[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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