Today the Fair Election Now Act was re-introduced into the 112th Congress. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was joined by Reps. John B. Larson and Chellie Pingree, as well as actor Alec Baldwin, in a press conference announcing the legislation.

This morning on NPR, Peter Overby interviewed several Fair Elections advocates about pushing for public financing of elections in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC. You can listen to the piece below:

National Journal's CongressDaily carried an interview with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) today. In addition to being the Assistant Senate Majority Leader, Durbin is the sponsor, along with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) of the Fair Elections Now Act to bring public financing to congressional elections. As such, Durbin has been speaking out frequently about the need to change the way we finance campaign and spoke about it eloquently in the interview.

In his speech on the floor of the Senate announcing his intention to introduce a full public financing bill, Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-IL) asked his colleagues to think beyond initial ethics reform to a more comprehensive solution: "I hope it will only be the beginning and that we can move, even in this session of Congress, to meaningful hearings and the passage of public financing of campaigns that will truly reform the way we elect men and women to office at the Federal level and restore respect to this great institution of the U.S.

Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced today on the floor of the Senate that he will be introducing a bill to establish full public financing of elections at the congressional level. The public financing system would be modeled on the successful systems already working in Maine and Arizona, see TPMmuckraker's coverage of the announcement.