Democracy in America
“We are at a pivotal moment in American history. The democratic foundations of our country are now facing the most severe attack, both economically and politically, that we have seen in modern times,” Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ted Deutch said on Tuesday in testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sanders and Deutch are the sponsors of proposed constitutional amendments in the Senate and House to undo Supreme Court rulings that voided campaign funding limits. “The 2010 Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates for a rush of secret money to flow into elections, and those of us interested in clean and fair elections saw our worst fears play out in during the 2010 and 2012 cycles,” Sanders and Deutch said.
Their testimony was submitted to the Judiciary Committee, which is considering constitutional amendments like Sanders and Deutch have proposed.
“Thanks to Citizens United and its progeny, the new “super PACs” were able to collect and spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars, often from only a handful of donors. In fact it only took 32 major super PAC donors to contribute more than the $313 million that all the small donors gave to the Obama and Romney campaigns combined. Further analysis from the US Public Interest Research Group and Demos showed that only 159 Americans, each giving more than $1 million, combined to donate more than $500 million to super PACs in the 2012 election cycle,” they said in their written testimony. “All the more disturbing is that this is only the money we know about; this does not include millions of dollars of “dark” money, funneled through political nonprofits. Through those organizations, secret millions are shielded from the standards applied to political parties and campaigns.
