Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 1
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, Shakespeare's great play ``Hamlet'' began with the phrase: Something is rotten in Denmark.
Well, something is rotten in Congress, and what is rotten in Congress is dark money. Citizens United--perhaps one of the most foolish decisions ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court--opened unlimited spending into our politics, which benefits whom? It benefits those who have unlimited money to spend and a motive to spend it in politics. That is not a group of people whose voices were not being heard here already. That is the favored group. But Citizens United opened the door for them to spend unlimited money, and then the Supreme Court failed to police its own decision. Its own decision said this unlimited spending was going to be independent of candidates and transparent to the public. Well, they are 0 for 2. It has been a decade, and they have never even tried to enforce the basic predicates of their decision. It is a shameful, shameful effort by the Court. Now, as a result, we have throughout our politics this dark money tsunami of slime.
How bad is it? These groups have spent $4.5 billion since Citizens United--$4.5 billion trying to influence Congress. Do you think they were doing that in the public interest? Of course not. Do you wonder why bills die here in the legislative graveyard of the Senate? Take a guess.
Outside groups--these phony-baloney front groups for these big special interests--are now outspending candidates in races. In fact, in the decade after Citizens United, outside groups outspent candidates in 126 different congressional races. And it is a very small group of people behind it. The top 10 donor households gave a combined $1.1 billion to these front groups. Do you think they were looking out for the public interests? Dream on.
Who are the big spenders of this dark money? National Rifle Association; Americans for Prosperity, which is the Koch brothers front group; Crossroads GPS, which is Karl Rove's front group; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the champions of climate denial and obstruction.
Do you want to know why we are not getting things done around here? It is because billions of dollars are being spent secretly by special interests to shut things down, and it is creeping now even into the courts. The Federalist Society, which is picking our judges, is at the center of a $250 million dark money network. A group that ran the campaigns against Garland and for Gorsuch and then afterward for Kavanaugh got an individual $17 million donation for each of those two campaigns. It is actually probably the same donor, which means somebody out there anonymously gave $35 million to determine the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, and we don't know who that is. We don't know what business they have before the Court.
As I said, Hamlet begins with ``something is rotten in . . . Denmark.'' Something is rotten in Congress, and the rot is creeping over to the Supreme Court, and it is dark money, and it is the patriotic and decent thing to do to extirpate this menace.
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