4 Instead, President Trump and his administration have violated laws and upended long-standing norms meant to prevent corruption and conflicts of interest. In 2016, for example, Donald Trump was elected to the presidency on a central promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. Recent elections have signaled the importance that Americans place on making the government work for all people. Until Congress is willing to stand up to corporate power, the federal policymaking process will remain broken. People know that their policy priorities-including jobs that pay them fair wages, affordable health care, and clean air and water-are losing out to wealthy special interests who donate huge sums of money to help elect members of Congress and then lobby those very members of Congress on their preferred policies. John Adams captured this concern when he wrote: “Government is instituted for the common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people, and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.” 3 Adams and his fellow revolutionaries recognized the dangerous potential for special interests to monopolize the government and to poison the trust that the public should have in its lawmakers.Īmericans deserve elected officials who represent them fairly and fight for their interests. One of the greatest threats to the United States’ experiment in democracy, anticipated by its founders, is corruption in its political system. 2 In this report, the authors narrow their focus to a subset of those solutions designed to make members of Congress more responsive to the people who elect them. 1,” examined a range of structural solutions that are needed to curb Washington’s culture of corruption and help ensure fair, democratic elections. A recent Center for American Progress report, “Bold Democracy Reforms That Build on H.R. Trust in government is near an all-time low, 1 and Americans are demanding anti-corruption reforms that will make government more accountable to everyday people instead of to corporate lobbyists and the most well connected. American democracy is at a crossroads, with most Americans believing that political corruption in Washington, D.C., is widespread, that members of Congress are in the pockets of wealthy special interests, and that the federal policymaking process does not represent the views of the people.
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