The For the People Act
The bill passed the House in 2021 but could not get through the Senate.
For example -
(snip)
Subtitle A--Findings Relating to Citizens United Decision
SEC. 5001. FINDINGS RELATING TO CITIZENS UNITED DECISION.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The American Republic was founded on the principle that
all people are created equal, with rights and responsibilities
as citizens to vote, be represented, speak, debate, and
participate in self-government on equal terms regardless of
wealth. To secure these rights and responsibilities, our
Constitution not only protects the equal rights of all
Americans but also provides checks and balances to prevent
corruption and prevent concentrated power and wealth from
undermining effective self-government.
(2) The Founders designed the First Amendment to help
prevent tyranny by ensuring that the people have the tools they
need to ensure self-government and to keep their elected
leaders responsive to the public. The Amendment thus guarantees
the right of everyone to speak, to petition the government for
redress, to assemble together, and for a free press. If only
the wealthiest individuals can participate meaningfully in our
democracy, then these First Amendment principles become an
illusion.
(3) Campaign finance laws promote these First Amendment
interests. They increase robust debate from diverse voices,
enhance the responsiveness of elected officeholders, and help
prevent corruption. They do not censor anyone's speech but
simply ensure that no one's speech is drowned out. The Supreme
Court has failed to recognize that these laws are essential,
proactive rules that help guarantee true democratic self-
government.
(4) The Supreme Court's decisions in Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) and McCutcheon
v. FEC, 572 U.S. 185 (2014), as well as other court decisions,
erroneously invalidated even-handed rules about the spending of
money in local, State, and Federal elections. These rules do
not prevent anyone from speaking their mind, much less pick
winners and losers of political debates. Although the Court has
upheld other content-neutral laws like these, it has failed to
apply to same logic to campaign finance laws. These flawed
decisions have empowered large corporations, extremely wealthy
individuals, and special interests to dominate election
spending, corrupt our politics, and degrade our democracy
through tidal waves of unlimited and anonymous spending. These
decisions also stand in contrast to a long history of efforts
by Congress and the States to regulate money in politics to
protect democracy, and they illustrate a troubling deregulatory
trend in campaign finance-related court decisions.
Additionally, an unknown amount of foreign money continues to
be spent in our political system as subsidiaries of foreign-
based corporations and hostile foreign actors sometimes
connected to nation-states work to influence our elections.
(5) The Supreme Court's misinterpretation of the
Constitution to empower monied interests at the expense of the
American people in elections has seriously eroded over 100
years of congressional action to promote fairness and protect
elections from the toxic influence of money.
(6) In 1907, Congress passed the Tillman Act in response to
the concentration of corporate power in the post-Civil War
Gilded Age. The Act prohibited corporations from making
contributions in connection with Federal elections, aiming
``not merely to prevent the subversion of the integrity of the
electoral process [but] * * * to sustain the active, alert
responsibility of the individual citizen in a democracy for the
wise conduct of government''.
(7) By 1910, Congress began passing disclosure requirements
and campaign expenditure limits, and dozens of States passed
corrupt practices Acts to prohibit corporate spending in
elections. States also enacted campaign spending limits, and
some States limited the amount that people could contribute to
campaigns.
(8) In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act prohibited corporations
and unions from making campaign contributions or other
expenditures to influence elections. In 1962, a Presidential
commission on election spending recommended spending limits and
incentives to increase small contributions from more people.
(9) The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), as
amended in 1974, required disclosure of contributions and
expenditures, imposed contribution and expenditure limits for
individuals and groups, set spending limits for campaigns,
candidates, and groups, implemented a public funding system for
Presidential campaigns, and created the Federal Election
Commission to oversee and enforce the new rules.
(10) In the wake of Citizens United and other damaging
Federal court decisions, Americans have witnessed an explosion
of outside spending in elections. Outside spending increased
more than 700 percent between the 2008 and 2020 Presidential
election years. Spending by outside groups nearly doubled again
from 2016 to 2020 with super PACs, tax-exempt groups, and
others spending more than $3,000,000,000. And as political
entities adapt to a post-Citizens United, post-McCutcheon
landscape, these trends are getting worse, as evidenced by the
record-setting 2020 elections which cost more than
$14,000,000,000 in total.
(11) Since the landmark Citizens United decision, 21 States
and more than 800 municipalities, including large cities like
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia, have gone on
record supporting a constitutional amendment. Transcending
political leanings and geographic location, voters in States
and municipalities across the country that have placed
amendment questions on the ballot have routinely supported
these initiatives by considerably large margins.
(12) The Court has tied the hands of Congress and the
States, severely restricting them from setting reasonable
limits on campaign spending. For example, the Court has held
that only the Government's interest in preventing quid pro quo
corruption, like bribery, or the appearance of such corruption,
can justify limits on campaign contributions. More broadly, the
Court has severely curtailed attempts to reduce the ability of
the Nation's wealthiest and most powerful to skew our democracy
in their favor by buying outsized influence in our elections.
Because this distortion of the Constitution has prevented other
critical regulation or reform of the way we finance elections
in America, a constitutional amendment is needed to achieve a
democracy for all the people.
(13) The torrent of money flowing into our political system
has a profound effect on the democratic process for everyday
Americans, whose voices and policy preferences are increasingly
being drowned out by those of wealthy special interests. The
more campaign cash from wealthy special interests can flood our
elections, the more policies that favor those interests are
reflected in the national political agenda. When it comes to
policy preferences, our Nation's wealthiest tend to have
fundamentally different views than do average Americans when it
comes to issues ranging from unemployment benefits to the
minimum wage to health care coverage.
(14) At the same time millions of Americans have signed
petitions, marched, called their Members of Congress, written
letters to the editor, and otherwise demonstrated their public
support for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens
United that will allow Congress to reign in the outsized
influence of unchecked money in politics. Dozens of
organizations, representing tens of millions of individuals,
have come together in a shared strategy of supporting such an
amendment.
(15) In order to protect the integrity of democracy and the
electoral process and to ensure political equality for all, the
Constitution should be amended so that Congress and the States
may regulate and set limits on the raising and spending of
money to influence elections and may distinguish between
natural persons and artificial entities, like corporations,
that are created by law, including by prohibiting such
artificial entities from spending money to influence elections.
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