On January 20, the leadership of the House of Representatives said there will be a floor vote on January 26 on whether to abolish the public funding program for presidential candidates. See this story. The House leadership says it will bring bills to the floor every week to abolish some particular type of federal spending, and this is the first one in the series. There is apparently no bill introduced yet to take this action, and no committee hearings are expected. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.

The public funding program has been in place ever since 1976. It provides nondiscriminatory public funding in the primary season to any presidential candidate, seeking the nomination of any party (no matter how small), if that candidate raises at least $5,000 from each of 20 states. It also provides general election funding to the presidential campaigns of parties that polled at least 5% of the vote in the previous presidential election. If any new party, or any independent presidential candidate, polls 5% or more, then that campaign gets general election funding after the election is over. The only general election funding received by candidates and parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties has been after the 1980 election, for John Anderson; and for the Reform Party, after the 1996 election and before the 2000 general election.