Get Corporate Money Out of Politics.
Get Corporate Money Out of Politics.
Be the change you wish to see in the world - M. Gandhi
In President Obama’s State of the Union address, he spoke about the grave threat our country faces from the influence of corporate money in politics.
The President spoke specifically about last week’s Supreme Court decision in the case Citizens United vs. FEC, which overturned over a century of precedent and opened the floodgates for unlimited amounts of corporate money to flow into our political system. Shockingly, the court’s decision may even allow foreign corporations and large multinationals to manipulate our elections.
Progress on any issue we care about depends upon our ability to stop the corporate takeover of our electoral process. If we do nothing, this ruling has the potential to undermine the very foundation of our democracy.
Representative Alan Grayson has been one the most forceful voices in responding to this crisis. He has introduced a number of bills as part of a “Save Our Democracy” initiative to blunt some of the worst implications of the Supreme Court’s decision.
These bills would include a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees, prevent for-profit corporations that receive government money from making political contributions, and apply antitrust law to industry Political Action Committees. Click here for more information.
Without these types of laws, it will be even harder for candidates and elected officials to stand up to big business. Even before the decision, we too often saw the interests of Main Street subverted in favor of the interests of Wall Street. But with the Citizens United decision now law, large corporations have the power to spend unlimited amounts of money from their general treasuries to buy elections.
To put things in perspective, the roughly $745 million Barack Obama raised to run for President (which was the most money raised by any candidate ever to run for office in the U.S.) is dwarfed by the $45 billion in profits a single company (ExxonMobil) made in 2008.
We have heard that the Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate will be deciding in the next few weeks upon a legislative package to push in response to the Citizens United decision. We need to ensure they respond boldly.
Thank you for working to build a better world.
- The Change.org Team in partnership with CREDO Action
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