Citizens United

Floor Speech

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in marking the 2-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. I want to express my support for legislation to reverse the harmful impact of this decision and restore accountability, transparency and common sense to our Nation's electoral system.

Nearly 2 years ago, on January 21, 2010, the Roberts Court handed down a 5-4 decision striking down parts of the ``Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.''

That decision--Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission--flew in the face of nearly a century of Congressional law and overturned two prior rulings of the Supreme Court.

This case is not alone.

It is part of a pattern of decisions from the Roberts Court that have overturned precedent.

I have a real concern that this Court is going out of its way to rewrite and reinterpret prior law with decisions, I am sorry to say, seem to favor corporate interests over the interests of the American people.

The Citizens United decision may be the most troubling of these activist decisions.

This decision does not only impact one group of people or one area of the law--it affects the very functioning of our elections and the democracy of more than 300 million Americans.

The Court's decision in this case opened the door to unlimited corporate spending in Federal elections.

Let me repeat: unlimited spending.

The Court held that the First Amendment of the Constitution protects the rights of corporations to spend freely--in the millions or even the billions--on election ads to support or defeat a particular candidate.

What does this mean in the real world?

This means that an oil company like ExxonMobil--a company that earned $45 billion in profits last year--could spend unlimited money to support a candidate who supports more drilling, or to defeat a candidate who opposes more oil drilling.

It means that Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, and other defense contractors could spend unlimited sums toward the election of candidates who view their defense positions favorably.

Or large banks like Bank of America would be free to use their corporate treasury to attack candidates who favor financial regulation and consumer protection.

As Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 testified at a Rules Committee hearing in 2010, ``It would not take many examples of elections where multimillion corporate expenditures defeat a Member of Congress before all Members quickly learn the lesson, vote against the corporate interest at stake in a piece of legislation and you run the risk of being hit with a multimillion-dollar corporate ad campaign to defeat you.''

Is this what we want?

Four years ago in 2008, at this same point in the presidential election cycle, $12.9 million was spent by super PACs in support of candidates.

The fall 2010 midterm elections ushered in this new political landscape with outside groups spending a record $300 million on political advertisements and other messages. This amount represents a 340 percent increase above 2006 spending levels.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the spending by presidential super PACs in this year's election cycle has quadrupled since 2008 to an astonishing $42.5 million spent as of January 24, 2012.

More money is being spent than ever before.

Do not take my word for it.

Take a look at what is going on in the Republican Presidential primary. Corporations and wealthy individuals are funding these super PACs and spending vast amounts of money to attack candidates.

My concerns with these dramatic increases in spending are heightened by a

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recent finding from the Center for Responsive Politics that approximately 44 percent of the outside spending in 2010 came from anonymous sources.
The Roberts Court's decision in Citizens United was, I believe, the wrong one.

It protects corporate free speech and will drown out an individuals' free speech. It has threatened to put democratic elections in the United States up for sale to the highest bidder. And it will, I believe, lead to voters having less reliable information about candidates, not more.

The Court gets the final word on the Constitution, and it has spoken.

However, Congress should pass the DISCLOSE Act or Senator Tom Udall's campaign finance constitutional amendment.

I supported the DISCLOSE Act in the last Congress because I believe it is a critical step forward, but the bill was narrowly defeated on a cloture vote of 59-39 in September of 2010.

Given what we have seen in the Republican primaries this year, I think this body must try again to pass the DISCLOSE Act. In 2010, we came close to passing it and needed just one additional yea vote to move the bill forward.

The DISCLOSE Act ensures the American public knows who is funding an ad when they see it on television, and it will close loopholes that could have otherwise allowed unlimited spending in our elections by foreign nationals and corporations receiving government assistance.

I understand that Senator Schumer is working to reintroduce this legislation, and I fully support him in this effort.

Senator Udall's resolution to amend the Constitution would authorize Congress to regulate the raising and spending of money for federal campaigns, including the independent spending of super PACs.

This resolution is a critical step to ensure that corporate dollars will not flow in the dark to one candidate and against another, but, instead, our election process will regain the transparency it has lost after Citizens United.

I believe it is essential that we pass legislation to address this growing problem, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to do so.

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