Gaines Gunn on Should Campaign Donations be Anonymous?
Gaines Gunn
Should Campaign Donations be Anonymous?
Claims and stances
Transcript
- 0:00 Carl, I think this is a really interesting topic.
- 0:02 I think that it's interesting your point where you say that people may donate less if you know donations are made public to the general population.
- 0:11 But I will say, in such a polarized um political state at like the United States is, it is important for the people to know exactly who's lobbying our politicians.
- 0:23 And so I think it's really important that the general public is able to access the information of where money is flowing in from, because then it leaves a footprint and a trail to follow when these policymakers might be making policies that go against um, you know, the general public's belief.
- 0:41 I think there have been many examples of where you can trace the money back um and figure out exactly why um you know policies are being uh put into place.
- 0:51 And I'm pretty sure I I read an article um a while back, and it was basically about um, you know, how much money is being um put into these Congress members' pockets and where that's coming from.
- 1:06 And you know, like it's insane to me how, you know, the president's paycheck from the United States of America is 400,000 and a Congress member's paycheck is around like $250,000.
- 1:17 Yet while these people are in office, they go from being, you know, just regular people to being multi-million dollar people.
- 1:25 They like their net worth exponentially grows, even though their income is a reasonable amount.
- 1:32 And so I think it's really important that you're able to track where this money's coming from, who's donating it, especially if it's these large corporations who want something out of these policymakers, um, so that you can actually vote and understand why the policymakers are making the decisions that they're making and whether or not they actually have your interests at heart.