What's more important to Senator Mitch McConnell -- health insurance for 157,996 of Kentucky's children or big money donors from Big Tobacco, HMOs, and other health interests?

You can guess the answer by the mere fact that I even have to ask the question.

With an imminent Senate vote on S-CHIP, the children's health insurance program, we at Public Campaign Action Fund made a poignant, hard-hitting web ad that raises this question for Sen. McConnell.

Matt (here and here) and Kos have written posts recently about the ethics and lobbying reforms in Congress, and the need to reassess the whole regulatory scheme of campaign reform. They've been joined by lots of other commentary, like former Secretary of Labor Bob Reich on Marketplace this morning and David Sirota (here and just about everywhere), arguing that Congress has left the major part of the money in politics problem untouched - the private financing of public elections.

Matt's argument, in a nutshell is this: process reforms that rely on regulation and policing bad behavior always fail to live up to their billing, and what we need to do instead is shift the paradigm to public financing:

Let's be honest - quasi-corrupt practices such as secret earmarks are not the result just of bad people in politics, they are the result of structural factors that encourage the legalized bribery of our governing class.  If you restrict secret earmarks without changing any other incentives, you'll simply push the quasi-corruption into another legal vehicle designed to bilk the public and hide the costs.

Kos extends the criticism of the ethics and lobbying reforms to other types of campaign reforms, like the proposed and rejected FEC regulations on bloggers political activities.

Here's the problem, and I saw this up front and personal during the FEC fight with the "reformer" groups -- they've lost sight of the purpose of [campaign finance reform].

In their minds, money is inherently evil. Their efforts are predicated on the impossible -- getting money out of politics. But as Stoller notes, that just ain't gonna happen, Buckley or not. All speech costs money of some sort these days. Even getting yourself to a street protest costs money (gas or transit).

So is the problem really money?

I would argue that the problem is when money is used to drown out competing voices. It was a key argument we bloggers used in defending ourselves against the "reformers" -- that while money could drown out other voices in radio or television, the inherent nature of the web meant there was no scarcity.

Still, he withholds judgment on public financing, despite its impact in dealing with the very problem he identifies.

These are not an academic question for me, or for progressives. I work on this issue day in, day out for  Public Campaign and Public Campaign Action Fund, the leading national group on public financing. I have worked on Clean Elections for a dozen years, dating back to when I ran the Maine ballot question campaign to pass the first full public financing law in the country. Six additional states (including Arizona and Connecticut for all state offices) and two cities have followed suit. We are working in coalition with many of the organizations identified in the posts by Matt and Markos, and count them as strong allies in the public financing fight.

Earlier in the election cycle, the news was filled with stories of corruption and abuse of power -- Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, and Duke Cunningham, and more recently Mark Foley, Tom Reynolds, and Dennis Hastert. Much of that has fallen to the side as the news from Iraq continues to get worse. But while the issue that has defined this election more than any other is the war in Iraq, an analysis I've done of three dozen of the closest House races shows that the Democratic candidates, the DCCC, or outside organizations have run significant paid media campaigns on the pay-to-play politics of Washington. The airwaves have been filled with ads connecting what GOP reps voted to give Big Pharma and Big Oil in exchange for campaign contributions, as well as the lobbying scandals and campaign contributions in general.

In many of these three dozen races (not a complete analysis by any stretch), voters will choose candidates who have promised to take on the special interests when the get to Washington. I also expect to see between 90 and 100 incoming members of Congress -- incumbents and challengers alike -- who have taken the Voters First Pledge to support public financing of elections, stricter lobbying and ethics rules, and greater transparency on the role that lobbyists play in raising money for candidates.

This morning my wife and I spent an hour in my son Benjamin's class. He's in third grade. His teacher had thought it would be great for my wife and I to come in and talk about Election Day and the importance of voting. We were happy to do it.

We talked about all the signs they see on the side of the road, the commercials running on television, and what elections mean. We also had them throw out examples of things that they didn't think were political, and we told them how they were. (They offered things like, "This textbook isn't political!" and "Getting sick isn't political.") Of course, our son Benjamin, who has watched me working on passing Clean Elections in states, actually knows who Tom DeLay is (go figure), etc., tried to be the star of the show. We went from discussing all of the things that are impacted by the laws passed by people we elect, to going through the voter file for our small town to see if their parents were registered to vote. Their homework: Make sure their parents vote, and go with them, if possible.

I couldn't help but think, though, about what a disconnect there is between the classroom democracy taught to our kids and the real world democracy practiced by consultants, fundraisers, lobbyists, and power-seekers. Leaving, I also couldn't help but wonder if any of those kids in Benjamin's class would ever be turned on to politics enough to run for office someday. If so, they'd better make their next birthday party a fundraiser.

I'm only half joking. Who can run major office today? This election wil cost an estimated $2.6 billion. It costs between $1 and 2 million for  a challenger to stand a chance. Most have to spend more. It's out of control, and now, out of reach for far too many qualified Americans who see public service as a calling rather an avenue to riches by cashing-in at the end of their time in office. If you spend any time in our public schools, you are immediately confronted with the need for qualified political leaders willing to invest in what's right (education) versus what's wrong (the war in Iraq). But our political system doesn't always pick the best leaders. It generally picks the best fundraisers though. How much overlap is there?

I'm talking about the special interest money-drenched campaign finance system, which seems to act like a corruption-magnet, while shutting people and good candidates out.

Today's Washington Post story points out that this election is characterized by an unusually large number of races with corruption or personal scandals - perhaps as many as 15 races, according to the story. Fifteen is the Democrats magic number. If you're a Republican, I guess you could say that at least the corruption story has been localized. Isn't that what Tom Reynolds - who running in one of those 15 races impacted by scandal - wanted? Races to be determined not by the news of a corrupt Washington, but 435 individualized elections?

For more than a year, Democrats have tried to gain political advantage from what they called "a culture of corruption" in Republican-controlled Washington. Republican campaign officials insist the theme has not caught on with the public, but even they concede that many individual races have been hit hard.

Though it is clear that the war in Iraq is the dominant nationalized issue of the election, I do think there's a larger theme at work here that invokes the corruption at a national level: this Republican Congress is not listening to the people - they are out of touch, too cozy in Washington, and are stuck defending the status quo mess of their own making. So far, the Democrats have succeeded campaigning on change - change the course in Iraq and change politics-as-usual in Washington.

Should the Congress change hands in January, the Democratic leadership has promised to pass ethics and lobbying reform in the very first 100 hours of running the House to break the nexus of lobbying and lawmaking, in their words. The policy they're suggesting at this point -- Pelosi has pointed to a mixture of lobbying and ethics reforms -- are fine on the surface but don't go to the root of the problem: the pay-to-play, privately-financed campaign finance system that privileges those with money over those with ideas.

Update: Can't believe I missed it: The Washington Post reported this morning that Pelosi will offer legislation that will "break the link between lobbyists and legislation" as the first order of business on the first day. What will they propose?

Money is pouring into races all over the country. Abramoff has his own "desk" at the FBI. Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Land Deal) is the latest to be under federal investigation. Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Slap-Happy) threatens bodily harm to her Libertarian opponent (who has MS and is in a wheelchair) after he brought up her contributions from Tom DeLay in a televised debate. Then there's the Lieberman loophole: $387,000 in unaccounted for petty cash.

And we haven't even experienced the malfunctioning voting machines yet (at least in the general).

Democrats, should they take back Congress, will need a real plan to clean up Congress, and put voters first -- an agenda that is deep, broad, and systemic. No more bandaids, or narrow process reform masquerading as big ideas.

Jonathan's post yesterday raised a good question. After 12 years of Republican efforts to take over K Street as their own ATM, will Democrats hamper a bold agenda by raising money from scrambling lobbyists who see a Democratic takeover of Congress coming?

He argued that Democrats ought to reject that money. They don't need it, and shouldn't take it. Others, like Nancy Pelosi's spokesperson, say, everyone knows the Democratic agenda and that agenda won't be influenced by the money.

I think there's another bigger issue here... Instead of asking if the House Democrats will bite the hands that feed them on their issue agenda if they retake the House, we should ask this question:

Matt has graciously asked me to post some ideas, strategic suggestions, and framing advice on the issue of money and politics, particularly as to how it relates to his #7 below ("K Street Finds its Sea Legs").

First off, I'm a little "d" democrat. I work for Public Campaign Action Fund (but these posts are my own), and I direct our Campaign Money Watch committee (we took on DeLay in his district in 2004, and educated voters in Ralph Reed's run for lieutenant governor, to list a few campaigns). I believe, in a democracy, citizens need more control over what happens in government than what they have today, and that the GOP Congress has placed power and its accumulation ahead of serving the public interest. If the Democrats take the House, and/or the Senate, the challenges may no where be greater than trying to pass a serious corrective measure on how far out of whack government is skewed to powerful interests and away from the needs of voters.

Certainly, there are examples where a Democratically-controlled Congress will "take on the special interests"  like trying to correct what Big Pharma and the GOP Congress did to Medicare, and to refocus our nation's energy policy away from subsidizes Big Oil towards more renewable energy.