Contact Congress

This letter was sent by OpenCongress user koolkai78 on October 29, 2011 in support of H.R.1826 Fair Elections Now Act. Privacy setting: PUBLIC
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H.R.1826 Fair Elections Now Act
I am writing as your constituent in the 3rd Congressional district of California. I support H.R.1826 - Fair Elections Now Act, and am tracking it using OpenCongress.org, the free public resource website for government transparency and accountability.

Sincerely,
Kai Krienke
This letter was a reply from the office of Rep. Daniel Lungren [R, CA-3] on October 29, 2011.
Reply from Congressman Daniel E. Lungren
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

You are receiving this auto-reply message to confirm that I have
received your email.
I will respond to you shortly.

In the meantime, I invite you to visit my website
(www.lungren.house.gov) for details of the upcoming town halls that I am
hosting in the Third Congressional District.

It is through your comments that I am better able to represent the
people of California's 3rd Congressional District.
This letter was a reply from the office of Sen. Barbara Boxer [D, CA] on December 20, 2011.
Responding to Your Message
Dear Mr. Krienke:

Thank you for writing to me to express your support for campaign finance reform.  I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

I believe that it is of the utmost importance that we do not allow corporate money to disproportionately influence our elections.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court reversed a century-old law and overruled decades of legal precedent when it decided that corporations cannot be restricted from spending unlimited amounts in federal elections.  The decision was astounding, not just because it was a gross display of judicial activism, but because it defies common sense for the Supreme Court to conclude that corporations are citizens, as you and I are, in the eyes of the law.

There are several proposals now before Congress that would mitigate or reverse the effects of the Citizens United decision.  I am proud to be an original co-sponsor of S.750, the Fair Elections Now Act, which would allow candidates for the U.S. Senate to receive grants and matching funds to run competitive campaigns instead of relying on contributions from lobbyists and other special interests.

Recently, two constitutional amendments have been introduced in the Senate that seek to reverse the Citizens United decision.  An amendment by Senator Tom Udall (S.J.Res.29) would authorize Congress and the states to regulate the raising and spending of money for federal political campaigns.  An amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders (S.J.Res.33) would make it clear that corporations are not entitled to the same constitutional rights as people, prohibit corporate spending in all elections, and affirm the authority of Congress and the states to regulate election contributions and spending.  Be assured that I support the goals of these proposals.

You can count on me to keep working to ensure that corporations do not drown out the voice of the people.

Again, thank you for writing to me.  Please feel free to contact me again about this or other issues of concern to you.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer

United States Senator

Please do not respond to this message. If you would like to comment on legislation, please visit my website and use the correspondence form at https://www.boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm.

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Note to Congressional staff & elected officials reading this: this letter was sent through Contact-Congress features on OpenCongress.org, a free public resource website, but in the future we seek to compel the U.S. Congress to adopt fully open technology for constituent communications. For more information how your office can better handle public feedback through an open API and open standards, contact us -- even today, there are significantly more efficient and responsive ways for our elected officials to receive email feedback than the status quo of individual webforms. For greater public accountability in government, we must make the process of writing one's members of Congress more accessible and empowering. Looking ahead, we will release more data from Contact-Congress letters and Congressional response rates back into the public commons. This will result in a new open data source on bills & issues people care about, as well as encourage best practices in constituent communications and make it possible to grade members of Congress on their responsiveness & citizen satisfaction.

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