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'A Big Deal': Lawmakers Reintroduce Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United
"We cannot allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to flood our elections with cash through complex webs of super PACs and dark money groups that put special interests above the will of the American people."
Jan 20, 2021
In a bid to reverse the outsize influence of corporations and the wealthiest Americans over the nation's electoral process, a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers on Thursday reintroduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.
"To ensure that our elections produce a democracy for all, we must overturn Citizens United and get big money out of our elections."
--Rep. Ted Deutch
The reintroduction of the Democracy for All Amendment in the 117th Congress--led by Reps. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)--occurred on the 11th anniversary of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a 5-4 ruling which affirmed that corporations are legal persons and that they, labor unions, and other outside groups could spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcome of U.S. elections.
The amendment, which has been introduced in every Congress since the 113th, grants the states and the federal government the ability to limit how money is raised and spent in U.S. elections. It also grants the states and Congress the power to differentiate between natural and corporate persons.
A separate but related measure, the We the People Amendment, has also been reintroduced in each successive Congress since the 113th, most recently by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) in February 2019. The amendment would preclude artificial entities such as corporations and limited liability companies from enjoying constitutional rights, which would be reserved for natural persons.
Deutch asserted in a statement released Thursday that Citizens United has "put an unacceptable price of admission on American democracy."
He wrote:
We cannot allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to flood our elections with cash through complex webs of Super PACs and dark money groups that put special interests above the will of the American people. Americans overwhelmingly support stronger gun laws to keep our communities safe, action on climate change to preserve our planet, and a fair economy that doesn't leave the most vulnerable behind or deny people basic needs like healthcare and a living wage.
Unfortunately, big money in our politics gets in the way time and time again. Limitless campaign spending makes it harder for Washington to solve problems and opens the door to corruption. To ensure that our elections produce a democracy for all, we must overturn Citizens United and get big money out of our elections.
Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, welcomed the amendment, saying it "unites the American people," who he said "are furious about a rigged political system that responds to the whims of Big Money rather than the needs and desires of regular people."
"The American people know that Citizens United embodies, perpetuates, and locks in that rigged system," Weissman added. "That's why by overwhelming numbers they favor a constitutional amendment to overturn [it] and related decisions that create an overclass of the wealthy few and consign the rest of us to political serfdom."
Others are seeking to undo the damage wrought by Citizens United via the legislative route. Senate Democrats led Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) announced Tuesday that the first bill they will offer will be the For the People Act (pdf), which would expand voting rights, limit partisan gerrymandering, strengthen ethics rules, and limit money in politics.
The progressive advocacy group Stand Up America on Thursday called for the passage of the For the People Act within President Joe Biden's first 100 days.
"Under the leadership of the Biden-Harris administration and with a Democratic Congress, we have a tremendous opportunity to undo some of the damage done by the Roberts Court by passing the For The People Act," Stand Up America managing director Christina Harvey said in a statement.
"Mitigating the damage Citizens United has done to our democracy won't be easy," added Harvey, "but the critical campaign finance reforms in the For the People Act--including creating a small-dollar matching program and requiring super PACs to disclose their donors--are an important first step."
As expected, outside election spending--which was already increasing before Citizens United--skyrocketed following the ruling. According to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org, outside spending in the 2020 election cycle by super PACs, political parties, and "dark money" groups, among others, totaled a record $2.9 billion, more than double the amount spent in 2016. That's up from $143.8 million in 2008, the last presidential election year before Citizens United.
Citizens United also flung wide open the floodgates to megadonors, who had previously been limited by political action committee caps. According to OpenSecrets, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein gave over $58.3 million to Republicans during the 2020 election cycle, while Thomas and Kathryn Steyer, the top Democratic donors, spent $54.6 million on liberal races.
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Lawmakers Opposing Assault Weapons Ban Received 130 Times More Gun Industry Donations
Despite public outcry and increased support for stricter gun control measures, analysis shows industry money still dominates in Congress
Mar 08, 2018
New campaign finance data reveals the extent to which efforts to pass meaningful gun control legislation is hamstrung by the power of pro-gun groups.
Analyzing information from the Center for Responsive Politics, the nonpartisan watchdog group MapLight reported Thursday that representatives in the House who refuse to support a ban on military-style semi-automatic weapons and other assault-style firearms, receive about 130 times more money in campaign donations from pro-gun groups than those who back such regulations.
"It's hard to imagine Congress being so out of step with the American public on gun measures if lawmakers were less focused on the campaign money for their reelection."--Alec Saslow, MapLight
Only two of the 172 co-sponsors of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2018 (H.R. 5087) received donations from pro-gun groups during the 2016 election cycle, with Reps. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.), who have previously backed pro-gun legislation, gathering an average of $64 in contributions.
House members who declined to support the legislation received an average of $8,671 from pro-gun groups. Six of the 21 Democrats who haven't yet signed on as co-sponsors received at least $2,500 from gun groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA).
"This kind of disparity is a reminder that our broken campaign finance system has an outsized impact on both our elections and the legislative process," said Alec Saslow, media communications director, in an email to Common Dreams. "It's hard to imagine Congress being so out of step with the American public on gun measures if lawmakers were less focused on the campaign money for their reelection."
The report comes as Americans show increased support for an assault weapons ban in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. last month, with 68 percent of people surveyed by Politico saying they back a ban.
While enthusiasm for bold action is on the rise among the public, the financial power of pro-gun groups continues to keep legislators from supporting wide-reaching legislation to keep guns like the AR-15, which was used in Parkland and in several other mass shootings in recent years, out of the hands of civilians.
While H.R. 5087 has not been co-sponsored by a single Republican, GOP lawmakers have largely attempted to shift the national focus away from controls on civilian gun ownership after the deaths of 17 people in Parkland, with the Florida Legislature passing a bill Wednesday that would allow school districts to arm teachers, and President Donald Trump meeting with video game industry representatives on Thursday to discuss the widely debunked theory that violent video games have contributed to school shootings.
The president's meeting comes a week after an impromptu late-night sit-down with the NRA, during which he appeared to reverse his earlier statements in support of stricter gun control measures.
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What Matters More than the NRA's Money
"Passion counts for a lot in politics," says an ex-state senator who has been on the receiving end.
Jun 17, 2016
Another disturbed young man with a high-powered weapon. Another massacre. And once again, the question: Why, with polls showing broad majorities of Americans favoring tighter restrictions on who can purchase firearms and what types of weaponry that can be offered for sale, have lawmakers refused to act?
If you want to understand the answer, don't look first at the data -- though we will get to that, and the numbers are important and enlightening. First listen to John Morse, a Colorado Democrat who has taken on the gun lobby and paid the price.
As the former president of his state's Senate, Morse knows firsthand that gun-rights advocates "feel very passionately" about their issue. Passion counts for a lot in politics," says Morse. We have not been able to generate the same passion on the side of common sense."
Nobody can attest to that more eloquently than Morse. In 2013, shortly after another disturbed young man opened up on a Denver suburban theater audience in 2012, killing 12 and injuring 70, he helped shepherd a package of gun-control measures through Colorado's legislature. Five months after the bills passed, Morse was out of a job, one of two state senators ousted in a recall campaign ramped up by gun rights enthusiasts.
Both sides of the gun debate applied plenty of money to the highly symbolic race, and while it's impossible to get a true handle on the spending because of the involvement of dark-money groups, whose bottom lines are never made public, there's some indications that the gun-control forces may even have had the spending advantage. Morse says the key factor was not the amount of money but the strategy that determined when and how it was spent.
A $350,000 infusion from billionaire gun-control advocate Michael Bloomberg less than a month before Election Day was "way too little, way too late," said Morse. He identified the key contribution as a much smaller amount that gun rights advocates paid to get signatures on the petition that made Morse's recall possible. "They threw in $60,000," said Morse. "You pay $5 for a signature. Boom. Done." In some cases, according to paperwork filed with the Colorado Secretary of State's office by the El Paso Freedom Defense Committee, which was gathering the signatures, the remuneration wasn't in cash. Of the more than $61,000 collected by the group over a period of several months, most were in-kind donations, including rounds of ammunition for door prizes and an "AR-15 foregrip."
Thousands of signatures on the petitions were tossed out as forgeries and Morse is convinced his campaign could have found more, but "I ran out of time," he says. The bottom line is that "The right amount of money at the right time can do amazing things," says the ex-lawmaker, who now runs an accounting practice in Denver.
There's no question that the gun lobby has a proven record of applying its bucks with a bang: Pro-gun groups have massively outspent those who favor stricter gun control on a federal level. According to figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the National Rifle Association and its allies have made $37.3 million in contributions to candidates for Congress and the White House over the past 26 years. The total for gun-control groups over the same period: $2.4 million. The disparity is the same on the lobbying front: CRP's data shows that gun-rights organizations routinely outspend those on the other side of the debate by a factor of 10.
Nor is it coincidental that the two men who have most to say about what gets to the floor of the two congressional chambers, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) were among the biggest recipients of pro-gun money in the last election cycle.
Less obvious (because it's a lot harder to track) but at least as important: The NRA's activity in state capitals, where most of the laws governing firearms are enacted. An analysis of the campaign finance database in Florida, where Omar Mateen was easily able to acquire the high-power weaponry he used to gun down patrons at Orlando's Pulse nightclub this week, shows the NRA spent more than $4.3 million trying to influence statewide and state legislative elections in Florida during the past 20 years. Aside from multiple five-figure contributions to party political committees, the most eye-popping amounts go to marketing and direct-mail firms, another hallmark of the NRA's grass-roots strategy. The analysis of the Florida campaign finance data was done for BillMoyers.com by Bob Lannon, a civic hacker who runs Influence USA, an all-volunteer project that aims to put state and local campaign finance and lobbying numbers into a national database.
"We cower and follow the path of least resistance." -- John Morse
Morse attests to the impact of such efforts. Every time a gun bill would come up in Colorado, "I probably got 7,000 emails," said the former senator, who represented about 145,000. There was a catch: Of those emails "maybe 150" had been sent by Morse's actual constituents. But the former Senate president said it was a distinction that not all of his colleagues appreciated. When the Colorado legislature took up gun-control legislation, Morse said, "the NRA did a great job of getting people to show up. They drove around the Capitol for four hours honking horns. They had people willing to do that."
Meanwhile, on the gun-control side of the issue, "I got meh, maybe 25 emails," Morse recalls, adding: "Even though the NRA represents a small part of the population, they do so very loudly and very effectively." That impresses people who regularly have to seek reelection. "So we cower and follow the path of least resistance," he says.
Morse speaks as a gun owner. A former Colorado Springs cop, he says he keeps a loaded service revolver at home just in case he ever has to defend himself. But he feels as though he's more qualified than most to do that. "I can outshoot 99.1 percent of the people on the planet," he said. "Seriously. I am a crack shot." None of that helped protect him from the reality of the political passion gap. In that recall election Morse lost by 319 votes, he says: "Eighty percent of the registered voters in my district did not cast a ballot."
Despite its success in getting rid of him, the NRA has been unable to remove the laws Morse helped enact. He doesn't take too much comfort in that. "Those bills weren't really that profound," he said, although one does limit the size of magazines in Colorado. "What I say to people on my side is, 'C'mon. We've got to show up and stand up,'" Morse says. "Most of the country agrees with us. We need to convince our people to show up and take a stand."
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