Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer Calls for Prompt Legislative Response to Citizens United Decision in Senate Rules Committee Testimony

 

In testimony today before the Senate Rules Committee, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer called on Congress “to move swiftly to enact legislation to mitigate the enormous damage done” to the political system by the recent Citizens United decision.

Wertheimer testified that it was essential to promptly pass legislation that addresses the problems caused by the decision and that can be made effective for the 2010 congressional elections.

Wertheimer presented the Rules Committee with a list of proposals for consideration that would respond directly to the Citizens United decision including:

new requirements for corporations and labor unions to make broad disclosure of campaign-related expenditures to the public and to corporate shareholders and labor union members, respectively, and new requirements for corporate CEO’s and the heads of other organizations to appear in and take responsibility for campaign ads they run, as candidates currently are required to do.

a provision to close the Citizens United created loophole for foreign interests to participate in federal elections through domestically-controlled corporations;

provisions to make effective the existing Lowest Unit Rate requirements;

meaningful and effective rules to define what constitutes coordination between outside spenders and candidates and political parties; and

provisions to extend the existing government contractor pay-to-play restrictions to cover campaign expenditures;

These proposed reforms are discussed in Wertheimer’s testimony.

Wertheimer also testified:

Other areas that Congress may want to explore include requirements for shareholders to approve corporate campaign-related expenditures and union members to approve labor union campaign-related expenditures, and tax laws, which Justice Stevens in his dissent specifically referenced as an area that could be available for new rules.

Wetheimer further testified:

In the longer term, it is essential for Congress to enact fundamental campaign finance reforms. These reforms include fixing the presidential public financing system, establishing a new system of public financing for congressional races and replacing the failed Federal Election Commission with a new, effective campaign finance enforcement body.

The Internet provides the opportunity to revolutionize the way we finance campaigns. By combining breakthroughs in Internet small donor fundraising with public matching funds, we can dramatically increase the role and importance of smaller donors in financing presidential and congressional races and provide major incentives for small donors to contribute.

Wertheimer noted in his testimony that while other campaign finance reforms have resulted in strong differences in the past, there has always been a broad bipartisan consensus in support of public disclosure of campaign activities.

“This has not been a partisan issue in the past and it should not be a partisan issue today,” Wertheimer testified.

Wertheimer pointed out that the Supreme Court, in Citizens United strongly affirmed by an 8 to 1 vote the constitutionality of requiring disclosure for the newly allowed campaign activities.

The Supreme Court said:

With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.

Wertheimer testified that Congress should repair the existing lowest unit requirement for broadcast stations selling time to federal candidates to make it work.  “This would significantly increase the value of funds raised by candidates to spend on their campaigns,” Wertheimer said.

Wertheimer pointed out to the Rules Committee that the Senate in 2001 voted for such a provision by a large bipartisan majority vote of 69 to 31, although it was not enacted into law.

Wertheimer testified to the Committee that the support for the proposal included 11 of the 14 members of the Rules Committee who were in the Senate at the time of the vote.  This included the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Rules Committee, Senators Chuck Schumer and Robert Bennett, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Democratic Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin.

In his testimony, Wertheimer said that “the 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is the most radical and destructive campaign finance decision in the Court’s history.”

Wertheimer said “the decision threw out a century old national policy to prevent corporate wealth from being used in federal elections.”

Wertheimer also testified that the decision “also threw out two decades of precedents upholding that national policy, without any relevant changed circumstances from the time the precedents were established except for the composition of the Court — as Justice Stevens pointed out in his dissent.”

“The Citizens United decision represents an enormous transfer of power in our country from citizens to corporations,” Wertheimer testified.

“It opens the door to the use of the immense aggregate wealth of corporations to directly participate in campaigns and, thereby, to buy influence over government decisions. It also will open the door to labor unions undertaking the same efforts, although their resources are dwarfed by the resources of corporations,” according to the testimony.

“Under this decision, insurance companies, banks, drug companies, energy companies and the like, and their trade associations, will each be free to run multimillion dollar campaigns to elect or defeat federal officeholders, depending on whether the officeholders vote right or wrong on issues of importance to the corporations and trade associations,” Wertheimer testified.

Wertheimer testified:

Members of Congress, in effect, will have a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Any “wrong” vote by a Member on an issue of great importance to major corporations or trade associations could trigger multimillion dollar campaigns to defeat the Member.  And the Member would be forced to consider this consequence repeatedly in deciding how to vote on legislation.

Furthermore, once major corporations and trade associations used independent campaign expenditures to take out one or a couple of Members for voting wrong on a bill of importance to the spenders, just the threat of such expenditures could have the same effect of influencing the votes of other Members, without the spenders even having to  make the expenditures.

The testimony noted that prior to the decision, former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who served two terms in the Senate ending in 2008, pointed out the consequences if the Court overturned the corporate spending ban.

According to Wertheimer’s testimony, Senator Chuck Hagel said in an interview with a Washington Post reporter, that if restrictions on corporate money were lifted, “the lobbyists and operators…would run wild.” Senator Hagel also said that reversing the law would magnify corporate power in society and “be an astounding blow against good government, responsible government,” and “would debase the system, so we would get to the point where we couldn’t govern ourselves.”

Werthimer’s testimony concluded:

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United was a radical and unjustified assault by five Justices against a longstanding cornerstone of Congress’s effort to safeguard the integrity of federal elections and government decisions against “influence buying” corruption and the appearance of such corruption.  Congress should do everything in its power to enact appropriate safeguards that will minimize the enormous damage done by the Court’s ruling.