Harvard professor and campaign finance reform crusader Lawrence Lessig said Monday that unchecked money has locked up Congress and kept it from dealing with pressing issues like climate change.
“What our government does has no connection to what the average voter wants,” Lessig told Chris Cuomo on CNN’s “New Day.”
He cited broad public support for gun background checks after the Sandy Hook school shootings in 2012 and concerns about climate change — issues that Congress has not addressed — as evidence that money has stalled action at the Capitol.
“Again and again, what America wants, Congress doesn’t do, because the system is broken, the democracy is broken, and we’ve got to finally push pause on this partisan fight and say what are we going to do to fix this corrupted broken system and that’s what this campaign is about.”
Lessig announced Sunday that he had reached his goal of raising $1 million in order to launch a White House bid focused squarely on campaign finance reform. He is set to formally announce his bid for the Democratic nomination Wednesday in New Hampshire.
Lessig’s campaign will focus The Citizen Equality Act, a proposal that couples campaign finance reform with other laws to curb gerrymandering and expand voting access.