Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, just yesterday, the Columbus Dispatch, the second largest paper in my State, reported that one single Cincinnati-based corporation gave more than $450,000 to Karl Rove's outfit. Lest we forget, Karl Rove was the very political person in the Bush administration who was sort of the mastermind of dirty tricks and of raising tons of special interest money and the mastermind on a lot of the sort of, shall we say, disinformation coming out of the White House in the Bush years during the lead-up to the Iraq war--that Karl Rove. Again, the Columbus Dispatch reported that one single Cincinnati-based corporation gave more than $450,000 to Karl Rove's outfit to support advertising for one single Ohio Senate candidate.
That was reported from a generally conservative newspaper. The Columbus Dispatch is no friend of Democrats. They are a pretty Republican organization, although the reporters are fairminded. So one corporation sent $450,000 to one single Senate candidate. That corporation can do that because of the Roberts Court decision--the Supreme Court decision, with its new ultraconservative Court, which is perhaps more conservative than any Court in the 21st or 20th centuries, in a case called Citizens United. It is an outright corruption of our democratic process. But with the Citizens United case, it is a reality.
The Supreme Court opened the floodgates, allowing multinational, large corporations to bankroll their favorite political candidates and build a Congress in their image. They don't have to be American; they can be foreign corporations. It is not like the drug companies, oil companies, and insurance companies don't have enough power in Washington, DC. When they sneeze, too many people around here get a cold. When the drug companies, insurance companies, and the oil industry--these large corporations--want something, far too often they are successful in the Halls of Congress. That is the reason we have seen the obstruction in the last year and a half. That is why it is so easy for Leader McConnell to get 41 Republicans to oppose what we are trying to do in this body--because of the influence of these drug companies, insurance companies, the oil industry, and others--these huge companies that outsource jobs.
The Supreme Court is made up of almost all conservative appointees--a majority of them--backed by these major moneyed corporate interests, and this Court has given even more power to these corporations. In some cases, they said they can be foreign-based corporations.
In Citizens United, the Supreme Court swept aside decades' worth of established jurisprudence to abruptly--and radically--change the rules of the game to remake, if you will, our democratic system. The Roberts Court couched their activism in arguments about the first amendment.
I am not a constitutional lawyer; in fact, I am not a lawyer at all. When I hear: Should General Motors or should Pfizer drug company or should any large corporation have the same free speech rights as individual Americans, I don't think so. The Founders never thought about corporations having all the same first amendment free speech rights as individuals, as the pages sitting here do or as Americans in Toledo, Akron, and everywhere do by nature of the fact they are American citizens. They have free speech rights.
The Roberts Court decision said we are going to give free speech rights to corporations in every way, which means the free speech of an individual American is washed away, in political terms, because of the huge influence that a small number of corporations can have because they have so much money to inject into the political system.
Citizens United, therefore, buries the voices of everyday Americans, as Fortune 500 companies straddle the globe and reap billions in profits, and they can take just pennies on the dollar and lavish huge dollars on American campaigns. If a multibillion-dollar company drops $1 million to help a candidate--as we are seeing with Rove's sort of sordid political operation--that is not very much money to that company. But that $1 million certainly can wash away and so much counteract a bunch of American citizens in Mansfield, Lima, Springfield, and Zanesville, OH, who are giving $20 each.
Average households are struggling to break even. How can you compare their ability to influence--ability to exercise their free speech--to that of a multimillion-dollar Fortune 500 company?
Look how that plays out. In 2009, corporations spent $3.3 billion lobbying Congress to influence legislation, exerting far more influence on our political process than they should.
We saw how special interests spent more than $1 million a day in an attempt to shape health care reform and Wall Street reform, and because of Citizens United they will be able to spend unlimited amounts of money to intimidate, retaliate against, and replace their foes in Congress.
If you speak up, as I am doing now at some risk--I am on the ballot in 2012. I know what this crowd is going to do because I do not always agree with BP's agenda or the drug companies' agenda. In fact, I usually do not. I also know these companies already have so much influence lobbying the Congress day after day, and now they are going to have greater influence in electing their allies to the House of Representatives and the Senate. They have turned this advantage into a corporate monopoly of political speech.
When campaigns overwhelmingly are run on television now, with millions of dollars spent--at least $10 million will be spent in Ohio in the Senate race, probably more than that in the Governor's race--when there is that kind of money, it too often drowns out everyday Americans' free speech.
Most Americans today do not advocate for, nor would the Framers have envisioned a democratic system in which $10 million contributions from corporations drown out $20 donations that represent real people's real concerns. A lot of people give me $10, $20, or $50 for my campaign. They are not trying to buy influence. They do not buy influence with that. They contribute to me and the Senator from Illinois and others because they agree with what I do. They like the positions I take. They think I represent them reasonably well. But they are not going to influence the system. Contrast that with this more than $400,000 donation to one political candidate from one corporation. What does that suggest might happen down the road?
Our democracy was once--I hope still is--on the power of a single person walking into a voting booth and casting a vote. It is based on individual rights, not corporate profits. But the Citizens United case gave corporations the power to put corporate profits squarely ahead of personal rights. That is why the legislation we are working on, the DISCLOSE Act, is so important. I guess that is why Republicans en masse seem to be opposing the DISCLOSE Act.
The DISCLOSE Act fights back by giving individual Americans more power to understand, to cast sunlight into the shadows of corporate political spending. It grants citizens power of information--information that breeds accountability and transparency. If a company engages in political activity, that company should be willing to identify itself--but not the way the Citizens United case is. That means the DISCLOSE Act would make CEOs do what political candidates do when they pay for political advertising.
When I ran for office, as I did in 2006 for the Senate, I looked into the camera and said: This ad was paid for by friends of Sherrod Brown, so people would know I am responsible for this ad. Why shouldn't a corporation that writes a check for $1 million to a political organization--why shouldn't that CEO be willing to and be told to and be forced to and be compelled to under law stand in front of the camera and say: This ad was paid for by XYZ Corporation. I take responsibility, and I am the CEO.
It helps the public follow the money behind the multimillion dollars that buy ads from shadowy groups. If BP were to give $1 million to a political candidate in Ohio or Pennsylvania and nobody really knows it is a BP ad that has gone into this group, then the voters do not have any way of judging very much from that ad. But if the CEO of BP had to walk out in front of that camera and say: I am the CEO of BP, and I paid for this ad, that is going to send a message to voters: Do I want to support this candidate BP is supporting? But, instead, BP can get behind the desk and hide from disclosure.
I have heard people in this body--the Republican leader most prominently--argue ad nauseam on campaign finance laws that we need full disclosure, we need the sunlight to shine. This is his opportunity to step up and argue for full disclosure and go down to that well and cast a vote: Yes, I agree with full disclosure.
They are not doing it now. Do you know why? So far, not one Republican has been willing to walk out here and make a CEO say: I am responsible for this ad. My corporation paid for this ad. They are not willing to because Republicans really know that come election time, when multinational corporations are willing to write million-dollar checks, they are going to be the beneficiary--not that my party by a long shot is perfect, but we know that Republican candidates are almost always supported by the biggest multinational, often foreign corporations in this country--the big oil companies, the big insurance companies, the big drug companies--that already have too much power here, but they are going to have more power here because they are spending all this money to elect conservative, Republican, pro-corporate, at-any-cost candidates. What that means is higher taxes for individuals as corporations pay less--less corporate responsibility for deregulation of Wall Street and the environment. Look at what happened to Wall Street in the last 3 years. Look at what happened to the environment with BP. The merry-go-round will continue.
The DISCLOSE Act also has a provision that says political decisions cannot be influenced by foreign-owned companies. We are putting a prohibition in this bill that a foreign-owned company cannot come to America and buy elections. I am incredulous that my Republican opponents--who always talk about nationalism, always challenge patriotism of people with whom they do not agree, always are talking about our national interests, always bashing immigrants--would not agree with us that foreign companies ought not be able to come in and buy American elections. I guess that is OK to them too, because our bill says foreign-owned corporations may not participate in American elections in this way.
To me, it is bad enough that a company based in the United States--this is the case where a company that is based in the United States but owned by a European interest can still contribute. That is what the Citizens United case said. We are saying no to that. Think of a U.S.-based, Chinese-owned company spending millions to influence a trade or manufacturing bill.
One of the things I fought for--and I know the Presiding Officer agrees with this, and it has been supported--is made-in-America provisions. We have seen in downstate Illinois, in suburban Chicago, in Dayton and Springfield, OH, Cleveland and Toledo, a significant erosion of our manufacturing base. One of the reasons for that is that companies have moved offshore because of bad trade agreements and bad tax law that we are trying to fix even though it has been blocked by the other side. We also know most Americans would love to buy clothes made in the United States, would like to buy products. They go to stores and cannot find products made in the USA. Tell me that a foreign-owned corporation that spends political money, comes in and gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to a conservative political candidate, tell me that corporation is not going to lobby that Member of Congress against some of our made-in-America laws we have tried to enact. You can bet those conservative politicians who love to trumpet their patriotism and accuse others who disagree of not being so patriotic will find a way to oppose strengthening made-in-America rules.
If anything should bear the label ``Made in America,'' it should be our elections. I am amazed that Republicans in this body do not agree with that.
It used to be that the disclosure of campaign expenditures was bipartisan, Republicans and Democrats. It is bipartisan in the public; it is just not bipartisan here. We should not want to see our democratic system become the puppet of corporate America or any special interest. Transparency matters. People ought to know from where these dollars come. Disclosure matters. Companies should have to disclose and take responsibility for those ads and those contributions. By enabling Americans to see behind the curtain, the DISCLOSE Act ensures Americans will not be left in the dark.
The bill restores some of the integrity and the transparency that the Citizens United decision stripped from our political process. Let's not forsake this opportunity. I know it will not affect the tens of millions of dollars Karl Rove and his friends in the Bush administration are spending in campaigns this year, but if we do this bill right, it can affect elections in the future in a positive way so that elections, one, will be made in America; and second, for people who give money, there will be transparency and disclosure so the public knows which corporations are putting how much money into whose campaigns, and it will mean ultimately that corporations take responsibility for the decisions they make and the money they spend in the American political system. It is what the rest of us have to do. CEOs should have to do the same.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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