Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I rise to speak to regret that the constitutional amendment proposed by Senator Udall lost 54 to 42. Of course, a majority voted for it, but we need two-thirds for a constitutional amendment. I first want to thank Senator Udall for his great leadership on this issue. As chairman of the rules committee and a member of the Judiciary Committee, I have worked with him on this, and I know his passion and dedication to straightening our country out, straightening our system of campaign finance out.

Second, I want to say this: We are going to keep fighting until we get this done. The only way really to cure the Supreme Court's misguided ruling, whether it is in Citizens United or McCutcheon, is with a constitutional amendment. Our day will come. We are not giving up.

When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in McCutcheon several months ago, it was another step on the path towards destruction of our system of campaign finance laws. First in Citizens United and then in McCutcheon, the Supreme Court has been chipping away at the actual foundation of our democracy that everyone is equal in the political arena. It just does not mean equal in terms of votes; it means that if you are a multimillionaire, you should not be allowed to drown out the messages of everybody else.

If Congress does not respond, our system is going to collapse. This year, the amount of independent expenditures from a small number of individuals will exceed the money spent by all the others. It is just amazing. We cannot have it. That is why Democrats will continue to fight for a constitutional amendment that would finally allow us to fight back and regulate the dark money that is flooding our elections and threatening to take us back to the era of the robber barons. The Federal Government and the States should be allowed to pass laws that prevent unregulated sums of undisclosed money from pervading our elections.

This constitutional amendment would do just that. Unfortunately, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not see it that way. They have argued that the amendment would curtail freedom of speech. The Republican leader said in an op-ed earlier this week that Democrats are trying to take an eraser to the First Amendment.

Well, he is dead wrong. All Democrats are trying to erase is the hundreds of millions dollars--undisclosed--that are tainting our elections, whether they are coming from the Koch brothers or George Soros or Tom Steyer. All of them should not be allowed to have such huge influence.

Many other Republicans have portrayed this sensible amendment as an unparalleled attack on the First Amendment, which, they seem to argue, is absolute. I would say, for instance, to the Senator from Texas and my Republican friends that no amendment is absolute.

You cannot yell "fire'' in a crowded theater. Child pornography is illegal. We have libel laws. These are all sensible limits to the First Amendment.

This amendment is similarly a sensible amendment. It creates balance. Every amendment--and the Founding Fathers, when they created the Bill of Rights, and the States, when they ratified them, realized that ``balance'' is a watchword. We believe in the right to buy arms, but people shouldn't be allowed to buy a tank and ride down the street in it. We believe in all of the amendments, but none should be stretched to ridiculous extremes, which any law can be.

This amendment would go a long way to restoring fairness and credibility to a system of campaign laws that the Supreme Court has ripped to shreds over the past years.

I don't know if these Supreme Court Justices know the harm they are doing to our system in their abstract view that limiting many kinds of campaign finance violates the First Amendment, but I wish they could be on the ground and see the harm they are doing.

Simply put, unregulated dark money is poisoning our elections, and this amendment is the antidote. The American people want us to change the way elections are financed in this country not just for the sake of the system itself but because the current system results in a Congress that fails to do what average folks--the middle class--want it to do. Democrats want to raise the minimum wage, but the Koch brothers spend millions electing candidates who oppose it. Democrats want equal pay for equal work, but shadowy billionaires and corporate interests funnel millions to the campaigns of candidates who would block it.

We have to have fair elections in order to give the middle class a fair shot. And on the amendment the Presiding Officer has so valiantly sponsored, all we want to say is if you are a multimillionaire, you ought to pay taxes at the same rate as everyone else and use the money we gain to help make it easier for everyone to afford college and pay their college debts at a reasonable interest rate after they get out of college. But those who would be the small number who would be hurt by this have a few clarion voices who have billions of dollars who spend the money and prevent candidates who believe in this view--which most Americans believe in--from getting elected.

We have to have fair elections in order to give the middle class a fair shot. We hope our Republican colleagues will drop their objections and work with us to restore some semblance of fairness to our electoral system.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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