People often ask me what I think is the root cause of so many of the problems facing our nation today? My answer: Big money is dominating our democracy.

It's difficult to do anything else – reverse climate change, get Medicare for All, fight systemic racism, shrink our bloated military, increase the minimum wage – when big money controls our politics and dictates what policies are and aren't enacted.

We can’t even fight this pandemic effectively. The CARES Act quietly provides huge benefits to wealthy Americans and big corporations. Why? Because they’ve bribed members of Congress with campaign contributions.

One provision doles out $135 billion in tax relief to people making at least half a million dollars, the richest 1% of American taxpayers. This $135 billion is three times more than the measly $42 billion allocated in the CARES Act for safety-net programs like food and housing aid. It’s just shy of the $150 billion going to struggling state governments, and vastly more than the $100 billion being spent on overwhelmed hospitals and other crucial public health services.

This giveaway overwhelmingly benefits President Trump, his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and their wealthy real estate buddies because it allows property owners to claim paper losses even when their properties are gaining in value.

In addition, the Act provides $500 billion to be doled out by the Treasury and the Fed to corporations that might otherwise go under. But we don’t know what corporations these are or even what the criteria are because it’s all in secret. Oh, and there’s no oversight at all.

As Americans are still suffering massive unemployment and the ravages of the pandemic, lobbyists are crawling all over Capitol Hill and the White House is seeking continued subsidies for the rich and for corporations — while demanding an end to supplemental assistance for average working people, the poor, and the unemployed.

It’s corruption in action, friends. And it’s undermining our democracy at every turn.

Ask yourself how, during a global pandemic, the total net worth of U.S. billionaires has climbed from $2.9 trillion to $3.5 trillion, when 45.5 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Is it their skill? Their luck? Their insight? No. It’s their monopolies, enabled by their stranglehold on American democracy… monopolies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook, which have grown even larger during the pandemic.

It’s also their access to insider information so they can do well in the stock market, like Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Senator Kelly Loeffler, whose husband happens to be chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Both were fully briefed on the likely effects of the coronavirus last February and promptly unloaded their shares of stock.

And it’s the tax cuts and subsidies they’ve squeezed out of government.

You are paying for all of this — not just as taxpayers but as consumers.

When you follow the money, you can see clearly how every aspect of American life has been corrupted.

Take prescription drugs… We spend tens of billions of dollars on prescriptions every year, far more per person than citizens in any other developed country. Now that millions of Americans are unemployed and without insurance, they need affordable prescription drugs more than ever.

Yet even the prices of drugs needed by coronavirus patients are skyrocketing.

Big Pharma giant Gilead is charging a whopping $3,120 for its COVID drug, remdesivir, even though the drug was developed with a $70,000,000 grant from the federal government paid for by American taxpayers.

Once again, Big Pharma is set to profit on the people's dime. And they get away with it because our lawmakers depend on their campaign donations to remain in power.

Big Pharma money in politics ensures our government doesn’t limit drug prices, as governments do in every other rich country; that our government doesn’t use its huge bargaining power to reduce drug prices; that we’re not allowed to buy drugs more cheaply from Canada; and so many other loopholes and restrictions that no other country allows — all because Big Pharma bribes legislators to write the rules in their favor. 

As you watch this, Mitch McConnell is actively blocking a bill drafted by Senate Republicans to reduce drug prices — after taking more than $200,000 from pharmaceutical companies so far this election season.Big Pharma is just one example. This vicious cycle is found in virtually every sector, and its impact disproportionately hurts women and communities of color. The mega-donor class is made up almost exclusively of white men — meaning policies that help people of color in particular, like raising the minimum wage, have vastly more support among average Americans than the influential big donors flooding Congress with cash. And Black candidates, especially Black women, are at a huge disadvantage. In 2018, Black women running for Congress raised only a third of what non-Black women candidates received from mega-donors.

So how do we get big money out of our democracy?

A good starting point can be found in the sweeping reform package known as H.R. 1 -- the For the People Act. The bill closes loopholes that favor big corporations and the wealthy, makes it easier for all of us to vote, and strengthens the power of small donors through public financing of elections -- a system which matches $6 of public funds for every $1 of small donations (up to $200) to participating candidates, and which would cost just 0.01 percent of the overall federal budget over ten years. 

The For the People Act would also bar congresspeople from serving on corporate boards, require presidents to publicly disclose their tax returns, and make executive appointees recuse themselves in cases where there is a conflict of interest.

These are just a few examples of tangible solutions that already exist to rein in unprecedented corruption and stop America’s slide toward oligarchy -- but there’s much more we can and should do. The important thing to remember is that the big money takeover of our democracy prevents us from advancing all of the policies we need to create a society that works for the many, not the few.