JONATHAN SOROS: Money will find a way into politics.

DAN CANTOR: Money doesn’t talk, it swears. So we’re

trying to turn down the ability of money to control things.

JONATHAN SOROS: For our democracy we cannot rely on disagreements

among rich people.

BILL MOYERS: And…

MARTÍN ESPADA: There’s something about poetry that saves

me. There’s something about poetry that energizes me that brings me to another plane.

Fires all the hormones, I don’t know what. Something intangible and yet tangible at the

same time.

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BILL MOYERS: Welcome. At the State of the Union speech,

there’s always more than meets the eye. Just out of sight is the reality of how we

are governed. The House of Representatives, where Congress gathers to hear the President,

used to be known as “The People’s House.” But money power owns the lease now and runs

the joint from hidden back rooms.

You're looking at the most expensive Congress money can buy. The House races last fall cost

over one billion dollars. It took more than $700 million to elect just a third of the

Senate. The two presidential candidates raised more than a billion a piece. The website Politico

added it all up to find that the total number of dollars spent on the 2012 election exceeded

the number of people on this planet -- some seven billion.

Most of it didn’t come from the average Joe and Jane. Sixty percent of all super PAC

donations came from just 159 people. And the top 32 super PAC donors gave an average of

9.9 million dollars. Think how many teachers that much money could hire.

We’ll never actually know where all of the money comes from. One third of the billion

dollars from outside groups was “dark money,” secret funds anonymously funneled through

fictional “social welfare” organizations. Those are front groups, created to launder

the money inside the deep pockets.

And don't let anyone ever tell you the money didn't make a difference. More than 80 percent

of House candidates and two-thirds of Senate candidates who outspent their general election

opponents won, and were present and counted as the new Congress prepared to hear the President.

Remember, money doesn't necessarily corrupt legislators, but it certainly tilts them.

HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER at the State of the Union:

Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you, the

President of the United States.

BILL MOYERS: So let's share some snapshots from the State

of the Union. That’s Speaker of the House John Boehner, of course. He's led his party

to protect Wall Street from oversight and accountability. The finance, insurance, and

real estate industries gave him more than three million dollars last year.

Eric Cantor is the Republican majority leader in the House. Among his biggest donors--Goldman

Sachs, masterminds of the mortgage-backed securities that almost sank the world economy.

Cantor’s also the third largest recipient of money from the National Rifle Association

in the House, which is one reason he's such a "big gun" there.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, may be in hot water. He's currently under

investigation for allegations that he improperly intervened with government agencies on behalf

of a big donor.

And there's Fred Upton, Republican from Michigan, chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee.

What a coincidence. The oil and gas industry is one of his top donors, helping him raise

the four million dollars he spent last year to win re-election.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrats of New York, have Wall

Street as a constituent and patron. Her biggest contributors include JPMorgan Chase, Morgan

Stanley, Goldman Sachs and law firms that have advised them. His top donors include

securities and investment firms, lawyers and legal firms, and lobbyists.

And there are fleeting glances of some familiar faces here tonight seen recently on our broadcast.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate, Republican Orrin Hatch

of Utah, and Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana. All cited by "The New York Times"

as suspects in that mysterious migration of half a billion dollars from taxpayers over

to the bottom line of drug companies, especially the pharmaceutical giant Amgen. Would it surprise

you to learn that over the past five years, Amgen has been one of the top ten donors to

McConnell, Baucus, and Hatch?

As for our president--by attending a fundraiser on the average of every 60 hours during his

bid for a second term, he once again broke the record for bringing home the bacon. Although

the money power that controls Congress could thwart everything Obama proposed in his State

of the Union address, there was not a single word in his speech about taming the power

of private money over public policy.

And so it goes: The golden rule of politics. He who has the gold, rules.

Can we do anything about it?

My two guests think we can. They say that if anybody should own the politicians, we

the people should. Dan Cantor is a former community and union organizer who’s executive

director of the Working Families Party. That's a third party that began in New York State

and has now spread to five others. Since its launch fifteen years ago, he's helped lead

the party's efforts to elect progressive candidates throughout the state and worked to increase

New York's minimum wage and raise taxes on the rich.

Jonathan Soros is one of those who would pay more. He's a lawyer, investor and philanthropist

working on economic change and social goods. A senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute

exploring the role of corporations in society, and co-founder of the super PAC Friends of

Democracy, which aims to counter the influence of money in politics – an irony we'll discuss

later.

Dan and Jonathan are on the front lines of the fight to make New York State a national

model for the public financing of political campaigns. Welcome to you both.

DAN CANTOR: Thank you so much.

JONATHAN SOROS Glad to be here.

BILL MOYERS: What an odd couple you are. Jonathan, you're

a lawyer, a man of means, you're active in finance among other things. Daniel, you are

a street fighter who cut your teeth organizing labor. In fact New York Magazine once called

you the very model of a grassroots political boss. What is, briefly, the Working Families

Party?

DAN CANTOR: So Working Families is a political party organized

under the laws of New York more or less in an alliance with the Democrats. We try to

yank the Democrats in what we think to be a sensible, humane, progressive direction.

We get about five percent of the vote statewide, but in some target races we can get as much

as 15 percent, 20 percent, 22 percent.

BILL MOYERS: Who funds you?

DAN CANTOR: So it's a variety of individual donors. We

raise, we do a lot of door-knocking. That's about 25 percent of our donations. Unions,

individuals, you know, we scuffle, we do fundraising events. It's not a high donor operation, but

we try to keep, you know, keep the doors open.

BILL MOYERS: So Jonathan, what drew you to this rabble

rouser?

JONATHAN SOROS: Well, Dan and I first worked together probably

about a decade ago as we were taking on the question of Rockefeller drug laws in New York

State. And then he came back to me you know, a little over a year ago. Dan's been working

as part of a terrific coalition of groups, the New York Fair Elections Coalition, that

have been promoting campaign finance reform for a number of years in New York state. He

knew that I had a lot of interest in this issue for a long time. And so we--

BILL MOYERS: What, where does, where'd that interest come

from?

JONATHAN SOROS: My first real job out of college, I ended

up spending almost two months in Moldova, the Republic of Moldova, working with a USAID-funded

foundation dealing with their first ever parliamentary elections. I was there on the ground for two

months. That was my first taste of really how rules matter, in the way that elections

are conducted, and how sometimes the unwritten rules matter too--

BILL MOYERS: The unwritten rules? Such as?

JONATHAN SOROS: Well, so there were, there weren't great rules

about campaign finance in Moldova. You know, their first ever elections, there was, you

know, a lot of use of state funds in electioneering. Folks who were sitting in the parliament were,

an existing parliament were running around in state cars, doing their campaigning.

BILL MOYERS: This has been a communist governed country?

JONATHAN SOROS: Communist governed country. And then I had

a great, I had a great teacher in law school, Lani Guinier, who really opened my eyes to

a number of issues related democratic process. And it's been a set of issues that I've cared

about ever since.

BILL MOYERS: What are you after in New York state?

JONATHAN SOROS: So we're after a comprehensive system of campaign

finance reform. I got involved in this really actively after Citizens United on the belief

that there is still despite the Supreme Court's rulings that there is a suite of reforms that

would be transformative in the way that money flows in and around politics. And that's now

on the table in New York state. It starts with disclosure obviously. But it really focuses

around what we're calling citizen funding, a form of public financing that allows candidates

the opportunity, gives them the option to run for public office without dependence on

large contributions and independent expenditures. That's really what we're, what we're seeking

to achieve.

DAN CANTOR: I mean, I think his point about rules is really

worth underlining, right. Better rules product better outcomes whether it's in elections

or for that matter in the finance industry. There's economic inequality, you've talked

a lot about that on this show over the years. But there's also political inequality. And

this effort is an attempt to deal with at least that second one a little bit.

But if you deal with political inequality, we have a system that should be one person,

one vote, not one dollar, one vote, you'll affect other things besides the elections

themselves. The, we have a non-virtuous system right now in which wealth gets power, uses

the power to increase its wealth. You know, Justice Brandeis' famous comment about how

you can have a great concentrations of wealth or you can have a democracy, but you can't

have both. So we're at a moment in this society it seems to us which we have to make a decision.

And we need to create a system that voters themselves will have more confidence in. Because

right now when you knock on doors people are, they're pretty cynical that things can change.

BILL MOYERS: Isn't the governor of New York, Governor Cuomo,

on your side? Listen to what he said in his State of the State speech in January.

GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO: We must enact campaign finance reform because

people believe that campaigns are financed by someone else at exorbitant rates […] implement

a public finance system based in NYC. It works well in NYC it will work well in NY state.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think he's serious?

JONATHAN SOROS: I do think he's serious.

BILL MOYERS: How will he prove he's serious?

JONATHAN SOROS: Well, he'll prove his seriousness by getting

this bill passed in the coming legislature. Campaign, I think we can have confidence that

the governor will be able to pass something that is called campaign finance reform in

this state. The real test and measure is going to be whether it includes this citizen funding.

BILL MOYERS: How would public funding work?

JONATHAN SOROS: Well, it can work a lot of different ways.

We're, for obvious reasons it's most useful to point to New York City when you're in New

York state. Here we have a system in the city if you're running for citywide office or for

city council, any contribution up to, you qualify to get into the system, you elect

to be in the system, it's voluntary. Then any contribution up to $175 is matched six

to one--

BILL MOYERS: By the public?

JONATHAN SOROS: By the public. Out of a pool from the general

fund from the budget. And that has had a dramatic transformative effect in the way that funds

are raised.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

JONATHAN SOROS: First of all the level of small donation,

the Campaign Finance Institute and the Brennan Center have done some great research and produced

some beautiful maps showing the difference in the two systems. If you look at a map of

state assembly races in New York City and how many small contributions there are for

those races, there are almost none throughout the entire city. Look at the same map of New

York City for city council races, it's covered.

There are small contributions coming from every neighborhood, even the poorest neighborhoods

in the city people who are running for office are reaching out to their constituents, ordinary