Friday, February 26, 2016
The Threat of Big Money in
Politics and the Call for a 28th Amendment
'Our situation is not inevitable,' write Bonifaz and Cressman,
'but rather the predictable results of Supreme Court rulings going back forty
years that have wrongly equated unlimited campaign spending with the freedom to
speak our conscience as protected under the First Amendment.' (Photo: via
Occupy.com)
While Americans agree that there is too much money coming from
too few people in our political campaigns today, a debate over how to address
that problem raises an even larger question about whether or not we still have
a Constitution that works to provide a government of, by, and for the people.
In particular, the question is whether we still have the capacity to amend our
Constitution as a way to check and balance a runaway Supreme Court.
In his farewell address where he notably warned Americans
against the dangers of hyper-partisanship, President George Washington also
urged his fellow citizens to embrace the checks and balances of the three
branches of government. He urged us to accept the authority of the
Constitution, precisely because when we found the distribution of powers to be
wrong, we could change it through amending the Constitution.
Americans now find ourselves in a situation where true power no
longer solely resides within our three branches of government, but within a
narrow cabal of political campaign donors that decides who can run for office
as a viable candidate, who will win elections, and what issues will be put forth
for debate. Any individual donor doesn’t always see his or her favorite
candidate win—sometimes they lose to other big money candidates. But with the
candidate who raises the most money winning nine out of ten congressional
campaigns, big money donors have collectively prevented candidates lacking
access to wealth from governing the country.
Our situation is not inevitable, but rather the predictable
results of Supreme Court rulings going back forty years that have wrongly
equated unlimited campaign spending with the freedom to speak our conscience as
protected under the First Amendment. George Washington would tell us that the
response to overreaching Supreme Court rulings which threaten our Republic—such
as the Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC—would be to
amend our Constitution to correct them.
Yet when serious legislators, reform organizations, and millions
of Americans across the country propose a constitutional amendment to establish
that campaign spending is not the same as free speech, the naysayers jump in to
say it cannot be done. We are told it is simply too hard to amend our
Constitution and that it is more prudent to simply wait for a new president to
appoint new members to the Supreme Court.
Yet, by taking a straightforward amendment to the Constitution
off the table and relying instead on the indirect process of presidential
appointments to a future court, we are in essence abandoning the very premise
of our Constitution that we are willing, and able, to govern ourselves.
The Constitution is not, and should not, be easy to amend.
We would expect that issues where the country is divided would not command a
sufficient national consensus to pass an amendment. Yet, both polls and results
from state and local ballot measures consistently show that 75% to 85% of
Americans disagree with the Citizens United ruling and want it
reversed. Is our distribution of powers between our three branches of
government so out of whack that a supermajority around one of the few issues that
unites most Democrats, Republicans, and independents can no longer amend our
constitution as the framers promised?
We’ve amended our Constitution before in ways that challenged
entrenched interests through women’s suffrage and bringing direct election of
U.S. Senators. In seven of our 27 amendments enacted to date, we have
overturned egregious Supreme Court rulings. It was indeed hard, but
not too hard for earlier generations.
It’s perfectly reasonable for presidential candidates to
campaign in part on whom they will nominate to the Supreme Court. But,
for the rest of us who are not running for president, we should decide if We,
the People, still want to govern the country for ourselves or if we’re willing
to let nine appointed members of the Supreme Court do it for us.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 License
John Bonifaz is co-founder and director of Free Speech For
People (www.freespeechforpeople.org),
a national nonpartisan campaign working to overturn the Supreme Court’s
Citizens United ruling and the corporate rights doctrine.
Derek Cressman is author of the forthcoming book When
Money Talks -- The High Price of "Free" Speech and the Selling of
Democracy, published in January, 2016 by Barrett-Koehler. In June 2014,
Derek ran for California Secretary of State after spending 19 years working to
protect voting rights and get corporate money out of politics. Prior to
announcing his campaign, Derek served as Common Cause's Vice President of State
Operations.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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