This morning, the Supreme Court announced its decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election
Commission, the latest in a series of rulings that have done away with any meaningful limits
on money in politics.
Since the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Citizens United in 2010, we've witnessed
the systematic unraveling of our nation's campaign finance laws.
I'm sure that this is cause for celebration for some - the super wealthy and well-funded
corporate interests - because, after all, these rulings give them even more influence,
more access, and more power - as if they need it.
Then there's everyone else - the everyday folks in Minnesota and around the country
who don't have the luxury of pouring millions of dollars into political campaigns.
There's the senior on a fixed income who gives twenty-five dollars to the candidate she likes
- maybe someone who's fighting to contain the cost of prescription drugs.
That twenty-five dollar donation - that's real money for that senior.
But it's nothing compared to the twenty-five million dollars that the pharmaceutical industry
now can spend to elect the other candidate.
There's the middle class mom who has just enough money to buy her kids' school clothes
- but surely doesn't have enough left over to buy an election, too.
And there's the small business owner in the suburbs who's so concerned about making payroll
that she can't even begin to think about making a huge campaign contribution.
Our democracy can't function the way it's supposed to when theses voices are drowned
out by a flood of corporate money.
So for those of us who believe that the measure of a democracy's strength is in votes cast,
not dollars spent - for us, there's nothing to celebrate today.
Citizens United was one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.
By a five-to-four margin, the Court ruled that corporations have a constitutional right
to spend as much money as they want to influence elections.
Big oil wants to spend millions of dollars to attack the guy who's advocating for more
renewable fuels?
The Supreme Court says, "Sure, go ahead."
Huge corporations want to run endless radio ads against the candidate who promises to
raise the minimum wage?
The Supreme Court says, "Fine.
Why not?"
The Wall Street banks want to pour money into a campaign to undo consumer protection laws?
The Supreme Court says that that's their constitutional right now, so there's not much you can do
about it.
That's the way the Court sees it.
But it's not the way I see it, and it's not the way most Minnesotans see it, either.
I think we should be able to say, enough is enough - that there's too much corporate money
in politics - that some reasonable limits on campaign spending are not just appropriate,
they're necessary.
And, really, that's what Citizens United was all about - the case that got us into this
mess.
It sort of came down to this question: Can We the People place any real limit on the
amount of money that corporations spend on elections?
The answer should have been yes, of course we can.
But five Supreme Court justices said no, no we can't.
Their logic was unprecedented - literally.
To reach the result it did, the Supreme Court had to overturn a case, Austin v. Michigan
Chamber of Commerce, that had been on the books for twenty years.
Overturning Austin wasn't some sort of minor, technical change to the law; it was a radical
shift, an exercise in pro-corporate judicial activism.
Just compare what the Court said about corporate campaign expenditures in Austin to what it
said twenty years later in Citizens United.
In Austin, the Court refused to strike down a Michigan law that limited corporate spending
on elections.
The Court explained that the law served a "compelling interest," namely, preventing
corporations from gaining an unfair advantage in the political system.
The Austin Court said that "corporate wealth can unfairly influence elections" - those
are the Supreme Court's words in 1990 - that "corporate wealth can unfairly influence elections."
The Court explained that campaign finance laws prevent, quote, "the corrosive and distorting
effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the
corporate form," end quote.
In other words, there's good reason - no, a compelling reason - to be worried about
unlimited corporate money in politics.
Had today's Supreme Court followed precedent, Citizens United would have been an easy case.
I mean, I could have written the opinion in a couple of minutes.
It would have gone something like this: "Laws limiting corporate campaign expenditures are
constitutional.
See Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce.
The end."
Of course, that's not the opinion the Court wrote in Citizens United.
The Court's opinion was a lot longer - and a lot worse.
Here's the one phrase that sums up the Citizens United decision: Quote, "we now conclude that
independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to
corruption or the appearance of corruption," end quote.
The majority of the Court told us that there's no reason at all to be worried about unlimited
corporate money in politics any more - that it does not give rise even to the appearance
of corruption.
And, the logic goes, since there's no reason to be concerned about it, there's no constitutional
basis to regulate it.
That's what the Court tells us.
But we know better.
The Court's analysis not only is disconnected from precedent; it's disconnected from reality.
The Minnesota League of Women Voters recently issued a report in which it concluded that
"the influence of money in politics represents a dangerous threat to the health of our democracy
in Minnesota and nationally."
That sounds right to me.
Because here's the thing: in our democracy, everyone is supposed to have an equal say,
regardless of his or her wealth.
The guy on the assembly line gets as many votes as the CEO - one.
You don't get extra votes just because you have extra money.
You don't get a greater say just because you have greater wealth.
It doesn't work that way.
At least, it's not supposed to.
Citizens United turned the whole thing on its head - it basically said that those among
us with the most money get the most influence, and, not only that, there's no limit to the
amount of money the wealthy can spend or the amount of influence they can buy.
I think that's inherently corrupting.
Unfortunately, Citizens United was just the beginning of the story.
In the years since, we've seen courts across the country strike down campaign finance laws,
ushering in what are known as Super PACs - wealthy groups that can raise and spend unlimited
money to influence elections.
And, today, in McCutcheon, the Court took Citizens United a step further, striking down
a law that limited the amount of money that people could give directly to candidates and
political parties.
Before today, the law said that direct contributions to candidates, parties, and certain PACs could
not exceed about 125 thousand dollars in the aggregate per election cycle.
The law was intended to stem the tide of money in politics and maintain the integrity of
our public institutions.
But, as of this morning, that law has been taken off the books - at the Supreme Court's
direction.
As Justice Breyer explained in his dissenting opinion in McCutcheon, quote, "Taken together
with Citizens United, today's decision eviscerates our Nation's campaign finance laws, leaving
a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those
laws were intended to resolve," end quote.
He's right.
Changing the law has real consequences.
What happens when you get rid of the speed limit?
People with fast cars drive faster - as fast as they want to drive.
What happens when you get rid of campaign finance limits?
Special interests with a lot of money spend more of it on politics - as much as they want
to spend.
That's not a theory; it's an empirical fact.
According to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, spending by outside
groups more than tripled from 2008 to 2012, with overall outside spending topping a billion
dollars - that's billion with a "b" - for the first time in history.
Where's the new money coming from?
Well, in a lot of cases, we don't know.
More on that later.
But what we do know is pretty much what you'd expect: According to one study, 60 percent
of Super PACs' funding in the 2012 election cycle came from just 132 donors, each donating
at least a million dollars.
So we have a relatively small group of super-wealthy people accounting for most of the money.
Remember when the Citizens United Court assured us that all of this new money in politics
was okay - that we shouldn't be worried about it - that it "will not cause the electorate
to lose faith in our democracy"?
Boy, were they wrong.
People are losing faith in their democracy.
Can you blame them?
The system is broken; we need to fix it.
There are a number of good proposals out there, and I'd like to use this opportunity to mention
three of them - disclosure, public financing, and a constitutional amendment.
First, we need greater disclosure.
The problem in the post-Citizens United world isn't just that there's now unlimited money
in politics, it's also that we often have no idea where the money is coming from.
Billionaires and big corporations want to influence elections by giving unlimited money
to Super PACs, but they don't want anyone to know that they're the ones pulling the
strings, so they do something that looks a lot like money laundering - except that it's
perfectly legal.
Let's say that there's a bunch of corporations and billionaires out there who want to preserve
indefensible tax loopholes that really only help their bottom lines.
Their allies form a Super PAC whose mission is to do just that - preserve their big tax
breaks.
Now, the Super PAC needs a name.
"Americans for Indefensible Tax Loopholes" won't do.
So, the Super PAC decides to go with something like "Americans for a Better Tax Code."
After all, who could be against that?
Now remember, the corporations or the billionaires who are behind this whole thing don't want
their fingerprints on it.
So they pass their money through shell corporations before it ends up with the Super PAC - that
way, the actual donors don't show up on the federal disclosure forms.
So now the TV is flooded with attack ads that end with something like, "Paid for by Americans
for a Better Tax Code."
But nobody has any idea who's actually behind the advertisement - and there's no good way
to find out.
But hang on - it gets worse.
In addition to all the secret money being spent by these Super PACs, there's a bunch
of non-profit organizations that are using a glitch in the tax code to keep all of their
campaign activities secret.
These groups - liberal or conservative - don't have to disclose a single penny.
Combine them with the Super PACs and you have a lot of money - and very little information.
Voters aren't just being flooded, they're being blindfolded, too.
We have a bill called the DISCLOSE Act that would go a long way toward fixing this problem.
It would put in place a clear set of rules requiring disclosure whenever someone spends
more than $10,000 to influence an election, even when that money is being funneled through
back channels.
The idea is pretty simple: if you're going to spend that kind of money to influence elections,
people should know about it so they can make informed decisions and effectively evaluate
what you have to say.
This is all about transparency and accountability.
All of us should be able to get behind that, and, indeed, most of us already have.
The last version of the DISCLOSE Act had support from a majority of Senators, and I'm proud
to have been one of the bill's cosponsors.
Several of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have spoken enthusiastically
about greater disclosure.
Even the Supreme Court has endorsed disclosure laws.
And poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans support greater transparency
in campaign finance.
This is a basic step that we should be able to take pretty easily.
You'd think so, anyway.
Turns out, you'd be wrong.
In July 2012, we brought the DISCLOSE Act to the Senate floor, and Republicans blocked
it.
The bill died before it could get an up-or-down vote.
But we're not giving up on it.
I'll continue to work with my colleagues to make the campaign finance system more transparent.
Here's another thing we can do: fundamentally change the way candidates finance their campaigns.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois recently reintroduced the Fair Elections Now Act, which basically
says that candidates who refuse to accept contributions of more than 150 dollars will
be eligible for public financing of their campaigns.
This would level the playing field: instead of campaigns that are funded by a handful
of wealthy donors, we'll have citizen-funded grassroots campaigns, where candidates focus
their attention on people who donate five, ten, fifty, up to 150 dollars.
We'll restore power to that senior who makes the twenty-five dollar donation.
I've cosponsored the Fair Elections Now Act in the past, and I'm proud to cosponsor it
again in this Congress.
This isn't going to solve all of the problems created by Citizens United and McCutcheon,
but it's a step in the right direction.
Finally, there's something else we can do, and, honestly, it's the one thing that we
most need to do if we're going to repair all of the damage the Supreme Court has done:
amend the constitution to reverse the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions.
Let me be clear: amending the constitution is not something I take lightly.
I think that it should be done only in extraordinary situations.
But the Supreme Court's decisions present us with one of those situations - because
they erode the very foundation of our democracy.
Now, I know what you're thinking - constitutional amendments are really hard to come by.
They require agreement by two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and they have to be ratified
by at least three-quarters of the states.
It's no wonder that constitutional amendments have been rare in our history.
Well, look - just because a constitutional amendment takes a long time and is difficult
to accomplish doesn't mean that it's not worth trying.
It took a long time - much longer than it should have - to enshrine women's suffrage
into the constitution.
But it got done because it would have been an affront to our democracy had it been otherwise.
These things take time and patience and persistence and perseverance.
But they happen.
In fact, there's already momentum building.
I'm proud to cosponsor a constitutional amendment that has been proposed in the Senate and would
restore legal authority to the People to regulate campaign finance.
The states are moving in the right direction, too.
According to Public Citizen, sixteen states already have called for a constitutional amendment.
I believe that it's time for us to answer that call.
Thank you, M. President.
I yield the floor.