[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 63 (Wednesday, April 30, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2558-S2559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court
once again chose to dismantle campaign finance laws which had protected
hard-working Americans for decades. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election
Commission, a sharply divided Court held that aggregate limits on
campaign contributions are a violation of the First Amendment. These
were the same five justices who, just 4 years ago, reversed a century
of precedent in Citizens United by declaring that corporations have a
First Amendment right to endlessly finance and influence elections.
Rather than increasing access and encouraging participation for all
Americans, this Court continues to rule against our democratic
principles and in favor of moneyed interests.
The Court's recent dismantling of campaign finance laws has been
devastating. As Justice Breyer warned in his dissent:
Taken together with Citizens United, [the McCutcheon]
decision eviscerates our Nation's campaign finance laws,
leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave
problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were
intended to resolve.
I could not agree with him more.
Nobody who has watched our elections or even tried to watch
television since the Citizens United decision can deny the enormous
impact that decision has had on our political process. In small states
like Vermont, that decision coupled with McCutcheon poses an even
greater risk. I have heard time and again from Vermonters concerned
about these toxic effects, and I agree that something must be done.
That is why I have cosponsored the DISCLOSE Act since 2010 to restore
transparency and accountability to campaign finance laws, and that is
why we have held multiple hearings in the Judiciary Committee on the
impact of these alarming Supreme Court decisions. Earlier this month I
announced that the Judiciary Committee would have another hearing on
this issue. That hearing will take place in June. We will hear
testimony from individuals who have witnessed the real impact these
harmful decisions have had on Americans seeking to exercise their right
to vote and to be heard.
The Judiciary Committee's hearing will also take place close to the
anniversary of yet another devastating Supreme Court decision. Last
June, as the Nation prepared to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the
March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his historic
``I Have a Dream'' speech, the same narrow majority of the Supreme
Court struck down the coverage provision of the Voting Rights Act and
effectively gutted the most successful piece of civil rights
legislation in this Nation's history in Shelby County v. Holder.
The Voting Rights Act, including the coverage formula and Section 5,
was reauthorized and signed into law by President George W. Bush in
2006, after the Senate voted 98-0 and the House voted 390-33 in favor
of the reauthorization. Yet the Court struck down a key provision of
the Act despite the fact that it has worked to protect the
Constitution's guarantees against racial discrimination in voting for
nearly five decades. In striking down the coverage formula in the
Voting Rights Act, the Court dramatically undercut Section 5's ability
to protect American voters from racial discrimination in voting. The
result is that many Americans who were protected by this law have now
been left vulnerable to discriminatory practices and have had much
greater difficulty accessing the ballot box. Along with other
lawmakers, I have introduced a bipartisan and bicameral bill, S. 1945,
to respond to the Court's decision and would reinvigorate the most
vital protections of the Act. I hope Senate Republicans will work with
me on this important effort.
This current Supreme Court's pattern of denying access to the ballot
box for everyday Americans while expanding the ability of billionaires
and corporations to buy elections is disturbing, to say the least. In
an article by Ari Berman at The Nation dated April 2, the author states
that ``The Court's conservative majority believes that the First
Amendment gives wealthy donors and powerful corporations the carte
blanche to buy an election but that the Fifteenth Amendment does not
give Americans the right to vote free of racial discrimination.'' Since
the Court's ruling in Shelby County, eight states previously covered
under Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act have since passed or
implemented new voting restrictions and voters are already seeing the
consequences of that lack of protection. Mr. Berman concludes that
``[a] country that expands the rights of the powerful to dominate the
political process but does not protect fundament rights for all
citizens doesn't sound much like a functioning democracy to me.'' I
agree and I ask unanimous consent to have this article printed in the
Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
Sara Mayeux at Harvard Law School observed that the Court began its
McCutcheon opinion by noting that ``There is no right more basic in our
democracy than the right to participate in electing our political
leaders'' yet, this same narrow majority discarded that very principle
just last year when it struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights
Act in Shelby County--a case that was much more about the right to
participate in electing our political leaders than this one.
The observation is consistent with the disturbing trend exhibited by
this Court in Citizens United, McCutcheon, and Shelby County, which is
that the Court underscores and endorses the rights of corporations and
billionaires to participate in our democracy, and yet dismisses that
same right for the average American to participate in our elections and
to vote free from discrimination.
Every American should understand how devastating these rulings are to
our system of democracy. Time and again, this narrow majority of
conservative Justices has substituted their own preferences for those
of the duly-elected Congress, despite the Supreme Court's own
precedents. This Court's disregard for Congressional findings about
both the threat of corruption and the irreparable harm of racial
discrimination in voting demonstrates how out of touch with reality
some of the Justices have become. These sharply-divided rulings
undermine the fundamental concept that our democracy is supposed to
work for all Americans. I will continue to work on behalf of the
American people to see that all Americans and not just a wealthy few
will continue to have a right to participate in our representative
democracy and to have their voices heard.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From The Nation, Apr. 2, 2014]
The Supreme Court's Ideology: More Money, Less Voting
(By Ari Berman)
In the past four years, under the leadership of Chief
Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has made it far
easier to buy an election and far harder to vote in one.
First came the Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v.
FEC, which brought us the Super PAC era.
Then came the Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v.
Holder, which gutted the centerpiece of the Voting Rights
Act.
Now we have McCutcheon v. FEC, where the Court, in yet
another controversial 5-4 opinion written by Roberts, struck
down the limits on how much an individual can contribute to
candidates, parties and political action committees. So
instead of an individual donor being allowed to give $117,000
to campaigns, parties and PACs in an election cycle (the
aggregate limit in 2012), they can now give up to $3.5
million, Andy Kroll of Mother Jones reports.
The Court's conservative majority believes that the First
Amendment gives wealthy donors and powerful corporations the
carte blanche right to buy an election, but that the
Fifteenth Amendment does not give Americans the right to vote
free of racial discrimination.
These are not unrelated issues--the same people, like the
Koch brothers, who favor unlimited secret money in US
elections are the ones funding the effort to make it harder
for people to vote. The net effect is an attempt to
concentrate the power of the top 1 percent in the political
process and to drown out the voices and votes of everyone
else.
Consider these stats from Demos on the impact of Citizens
United in the 2012 election:
The top thirty-two Super PAC donors, giving an average of
$9.9 million each, matched the $313.0 million that President
Obama and Mitt Romney raised from all of their small donors
combined--that's at least 3.7 million people giving less than
$200 each.
Nearly 60 percent of Super PAC funding came from just 159
donors contributing at least $1 million. More than 93 percent
of the money Super PACs raised came in contributions of at
least $10,000--from just 3,318 donors, or the equivalent of
0.0011 percent of the US population.
It would take 322,000 average-earning American families
giving an equivalent
[[Page S2559]]
share of their net worth to match the Adelsons' $91.8 million
in Super PAC contributions. That trend is only going to get
worse in the wake of the McCutcheon decision.
Now consider what's happened since Shelby County: eight
states previously covered under Section 4 of the Voting
Rights Act have passed or implemented new voting restrictions
(Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia,
South Carolina and North Carolina).
That has had a ripple effect elsewhere. According to The
New York Times, ``nine states [under GOP control] have passed
measures making it harder to vote since the beginning of
2013.''
A country that expands the rights of the powerful to
dominate the political process but does not protect fundament
rights for all citizens doesn't sound much like a functioning
democracy to me.
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