Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act--Motion to Proceed--Resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me read what this article says. This is a member of the banking industry who contrasts what the old rules would have allowed, and that is under the old rules where there are limits as to how much people can contribute into a PAC, and that is $5,000 before the primary, $5,000 after, for a total of $10,000.

This is what this gentleman, Mr. Packard, from the banking industry, says:

If someone says I am going to give your opponent $5,000 or $10,000, you might say, ``Yea, okay.'' But if you say the bankers are going to put in $100,000 or $500,000 or $1 million into your opponent's campaign, that starts to draw some attention.

What that gentleman is saying, and what this whole issue is about, is that if a Member of Congress is prepared to stand up to Wall Street, they better watch out. If they are going to vote for a bill that protects consumers, they better watch out because--as this banker said--there may be $500,000 or $1 million going to your opponent and going into television and radio ads.

So when Members of the House and the Senate are thinking about how they want to address the recklessness and irresponsibility on Wall Street--if they are thinking, as I am thinking, about the need to break up these huge banks which have so much power and have done so much harm to our country; if they want to bring about reform of the Fed so we don't have representatives of the largest banks in America sitting on regional Feds--guess what. They are going to think twice about going forward because they are going to worry that when they go home on the weekend, there are going to be all kinds of ads from the banking industry.

Maybe they are concerned as to why in America we spend almost twice as much per person on health care as any other Nation. Maybe they want to move, as I do, to a single-payer health care system. Well, the private insurance companies are not going to like that. They are going to pour huge amounts of money into advertising.

Maybe they are concerned that in America we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Are they going to take on the pharmaceutical industry if they now have the ability to spend unlimited sums of money?

I come to the Senate floor this afternoon to express my profound disgust with the current state of our campaign finance system and to call for more disclosure until we can finally overturn Citizens United. I know the Presiding Officer from New Mexico has a very good constitutional amendment to do just that. I have one. There are other good amendments. Long term, there is no question in my mind that we need to overturn Citizens United. In my view, it will go down in history as one of the worst decisions ever to come from the Supreme Court by a 5-to-4 decision. Five members on the Court came to the bizarre conclusion that corporations should be treated as if they were people and that they have a first amendment right to spend as much money as they want in elections, even though corporations cannot vote.

On election day, the average American, after studying the issues, goes out and with pride votes for the candidate of his or her choice. There are many people in this country who make campaign contributions. Maybe they will contribute $25, maybe they will contribute $50. If they have a lot of money, maybe they will contribute $1,000 or $2,000. But what Citizens United is saying is that a small number of people who run large multinational corporations can spend as much as they want on campaigns. And if that is what American democracy is supposed to be about, you surely could have fooled me, and I think many of the Americans who have put their lives on the line to defend American democracy. American democracy is one person, one vote. We are all in this together. You may be rich or you may be poor, but under our Constitution you have one vote.

This country has had to go through a very rocky process to ensure one person, one vote. In the beginning poor whites could not vote, women could not vote, African Americans could not vote. We struggled and struggled, and we said in America every citizen of this country is going to have their say on election day. That is what we learned when we were in elementary school. That is what democracy is about. And by a 5-to-4 Supreme Court vote, the Supreme Court said: Everybody has one vote, but if you are rich or if you are the head of a corporation, you can go into corporate treasuries and spend as much money as you want. For the average Joe, it is one vote. Corporate America can spend unlimited sums of money buying the airwaves, and we are seeing this today.

This is no academic or intellectual debate. People all over America are
seeing the results of Citizens United today on their television stations and on their radio stations. In the past few months the American people have seen what Citizens United means.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, super PACs alone have spent over $112 million on this election, and we are still more than 5 months away from election day. If 2 weeks before the election there is a billionaire out there or the head of some corporation, who is to say that person cannot take hundreds of millions of dollars out of a large corporation and spend it on an election? It is totally legal but not what America is supposed to be about.

Mr. President, I know you are aware of it, once again, because of your excellent constitutional amendment. What we are seeing throughout grassroots America is that people are beginning to stand and they are saying: No, we don't want Citizens United. We want to overturn it. We want real democracy in this country.

I am very proud that in the State of Vermont, and in four other States, State legislatures have gone on record saying: Overturn Citizens United. There are 209 cities that have passed resolutions to that effect, including some 50 or 60 in the State of Vermont, and people are organizing all over America on this issue.

I thank Senator Whitehouse and others for the work they are doing on this DISCLOSE bill. This is the very least we can do, and I am eagerly waiting to hear the arguments from those people who oppose it.

If I put an ad on as a candidate or if Senator Whitehouse puts an ad on as a candidate, we have to say: I approve this ad. If you are saying something nasty or dishonest, the viewers have a right to know you are behind that ad, you are not hiding. Right now the ads that are going out over this country--who is paying for them? We don't know who is paying for them. We don't see that pretty face on TV saying: I am the CEO of this corporation, and I approve this ad. We don't get the immediate disclosure we should as to who is paying for that ad. That is all this DISCLOSE legislation does.

Long term, no question, we need a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. It would be awfully nice if maybe our friends on the Supreme Court realized the error of their ways and acted accordingly. But at the very least here in the Congress, we need to pass a DISCLOSE piece of legislation and minimize the severe damage that Citizens United is doing to our democracy.

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