A campaign-finance bill that doesn’t pass muster

The Washington Post:

"The legislation — which has no chance of being enacted, but is a window into the liberal mind — would fund the campaigns of Senate candidates by extracting a 0.5 percent tax, up to $500,000 a year, on government contractors. This has nothing to do with Citizens United, which had nothing to do with contributions to candidates or the funding of their campaigns. Citizens United said only that the First Amendment protects independent (not coordinated with campaigns) candidate-advocacy by Americans acting collectively as corporations, including — actually, especially — advocacy corporations, from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club.

Mitch McConnell, leader of Senate Republicans, correctly says that taxpayer funding of politics has been the subject of the largest, most sustained and most accurate polling in American history. The polling occurs every year when Americans have a chance to check a box that will give $3 — without increasing their tax liabilities — to the fund for presidential campaigns. Almost all taxpayers (91.7 percent in 2007, the last year for which there are data) refuse to participate."