Scott Brown, Massachusetts’ new senator, opposes legislation in Congress that would strengthen regulations for Wall Street.

But when a reporter recently asked him why he’s against this bill, Brown couldn’t give an answer. He’s against financial reform, but he has no idea why.

Let me help Senator Brown: During his campaign last year, Brown received half of his campaign contributions from Wall Street and business executives. He benefited from another million dollars in issue ads by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They oppose the bill, so Senator Brown opposes the bill. It’s no wonder Pew recently found that trust in Congress is at its lowest point ever.

I focused on Scott Brown, but the influence of special interest money pervades both parties in both chambers. Americans are right to suspect that their representatives are merely doing the bidding of those funding their campaigns.

Last week, I recorded a new episode of the Change Congress Chronicles, talking about Scott Brown, the economy of influence in Washington, and the path to reform. Take a few minutes to watch, and then please share it with anyone you know who is fed up with our electoral system:

Congress can fix our campaign finance system right now by passing the Fair Elections Now Act, which would create an opt-in system of citizen-funded elections. But to get this bill written into law, we must build enough grassroots support so that Congress has no choice but to listen.

Whatever your party affiliation, whatever change you seek — it won’t happen until we Change Congress.

So head over to Fix Congress First and take action.

Update: Added video.

And for fun, watch Stephen Colbert’s take on it.

And finally, do something about it.

Update: Added Colbert video and link to Change Congress.

Some are trying a bit too hard.

Then again, this is just the first pillar to fall. There are literally no limits to the changes in law, election or otherwise, that this decision makes possible.

Update: Changed “some people” help link to Lessig’s article on The Huffington Post and moved the Change Congress link to the “you can help” link.

There are two great health-care crises in America—one involving coverage and the other cost. The Obama plan appears likely to tackle the first but not the second. This is bad economics but also bad politics: the crisis of cost affects 85 percent of Americans, while the crisis of coverage affects about 15 percent. Obama’s message to the country appears to be “We have a dysfunctional health-care system with out-of-control costs, and let’s add 45 million people to it.”

With the recent passage of the Senate’s bill, one that expands coverage but does nothing to control costs, his statement is even more true. So why is the cost of health care not getting adequately addressed? Because there are large corporations that are making huge sums of money from the system as it currently exists and they are willing to spend a small fraction of their earnings to “convince” lawmakers that their continued profiteering is good for those lawmakers, er, America.

Similarly, a few years ago the Republicans decried the use of the filibuster while the Democrats defended it. Now, with the current Republican minority breaking a record for filibusters, the roles are reversed. The same holds true for the President’s judicial appointments, Medicare expansion, deficit spending, Wall Street bailouts, the farm bill, etc.

Aside from the social issues that the parties use as a wedge but never actually do anything about, there is really not much that either party stands for now; nor much of substance that differentiates them from each other. Rather, each party happily does the bidding of their lobbyist overlords, each framing the gifts as something that has always been at core of their party’s platform.

The Senate passed its health care bill last week, and as you may have noticed, the final version looks quite different from the original legislation introduced last summer.

What’s happened in the meantime is a case study in what’s wrong with Congress — and a map of the work that lies ahead of us as we enter into a new year.

Take a look at one popular bogeyman of the day, Joe Lieberman. The people of his state strongly supported the public option, 68 percent to 21 percent in a recent poll. But Senator Lieberman almost single-handedly killed the public option, threatening to filibuster any legislation that included it. So why’d he do it?

Maybe Joe was acting on principle, and perhaps he believes every word that’s come out of his mouth in the past month. We don’t know. What we do know is that special interests in the insurance, health care, and pharmaceutical industries have given Joe Lieberman millions in campaign contributions.

It’s easy to pick on Joe Lieberman, but he’s far from the only member of Congress whose motives we can’t know. The point isn’t that these 535 people are evil. It’s that a vast and confusing network of influences stands between the public and our elected representatives, undermining trust in Congress and giving us no choice, finally, but to assume the worst whenever a member doesn’t vote the way we might have liked.

Fixing the problem doesn’t mean voting out the feckless Democrats or the obstructionist Republicans. It doesn’t even mean voting out Senator Lieberman. As long as our legislative process is held in thrall to an economy of influence that nearly requires members to play nice with the special interests, the will of the people — on the left and on the right — will continue to be stymied on every issue, in every Congress, under every administration.

The good news — yes, there is good news — is that, thanks to the health care mess, the public has never been more engaged on the issue of electoral reform than it is today. People who hated the bill and people who loved it have watched with growing disgust as the process seemed to be derailed, and the legislation itself torn apart by the highest bidders.

And what these people want to know is: How can we build a system in which the American people are the highest bidder?

I’m grateful you’ve decided to join our campaign to achieve real reform and finally take the money out of our political system. In the new year, we’ll be expanding these efforts — and your continued participation will be critical to our success. To get started, forward this email to your family and friends and tell them to visit http://change-congress.org to learn more.

The challenges have never felt more urgent, and never more daunting. But the will to win this fight has never run so deep, or so wide. 2010 is going to be a very good year for our movement.

Thank you, and a happy and healthy New Year to you and yours.

– Lawrence Lessig

Why are Sens. Lieberman and Bayh threatening to filibuster health care bills if they contain a “public option”? Well, both Senators and their wives receive large sums of money from the private health insurance industry. Millions of dollars. Is this why? Does it matter? Just the fact that this question is relevant indicates something is severely wrong with our system of campaign finance and lobbying. You can learn more about their relationships with the private health care industry and make a difference at Change-Congress.org.