A way for all of us to buy Congress

As long as Congress can be bought – why shouldn’t all of us be able to do the buying?

Campaign finance attorney Jonathan Zucker, co-founded a website three months ago with the intention of giving small campaign donors the clout of big campaign donors.

“A lawyer friend of mine said, ‘oh that sounds great, but go check the bribery statue,'” Zucker said.

It’s a website called “If.then.fund” – which lets you attach a condition to your political contributions.

For example: you pledge $100 for passage of that new trade bill Congress is considering. The site tracks he bill. And if Congress passes it, then all the members who voted “yes” share your donation, and the donations of everyone else who wanted it to pass.

You could also earmark your donation to oppose the bill, in which case, if it fails, then the “no” votes get the money.

And co-founder Zucker says since the site doesn’t reveal the amount of money at stake for a given vote, until after the vote takes place – there’s nothing illegal about this.

As for the benefit – he’s hoping that this will finally force Congress to focus on the issues with the widest appeal.

“Over time, through the influence of campaign contributions, we would hopefully see Congress shift more back toward where most of the country is,” Zucker said.

Although – he admits there’s nothing to prevent Congress from just passing a constant stream of offsetting, hot-button bills to game the system.

“What you might actually end up seeing is just a shift to negative giving, saying ‘wait we’re going to start trying to throw the bums out,” Zucker said.

Which is pretty much where we are now anyway.