Representative Leonard Boswell (D, IA-03) has introduced a constitutional amendment in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. (Read the ruling and many reactions and commentaries at the SCOTUS blog.)
Boswell is looking for co-sponsors and explained the case for amending the constitution:
“I have introduced this important legislation because the Supreme Court’s ruling strikes at the very core of democracy in the United States by inflating the speech rights of large, faceless corporations to the same level of hard-working, every day Americans,” Boswell said in a statement. “The court’s elevation of corporate speech inevitably overpowers the speech and interests of human citizens who do not have the coffers to speak as loudly.”
Boswell said House Joint Resolution 68 would disallow a corporation or labor organization from using any operating funds or any other funds from its general treasury to pay for an advertisement in connection with a federal election campaign, regardless of whether or not the advertisement expressly advocates the election or defeat of a specified candidate.
“Corporations already have an active role in American political discourse through million-dollar political action committees and personal donations to campaigns,” Boswell said. “The legislation I introduced will prevent the Wall Street corporations that received billions in taxpayer bailout dollars from turning around and pouring that same money into candidates that will prevent financial regulation on their industry. No American should have to turn on the TV and see AIG telling them how to vote.”
Five Republicans are running against seven-term incumbent Boswell in this D+1 district. Most Iowa observers consider Brad Zaun and Jim Gibbons the front-runners. Dave Funk has the backing of the Tea Party crowd, and I love his tweets that begin, “Congress needs Funk.” Mark Rees is staking out a moderate position, and I have no idea what Pat Bertroche is doing in this race.
and state simply that corporations are not “persons” under the 14th Amendment of the Constitutions.
I would also like a call for impeachment of some of the justices who were involved in this decision. Specifically Clarence Thomas.
I think this bodes very well for Boswell. This election will be all about populist anger, and nothing says populism like taking on corruption and corporations.
This amendment seems too specific. For all we know future courts will try to strike down all contribution limits. Jonathan Singer suggested something much simpler, like an amendment saying, “Congress is empowered to regulate money in elections.”
… but nothing more. No chance it hell it ever happens.
Namely, the problem is that the media has for months been painting this decision as a boon to Republicans and a blow to Democrats. As such, attempts to appear populist may only come off as a cheap attempt to save themselves. One could argue that we’d take the populist stance, but given how badly we’ve done on messaging I’d assume Republicans would win the framing war on this one.
Second, the truth is that Democrats aren’t totally effed by this decision. I work at a law firm specializing in campaign finance (which is why I’ve been laying low recently and am likely to totally duck out of SSP in a couple of weeks – my work is getting too involved in the discussions here and I can’t compromise my clients or be an unbiased commenter in a lot of these races). All I’ll say is this – there’s a lot of Democratic campaign finance lawyers that think we’ll be just fine in the long run, as a the McCain-Feingold disclosure laws still apply to corporations. They are for-profit enterprises, and many of them would risk alienating their consumers by plastering their name all over a Sarah Palin 2012 ad for example. Moreover, if the corporation is a partnership, the FEC rules would likely dictate that each individual partner’s name would have to be listed in the ad. That may make some Wall Street and investment banking firms back off. Finally, unions will be able to spend freely as well, giving the Democrats a nice weapon of their own. I’d also like to point out that this new federal ruling has been existent in California for some time (in fact, it extends to ballot measures as well, and corporations can give directly to campaigns). It certainly hasn’t hurt Democrats out here, nor has it hindered progressives.
Just my two cents.