Restoring Election Integrity

Floor Speech

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Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for giving me this opportunity to speak, but also for his leadership. This is such an important discussion for Americans, and I think most Americans don't realize what a deliberate effort this was for years to take away their power and place it in the hands of the wealthiest and, unfortunately, the most obscenely greedy people in this country who think only they have the wisdom to govern.

I thank the gentleman for giving me the opportunity to highlight how Citizens United has impacted not just the political landscape and indeed this room but also our Nation, our culture, and certainly our economy.

With the floodgates opened by the Supreme Court in 2010, corporations and billionaires can now make unlimited independent expenditures. As a result, the wealthy few have even more outsized influence on our politics.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the 2017 Trump tax cuts overwhelmingly favored the rich. The lowest 20 percent of earners got an average tax break of only $70 while the top 1 percent of earners received over $61,000 in tax breaks, and the top tenth of a percent saw over $250,000 of tax breaks. This is on top of the situation where we have the largest concentration of wealth in the history of this country, making it more obscenely unfair.

Those same tax cuts lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, which the Bipartisan Policy Center projected will increase the Federal deficit by almost $1 trillion dollars by fiscal year 2027.

Unsurprisingly, during the same period, billionaire spending on Presidential elections has skyrocketed, increasing from a total of $16 million before Citizens United was passed to over $2.6 billion in the years since Citizens United. What naive person would think that these people who contributed these obscene amounts of money did it for altruistic purposes? No, they did it for themselves. This is obscene greed. How much do they need?

When billionaires and corporations are able to spend unlimited amounts to influence the results of our elections, our elected officials are, in turn, unfortunately, more likely to respond by passing legislation that benefits corporations and the richest Americans while making life more expensive for middle-class Americans. If you are surprised about affordability, Mr. President, this is how real Americans have to live because of your policies and the people who preceded you.

Our Nation and the world are experiencing record levels of income inequality, and the impacts of Citizens United and other handouts to the obscenely rich and powerful are only making it worse.

It is past time that we change course and correct what has created this inequality. Compare it to the years of another Republican President, Dwight David Eisenhower, when we had the largest middle class in the country and the world in our history. Ironically, President Eisenhower said about working people, the labor movement: Only a fool--this is President Eisenhower--would come between an American worker and their ability to organize for other workers.

American voters deserve Representatives who will bring about positive change, not just cater to the interests of these obscenely wealthy donors and megacorporations. I am glad to be here today, and, again, I thank my colleague for doing this.

It is my belief America is about representing all of us, ordinary people as well as wealthy people. After all, are we a country of, by, and for Americans, or of, by, and for the obscenely wealthy?

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