Citizens United lets money dictate gun, climate and drug-price policy

Obama was right, Alito was wrong: Citizens United has corrupted American politics

Ten years ago this week, a narrow majority of the Supreme Court overturned a century of campaign finance law, giving wealthy donors and corporations nearly unlimited ability to influence our elections. In his State of the Union address a week later, President Barack Obama said the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision “will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.” Justice Samuel Alito famously shook his head, mouthing “not true.”

A decade later, it’s clear that President Obama was right and Justice Alito was wrong. With its decision, the court threw out restrictions on corporate and union election spending, narrowed the legal definition of “corruption” and triggered an influx of undisclosed dark money spending on our elections.

The court’s naive view of our electoral process set the stage for 10 years of billions of dollars corrupting our politics and dictating national policy on everything from the cost of prescription drugs to climate change to gun violence.

For example, during the attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, a Republican super PAC publicly withdrew its support of Rep. David Young of Iowa because he expressed opposition to the GOP health care bill. Young soon switched his position, voted for the bill, and millions from the super PAC flowed into his district to help him win.

That is corruption pure and simple, and it happens all the time in American politics. It now happens so often that the Supreme Court’s naiveté begins to look more like willful ignorance.

Our campaign finance system was broken long before Citizens United, but it has given a bullhorn to wealthy donors, who already had the loudest voices in the room. The overwhelmingly white, male and older donor class has become even more homogeneous. This elite set of Americans has scored political power on a magnitude not seen since the Gilded Age. In fact, just 11 people gave $1 billion — or a fifth of all donations to super PACs — from 2010 to 2018.

We now have elections where the candidates themselves play secondary roles in their own campaigns. For example, in Pennsylvania’s 2016 U.S. Senate race, outside spending topped $123 million, while the candidates combined for less than $50 million. This arms race not only impacts who can run for and win political office, but it also changes policy debates.

Climate change used to be a bipartisan issue, but that ended with Citizens United, even as global temperatures continued to rise. Meanwhile, since the decision, the energy sector has poured over $719 million into our federal elections, about a quarter of it in unlimited expenditures. The NRA has invested nearly $125 million in federal elections since the decision, nearly all of it in unlimited spending — helping to effectively block every attempt to pass universal background checks, though almost all Americans (75%-93% in recent polls) support that reform.

It’s not hyperbolic to state that the success of our democracy depends on our ability to restore guardrails that protect against the influence of big money and corruption in our elections. A constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United is a good place to start. That process isn’t quick, but it must be a priority.

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In the short term, new laws could blunt the impact of the decision. Last year, the House passed the For the People Act (H.R. 1), the most sweeping package of anti-corruption reforms since Watergate. It has not even received consideration in the Senate. This bill would bring undisclosed “dark money” into the light, allow candidates to run for office on the strength of grassroots support by creating a small-donor matching program, and strengthen oversight over and accountability of federal officials.

We must also protect every eligible voters’ right to cast their ballot easily and free from discrimination. In addition to the major voter registration reforms included in H.R. 1, the House also passed the Voting Rights Advancement Act to prevent places with a history of discrimination from continuing to engage in voter suppression.

Red and blue states fight corruption

These are ambitious goals, but Americans have come together over the past decade to prove they are attainable. Twenty states and over 800 municipalities representing 141 million Americans have passed resolutions calling to overturn Citizens United, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin.

We’ve seen new anti-corruption laws passed in red and blue states. In 2015, Montana’s Republican-led legislature passed a dark money disclosure law. In 2016, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved contribution limits the same year they delivered 10 electoral votes to Donald Trump. In the past decade there have been new, innovative small-donor public financing programs passed or enacted across the country, from Seattle and Portland to Washington, D.C.

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H.R. 1 is a direct result of this overwhelming public support for reform. The freshman class of House Democrats ran on a platform of ending corruption in Washington, and it was a key reason they retook the majority. All the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls have sworn off corporate PAC money, and they have said that passing a bold democracy reform bill will be their first order of business or a top priority.

All of this is happening because voters are demanding change. They’re tired of corruption and big donors buying access and influence. They want to vote for leaders who’ll stand up and fight for them. Every candidate, from state houses to president, should take this anger seriously as they weigh whether they’ll be champions of reform or defenders of the broken status quo.

Tiffany Muller is the president and executive director of End Citizens United. Follow her on Twitter: @Tiffany_Muller