By Katrina Markel, GeneroCity Staff Member

As our political campaign cycles get longer (almost never ending it seems), the cost of running a campaign is outrageous. In 2008 President Obama hit record fund-raising levels. He apparently raised a record-shattering $750 million for his historic and well-organized run. Now, political analysts are speculating that the President could spend $1 billion on his re-election bid. A BILLION DOLLARS!! And that’s just for Barack Obama. Add to that the campaigns of all his potential Republican challengers and we’re talking about several billion dollars spent on attack ads, private travel, arena speeches, advisers, print ads, social media experts, field staff, etc, etc, etc.

No other western democracy has a campaign cycle as long or as expensive as ours. Just think what we could do with that kind of money if we dialed back on the excessive, bloated campaign spending and put it where it really had impact.

Here’s what can be done with 1 billion dollars:

- Fund Public Radio for 7 years
- Fund the veteran’s advocacy group, Swords to Plowshares for 125 years (at current budget levels).
- Fund humanitarian non-profit, Architecture For Humanity, for 200 years (at current budget levels).
- Build 80,000 schools in Africa
- Pay the student fees for more than 50,000 students for 4 years at a Cal State University

- Fund Planned Parenthood for 1 year
- Fund 40,000 African water projects with WorldServe International
- Provide health insurance for more than 58,000 American families
- Provide approximately 450 million school breakfasts for needy children

We’d like to invite you to add to this list. What could you do with $1 billion?