Citizens United Anniversary

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator from New York for his courtesy. I too will be brief. It is an extraordinary honor to represent Oregon in the Senate. Having this special privilege, I have tried to make the lodestar of my service transparency and accountability. It is why I worked with the distinguished Senator from Missouri Mrs. McCaskill to end secret holds in the Senate.

I have had more than 600 open town meetings. That is why we take legislative drafts and put them online so citizens can comment wherever possible. It is all about transparency and accountability. Today's campaign finance system is neither. It is not transparent, it is not possible for Americans to see who is giving what sums to what particular candidate, and there is no accountability--certainly no accountability in the sense that when people go to the polls in Vermont or New Hampshire or New York or anywhere else people know who has given a donation so that they can factor that in to their political judgment.

With the explosion of mass media, the tradition of negative campaigning through pamphleteers and partisans has grown and grown to the point where the typical voter cannot find a way to avoid the flood of half truths and outright falsehoods. It becomes even harder to send the message that voters want; that is, we made our choice because we have full and complete information.

Now, all of this was getting worse until the Congress came together to take two steps. The first was Congress enacted regulations of independent expenditures and eliminated the so-called soft corporate money that had begun to overwhelm the process.

The second step--and I want to thank Senator Collins from Maine for working with me on this issue--is we passed what is called ``stand by your ad.''

This is the law that requires candidates who sponsor political ads to take individual responsibility for their ads and state in the ads that they ``approve this message.'' I thank Senator Schumer, who has been a champion for this kind of accountability for years.

That is where we were until the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United drove the system right back into the mud. Through this decision, the Supreme Court has seen fit to create what amounts to a new route for massive sums of unreported, unaccountable, and unacceptable spending to drown out any responsible discourse. In my view, this decision degrades our democracy and creates the appearance that the American Government is simply up for sale to the highest corporate bidder.

This decision by the 5-to-4 majority on the Supreme Court overturned almost a century of precedent and undermined the intent of the Founders. The decision, in my view, reflects a lack of understanding about a political process and an inability to see the corrosive effect of massive and hidden expenditures.

Justice Kennedy, in the decision, specifically said this:

We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

In effect, it was the opinion of the Court that if Disney or Comcast or British Petroleum spends $20 million in an otherwise $10 million Senate race advocating one candidate, that newly elected Senator will not even have the appearance of working in their corporate interests instead of the public interest. In my view, that kind of reasoning does not pass the smell test. This is the sort of decision that ought to be left to the branch of government with constituents who understand not just the theory but the reality of elections.

It is incumbent upon the Congress, whose members do understand the electoral system, to begin the process of restoring balance to the mechanisms of democracy. This needs to be done before our elections are entirely overrun by shadowy interests warring unchecked, using the political system and American voters as pawns.

My final point is that I do not reach this judgment lightly. I believe constitutional amendments ought to be reserved for those situations when the delicate balance set up by the Founders has been upset by time, circumstance, or, in this case, a sudden and ill-considered change in the jurisprudence that governs our system. That is the situation we face today, and it is why I have decided to add my name to the sponsors of this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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