tailored to committee our in. i can talk about money affecting justice. that will turn off a lot of people and people have a lot of good instincts that they are free. you have to find the individual examples where policy be it, affected someone's life. >> i think scott wants to say something. >> is this on? i think bert nails it. the biggest issue we have to

overcome is giving people hope. letting people know that there's something to be done. there are solutions can which is what we refer to earlier in the statement of principles, just letting americans know that rooms like this are filling up in every city, every town. every state, looking for answers to this problem. there are solutions that already are woshingrking around the country to overcome the cynicism that nothing can be done. that's really the key to winning this. >> hello. i'm scott representing global integrity. thank you all for your presentations. really enjoyed it. to focus on the state level issues that were raised at the end there, both the wisconsin focus as well as the judicial elections, i'm curious, in terms of independent expenditures and

coordinates coordinating how they find the best coordination you painted a pretty bad picture of what's go on in wisconsin. is that the last that we can speak off or are there other practices that we can speak to or? >> on the state level i might trevor to the statement on the proactive measures that are being taken in states to define coordination and to create affective walls between campaign and outside groups.

in wisconsin a lot has been crumbling over the past two years. i thought that we had a pretty solid definition of coordination in the state. it would seem pretty clear that groups regardless of whether they are running issue ads or express advocacy could not coordinate with campaigns. i think there seems to be an assertion that these laws that were widely accepted can be conflict conflict. >> yeah. so i will plug brendon center.org. all of our reports there. the report that brendon mentioned, surveys state laws on coordination, what are good. what are bad? what's the difference? so yeah. check it out.

to answer your question about the courts part in this. efforts to avoid coordination applying to all campaigns i would say that there have been other efforts to deal with the broader issue and disclosure is obviously very important. voter information because a lot of people don't feel in judicial elections. the big three in this field traditionally have been public financing where the judges can spend time west virginia and new mexico, asking one to step down. interest groups instead said that no judge can recuse if any legal money came in. and finally maritime selection

of judges that helps select a slate of candidates based on very thorough vetting. the governor has it. some states want to move toward it j it. >> okay. on that we're going to move onto our next panel. thanks so much to this group. [ applause ]

this panel will be focusing on the real world implications what you just heard how it impacts people and issues. i will turn it over to jay from common cause and adam from dimos. cl. >> thanks lisa. thanks for everyone coming today. so you just got a lot of information about how money affected the 2014 election. but our view at common cause and at many organizations in this room and many of the people in this room is that while money

and elections may determine winners and losers although there's an argument to be made. it's hard to determine whether money is affect. it's real affect is after the election is over and favors can be given and and things open to donors that not everyday americans can get. our new research from the report whose government, whose voice looks at the needs and the issues that the american people are calling for. issues that have high popularity that have been stalled in congress and stalled in a lot of state legislatures simply of the issues. special interest money is speaking louder than the people leaving people to ask if our democracy is still around and whose voice our elected

officials are listening to. one of the things we found is rained rapidly increasing but the race in which it is increasing is quite startleing specifically from special interest groups. in 2014 groups such as the chamber of commerce the nra i believe some of the largest spenders spent more money on the 2014 election than they did on the 2012 presidential congressional election. so if you put that in context. you can see wall street and financial institutions spent more than double on the congressional and presidential year. so the amount of money is

increasing. it has been increasing. i think someone used the term. citizens united put more fuel on the fire. it is about paid speech, not free speech. i think these charts and the information shows that. there's no line here. as spending by the special interest groopups leading voters to ask who's really behind the ads that they are seeing on their tv. >> we look at five issueses that had high pulling on the federal level but also a lot of state.

but some of the these numbers particularly the u.s. chamber and nra a, count as state level spending too. that's the untold story, yes, a lot of money is being spent on the federal level to elect a congress but a lost of the money explode exploded exploded. >> 78% of americans support raising the minimum wage but the national federation are spending to silence their workers who want minimum wage. it's bad when the walton family can poor millions in politics

for one year and still feeling the economic crisis. the latest poll and congress is literally the best congress money can buy. is it t go to show where the american people have such a low aapproval rate and spending millions to block these and also get this so when large corporations or the rich come out of this recession on top petter than anyone and why the

needs. so in our report,. here are some of the solutions that we identified. it's important because the american people identify this issue. they understand corruption. they are tired of seeing tv attack ads.