Ranking Member Morelle Delivers Floor Remarks on the Anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC Decision
WASHINGTON – Today, Rep. Joe Morelle (NY-25), the top Democrat on the Committee on House Administration, delivered floor remarks marking the anniversary of the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission SCOTUS decision.
The following remarks were prepared for delivery:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I rise today on the sixteenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision—a decision that disfigured our political landscape, reorienting power away from voters and toward corporate and wealthy special interests.
In Citizens United, a five-to-four conservative Court majority endorsed almost unlimited political spending by corporations and wealthy individuals, and alongside several subsequent federal court rulings, demolished long-standing limits designed to prevent undue influence.
It is well beyond time for Congress to pass a comprehensive campaign finance reform package to protect our constituents from the widespread political corruption that Citizens United unleashed.
Since 2010, more than $10 billion in corporate and dark money has saturated every aspect of our politics.
Super PACs and dark money groups now spend vast sums to influence, and sometimes determine, election outcomes—while shielding their donors from public scrutiny.
Compounding the problem, the Federal Election Commission has too often failed to enforce the law, leaving voters unable to discern who is trying to influence them and why.
We know that transparency is a baseline requirement for a functioning democracy—we know, too, that its absence erodes public trust in politics, and fuels the belief that the system is rigged for wealthy elites and insiders.
Most troubling, however, is that Citizens United threatens to compromise the incentives of those of us who serve in public office.
House campaigns now require previously unimaginable sums of money.
Members spend far too much time courting wealthy or corporate donors rather than engaging with constituents.
Americans reasonably question whether this imbalance helps explain why policies related taxes, health care, corporate regulation, and environmental protection so often favor powerful interests over working families—families that are struggling with an affordability crisis this Administration has exacerbated.
But while Citizens United greatly harmed our body politic, we will not let it prove fatal.
In a 1938 address to Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a stark warning: “[T]he liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself.”
House Democrats recognize the fierce urgency of this warning.
At the request of Leader Hakeem Jeffries, I am coordinating a comprehensive anti-corruption legislative agenda to restore fairness, transparency, and a requisite principle of our Republic—that government must serve the people, not the highest bidder.
This sweeping agenda will address corruption across all three branches of government as well as, critically, unfettered corporate influence in our broken campaign finance system.
The package will include pieces of legislation that House Democrats have long championed, like the DISCLOSE Act, that will shine a light on the dark money donors that seek to purchase the outcomes of our elections.
It will fundamentally reform the FEC, so our federal campaign finance laws no longer go unenforced.
Indeed, at present, the FEC has no quorum, and cannot function in a law enforcement capacity at all.
House Democrats will put a cop back on the beat.
And, vitally, House Democrats will move to ratify a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision.
House Democrats will ensure this package reflects the pressing reform interests of Americans from coast-to-coast—Americans that demand an end to the culture of corruption endemic in Washington.
While Citizens United did not create every problem in our politics, it has undeniably enhanced the power of the wealthiest few at the expense of the many.
When a single billionaire spends more on an election than countless thousands of voters combined, the principle that every voice counts equally in our political system withers.
We must, and we can, remedy the rot that the deeply misguided Citizens United decision introduced into American politics.
As Ranking Member of the Committee on House Administration—the committee with jurisdiction over campaign finance legislation—I look forward to continuing to work to restore trust and honesty to American governance.
Thank you.
###
The Committee on House Administration’s jurisdiction includes federal elections, House operations, Capitol Complex security, the Smithsonian Institution, and Legislative Branch agencies such as the Library of Congress and Government Publishing Office.