The monthly interview: a conversation with Representative John Sarbanes, on a new campaign finance idea to get lawmakers more focused on voters than big-money contributors.

• Author: Glastris, Paul
• Position: Interview

Advocates of campaign finance reform have been understandably glum since Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions all but gutted previous hard-fought-for strictures on big money in campaigns. But a new piece of legislation by Representative John Sarbanes, Democrat from Maryland, crafted for the post-Citizens environment, has picked up moods within the political reform community. Sarbanes recently sat down with Washington Monthly editor in chief Paul Glastris to talk about his Government By the People Act. Here is an edited version of that interview.

WM: What does your legislation aim to do?

JS: The bill is designed to shift the attention of candidates away from big money and toward everyday citizens and small donors. In order to do that, you have to be able to generate enough funding from small donors that it's actually worthwhile for a candidate to turn away from PACs, big-money donors, and special interests.

WM: How would your bill do that?

JS: Number one: A small donor gets a tax credit for the contribution they make to a federal candidate, to the tune of up to $25 in each of the two years of an election cycle. It's a 50 percent tax-refundable credit. So you give $10, you get $5 back from the IRS. You give $20, you get $10 back. You give up to $50, you get $25 back in each of the two years of the cycle.

The idea here is that if we're living in a world where the Supreme Court has declared that money is speech, how do people of modest means have speech? How do we make it more possible for them to get into the funding side of the equation and to begin to get the attention of the candidate?

Number two: If that contribution goes to a candidate who has chosen to give up traditional PACs and to put a $1,000 cap on their highest donations, then every contribution that comes in from the small donors, up to $100, will be matched six to one with public funds. That turns a $150 donor into a $1,050 donor when you add the six-to-one match. It means the $50 donor is worth $350 to the candidate. If that person can assemble thirty people at a house party, and they each give $50, using a $25 tax credit, that's $1,500 raised, with another $9,000 in matching funds. The candidate could raise $10,500 dollars by going to a house party with real people in their district, instead of needing to go to a K Street fundraiser. This is the game changer.

Imagine that Verizon commercial where the guy is saying, "Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?" Right...