“I can’t think of anything that is less American than secret money going secretly into campaigns to try to affect the choices of the American people.”WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) this afternoon delivered a speech on the Senate floor to demand that the unlimited contributions of faceless corporations and domestic subsidiaries of foreign companies be disclosed in the campaign process.
“I would hope our colleagues would support the idea that messages in American politics ought to be sent openly and in an accountable way,” said Sen. Kerry. “This institution, this House, this Senate, all of us comes from the words ‘We the People.’ And we’ve been hearing those words, ‘We the People,’ all across America from the Tea Party and others who are trying to remind people what this is all about. Their outrage ought to be summoned all across the country to shed the sunlight on this political process and hold it accountable. The stakes for the American people are simply too high to let special interests hide behind faceless and unidentified campaigns. I can’t think of anything that is less American than secret money going secretly into campaigns to try to affect the choices of the American people. This is an opportunity for us to truly speak for the American people, and I hope my colleagues will join us in doing so today.”
The DISCLOSE ACT, or Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act, legislation to prevent unlimited corporate and foreign influence in United States elections, is currently pending in the Senate. Republicans last blocked a vote on DISCLOSE in July.
Video of Senator Kerry’s floor remarks are available
here.
The Senators full speech as delivered is below:Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, in the 25 years now that I've had the privilege of serving in the United States Senate, I have regrettably in the course of almost every election period, with one brief exception when we had the McCain-Feingold bill in place, seen our system of funding campaigns become increasingly broken. And the truth is that a lot of the anger that the American people feel today, rightfully, for the absence of this Congress -- not just this particular session, but the Congress of the United States, being able to directly address the concerns of the American people, a lot of that anger really ought to be directed at the system itself.
At the fact that we have locked in place a funding of campaigns that robs the American people of their voice, that steals the legitimacy of our democracy and concentrates decision-making in the hands of powerful individuals with a lot of money or powerful corporations with a lot of money.
Money is driving American politics. Money is driving the American political agenda. Money decides what gets heard and doesn't get heard around here. What gets acted on and doesn't and how it gets acted on in many cases. And every so often you have bubbling up a legitimate kind of citizens energy that motivates one particular reaction here or another, whether it's a tax bill or a particular piece of legislation for women, pay. But it's rare now -- it's actually rare that the kind of grassroots effort that traditionally we think of when we think of legitimate democracy, that that is felt in its appropriate ways. And the truth is that the increased influence of special interest money, big money, in our politics is robbing the average citizen of his or her voice in setting America’s agenda.
You know, there are far more poor people. There are far more children. There are far more interests that don't get represented here and you constantly see, you know, like the debate we've had recently over carried interest, for instance, or a number of other interests here get as much time and as much debate over one or two of those single issues as some of those that affect a far greater proportion of the population.
Now, as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of
Citizens United, we've seen an incredible step backwards from accountability, a step backwards from preserving our democracy, and an incredible gift to the power of money.
Now all a C.E.O. of a company has to do – you know, in the last few years under the McCain-Feingold bill, and under our rules, at least if a company wanted to participate in the election, it had to go out and ask its executives to contribute. And we went through the sort of charade of having a fundraising event at which a whole bunch of executives would have to show up or people who work for a company and they wrote a check and the checks were bundled together and there were your contributions. But at least there was accountability. At least people knew those people had contributed. At least people saw where it was coming from and who it was coming from.
Now under the Citizen United decision, all a C.E.O. has to do is put it in the budget of the corporation. The corporation can just budget annually. We're going to put $2 million. And the C.E.O. can turn that money over in its totality to some group that is formed to destroy somebody's reputation with a lot of lies. Just pour the money over. That's it. Total secrecy, America. You don't even get to know who gave the money. No accountability. They just turn the money over to lobbyists who run the media campaigns to help their friends and defeat their opponents in Congress. You can have the best Congress, the people have always said, you know, money buys people in public life, but this is a step towards the greatest certification of that I've ever seen. It sends a chilling message to candidates without means, which is most candidates in the country, that -- that they can't combat a bottomless pocket of a K Street lobbyist who has some cabal of corporations that want to pour a bunch of money in to get their special interest protected.
So American workers in Ohio or Indiana or any other state in the country who wonder why did those jobs go overseas because there's a tax benefit that helps those companies actually take those jobs overseas. And why is that tax benefit there? Why do we have thousands upon thousands of pages of special interest tax provisions in our tax code? Because the lobbyists and the powerful people are able to be heard and they're able to work their will and they're able to make that happen. And now we've got a rule because the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are like people and have the same rights and so we have a new assault on America’s democracy. I mean that. It's an assault on our democracy.
We've always had money in the marketplace of politics. We understand that. For years people have tried to find one way or another to address that concern. This is not a new concern of the American people. But now it's taken to a level that I really fear. You know, it's hard to say, where we head all of us in our careers in public life, but I’m obviously on the back end of that runway. But I’ll tell you, I’m stunned by what the impact of this is going to mean to our country and to the ability of average voices to be heard in our nation. The humorous Will Rogers once quipped that politics has gotten so expensive it takes a lot of money even to get beat. But Will Rogers would be stunned by the amount of money in politics today.
In 2008, Mr. President, a record total of $5.2 billion was spent by all the Presidential, Senate and House candidates. $5.2 billion. When I ran for President in 2004 on a national basis we spent $4.1 million, and that broke the 2000 record when Al Gore ran of $3.1 billion. We go from $3.1 billion to $4.1 billion to $5.2 billion. And now we have a rule that all these secret funds can come into the political process. And guess what? We have already broken the record in 2010 from the 2006 race by a huge amount. I think the total amount of money spent in 2006, which was an off presidential year, was about – somewhere around $700 something, $800 million. We're well over $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion already in this cycle. Now, that's just the campaign spending. That's the direct money that goes into the campaigns. But last year special interests spent a record of $3.47 billion hiring lobbyists. The rest of the country might have been suffering from a recession, Mr. President, but it was a great year for K Street in Washington. A 5% increase in fees over the previous year.
President Obama’s change agenda stirred up so many people who were going to be opposed to it from the very beginning, health care, banking regulations, all the things that have undermined Americans in the last years, they wanted to preserve the status quo and so they sat up and they came up with about $1.3 million spent per minute in 2009. That's the amount that the watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics arrived at when they took the $3.57 billion that lobbyists collected and they divided it by the number of hours that Congress was in session in 2009. And it comes out to $1.3 million per minute was spent to try to hold on to the status quo.
Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it's a lot easier for special interests to finance and orchestrate contrived political movements. Unbelievably the Court ruled in
Citizen that corporations have the same right to speech as individuals, and therefore they can spend unlimited amounts of money in elections.
Now, Mr. President, I remember from my days in law school learning distinctly that a corporation is a fictitious entity. It is a fictitious entity created as a matter of law to protect the corporation in the conduct of its economic business. Not to protect in the context of giving it the same rights as an individual with respect to speech. And for a Supreme Court of the United States to somehow put a corporation on the same plain as the individual citizen in the United States is absolutely extraordinary to me.
As a result, we're now seeing a whole bunch of spending by shadowy groups run by long-time officials and activists that will end up in the hundreds of millions of dollars, money that cannot be traced to its source. How do you feel about that, America? How do you feel about millions of dollars being spent and you don't know who's spending it? Unaccountable democracy.
Now what we're talking about, you know, I suppose it means little to the corporations compared to what they're going to get in terms of blocking a regulation. You know, we've got people here who want to delay the regulations for clean air in America. They're going to come in here and say, oh, no, we can't proceed now to have clean air. We've got to delay it. So more coal fumes will pollute the air and more people will get sick. But they're going to try to work their way and they've got a lot of money to try to do it with.
Now the Supreme Court’s ruling also clears the way for the domestic subsidiary of a foreign corporation to spend unlimited amounts to influence our elections. I want people to think about that. A foreign corporation and a national of a foreign country are barred under the law from contributing to federal or state elections. But nothing in the law bars the foreign subsidiary incorporated in the U.S. from doing so. And those subsidiaries don't answer to the American people. They answer to their corporate parents way off in some other country. That means in no uncertain way, a foreign corporation can indeed play in an American election and clever people will not have a hard time in covering that trail.
So today, here on the floor of the Senate in Washington, D.C., in the year of the Tea Party, when the Tea Party is asking for accountability and the Tea Party is asking for sunshine and they want reform, I'd like to hear the Tea Party stand up today and say, Republicans ought to vote overwhelmingly to have sunshine shine in on the funding process of our campaigns.
The DISCLOSE Act that we will vote on today doesn't amend the Constitution. It's not going to overturn the Supreme Court decision that equated the rights of people – I would think that the Tea Party ought to be excoriated over the notion that a corporation has been given the same rights as the Constitution gives to an individual. But it doesn't even overturn that. It doesn't even constitute campaign finance reform. All it does is shine the disinfectant of sunlight on corporations and faceless organizations that are trying to buy and bully their way in Washington through campaigns run against members that disagree with them.
The DISCLOSE Act requires corporations, organizations, and special interest groups to stand by their political advertising, just like any candidate for office, and it requires the C.E.O. of a company to identify themselves in their advertisements. And corporations and organizations would be required to disclose their political expenditures.
Is that asking too much, that the American people get to know who's spending the money to influence them so that maybe they'll have the ability to judge whether or not there might be a little bias in that ad or there might be a little personal interest in that ad, there might be a reason that they're getting the information that they're getting the way they're getting it. That's all we're asking. It's not radical. It's not prohibitive. It simply removes the false notion that Americans are somehow voluntarily organizing tearing all across this country in order to pursue a special interest.
The fact is that corporate special interest money is being compiled and targeted to pursue a special interest and to send a loud televised message to those who disagree with them that they'll be punished for disagreeing. If that practice is not tempered, it will not only tip elections, Madam President, it will cripple the legislative process more than it has already been crippled in these past few years.
Instead of negotiating with each other in the public interest here in the Congress, members of Congress find themselves asking corporations – supposedly subject to the law and will of the American people -- they ask them whether it is okay with them whether or not we regulate or legislate and release their allies to vote in favor of one thing or another. And guess what? No surprise, the American people those corporations almost always refuse to do so.
So when the
Citizens United decision was handed down, the voices seeking support from these corporations argued that it would have no effect on the American political process. They said, we don't need to worry about new funneling of funds to candidate. But, Madam President, the record already says otherwise. The truth is that Karl Rove admitted that, based on the
Citizens United decision, he has formed two new groups. Specifically because this decision empowered him to do it -- to influence the 2010 elections $52 million of ads bankrolled anonymously by special interests.
Now that the Supreme Court has opened the door to these anonymous ads, a lot of other groups are planning to spend approximately $300 million or more on the elections this Fall. And already we've seen incredible disparity. I think the total spent by these anonymous groups attacking Democratic candidates around the country is over $30 million. The total amount that the Democrats have had available to them because they don't have as much money and they don't represent those powerful groups is about $3 million. 7:1 is the ratio. All you have to do is begin to analyze those ads and you can see exactly what the message is and why it's coming.
So here's the deal: whether you agree with the ads or not is not what is at issue on the floor of the Senate today. At a minimum, I would hope our colleagues would support the idea that messages that are sent in American politics, advertisements that are made for or against a candidate, advertisements that are made for or against a particular idea, that those ought to be sent openly, that they ought to be sent in an accountable way so that the American people, which is what this is all about -- this institution, this house, the Senate, the House -- all of us comes from the words "We the People." And we've been hearing those words, "We the People," all across America from the Tea Party and others who are trying to remind people what this is all about.
This vote is all about that today. And their outrage ought to be summoned all across the country to shed the sunlight on this political process and hold it accountable. And if our friends come to the floor this afternoon and vote en bloc against it, let me tell you, that is a declarative statement about whose interests are really being protected and what is at stake in this election, as we go into this November.
The stakes for the American people are simply too high to let special interests hide behind faceless and unidentified campaigns. I can't think of anything that is less American than secret money going secretly into campaigns to try to affect the choices of the American people. This is an opportunity for us to truly speak for the American people, and I hope my colleagues will join us in doing so today. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum
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