Holland Lecture Series A Disaster for Democracy: The Campaign Finance Scandals of By Fred Wertheimer President, Democracy 21

Transcription

1 Holland Lecture Series A Disaster for Democracy: The Campaign Finance Scandals of 2012 By Fred Wertheimer President, Democracy 21 Holland Performing Arts Center Omaha, Nebraska October 24, 2012

2 2 A Disaster for Democracy: The Campaign Finance Scandals of 2012: Good evening. I think it s fair to say that the issue I am going to discuss tonight has been in the news a good deal this year. And in states with competitive presidential and congressional races, you literally cannot get away from campaign money in the form of nonstop, often negative, TV ads. Every national election we have turns out to be the most expensive in the country s history. Unlike the stock market, the cost of elections never goes down, it only goes up. The 2012 election, however, will be the most costly election in our history by far. Spending on the presidential and congressional elections combined is expected to reach $6 billion. President Obama and Mitt Romney, and the outside groups supporting them, are expected to spend at least $1 billion each in the election. Spending by Super PACs and nonprofit groups is expected to reach $750 million and could reach $1 billion. The money for these expenditures is coming in the form of unlimited contributions and secret donations from wealthy individuals and corporations, along with labor unions and other special interest groups. For anyone who might have been worried that we are not spending enough money on our elections you can stop worrying. But you might start worrying about what it means for our democracy to have all this money flooding our political system. I began working on the issue of money in politics in the spring of 1971, when I went to work as a lobbyist for Common Cause, a new citizens organization founded by John Gardner. I was assigned two issues to lobby on: campaign finance reform and legislation to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. I stopped working on the Vietnam War legislation in 1975 when the war ended.

3 3 John Gardner used to tell us that campaign finance reform was not for the short winded. He never told me, however, that I should plan on still doing this 41 years later. After three years on the job, we passed sweeping campaign finance reforms in 1974 in response to the Watergate scandals including the creation of a public financing system for presidential races. I thought to myself this is pretty easy. We should be able to fix the campaign finance system for congressional races in the next couple of years and the reform work would be finished. Needless to say, it didn t turn out that way. Given my own experiences, I tend to look at campaign finance issues in a longer term context. Money in politics is a cyclical issue. We have campaign finance scandals, like the Watergate scandals in the 1970s and the political party soft money scandals in the 1990s. They are followed by new reform laws like the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974 and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of The reforms work for varying periods of time the presidential public financing system, for example, worked for seven presidential elections. At some point candidates, parties and political operatives start pushing the envelope, loopholes are opened and the laws begin to break down. The absence of effective enforcement speeds up this process. This is followed by a new period of excess and scandal and then, once again, new opportunities for reform occur. This cyclical nature of the money in politics issue tells us several of things. First, we can never entirely and permanently eliminate influence-buying and political corruption. But, we can contain these problems and limit them to manageably low levels. Reforms can and have worked. Second, this is an area that requires constant vigilance on the part of the American people. Fortunately, citizens in our country have never accepted influence-buying and political corruption as a way of life and we cannot accept it today.

4 4 Third, we are again at the point in the cycle when new reforms are needed and the voices of citizens need to be heard. We are again at a crossroads for our democracy. Money in politics is a fundamentally important issue for a couple of reasons. If political money from a relatively few wealthy individuals and from well-financed, influenceseeking interests has disproportionate influence on the outcome of our elections, the basic principle of one person, one vote is undermined. Also, government decisions on taxes, spending, regulation, health care policy and countless other issues affect all of us. If decisions are made in Washington based on the undue influence of political money, the decisions that favor a few generally come at the expense of most Americans. The major triggering point for our current campaign finance crisis is the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case. Beginning in 1976, for three decades the Supreme Court generally upheld the constitutionality of campaign finance laws, based on the need for these laws in order to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption. When the makeup of the Supreme Court changed in 2005 and 2006, however, this resulted in a new Supreme Court majority hostile to campaign finance laws. On January 21, 2010, by a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case struck down as unconstitutional the ban on corporate expenditures to influence federal elections. The Court decision reversed past Supreme Court decisions and overturned a national policy that began in 1907 to prevent corporations from using their resources to influence federal elections. With the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court changed the landscape of American politics and has created a campaign finance system that is wreaking havoc on our political system. Citizens United resulted in the creation of Super PACs and the use of non-profit groups to launder secret contributions into our elections. Super PACs raise unlimited contributions to make unlimited expenditures to influence federal elections. They disclose their donors and expenditures and must make their campaign expenditures independently from the candidates they support under the Citizens United decision. Tax-exempt, nonprofit groups also raise unlimited contributions to make unlimited expenditures that need to be spent independently from candidates to influence federal elections. These groups, however, do not disclose their donors.

5 5 In order to qualify for this tax-exempt status and keep their donors secret, however, the primary purpose of the nonprofit groups must be to engage in social welfare activities. This requirement is being violated by a number of groups claiming the tax-status for the singular purpose of hiding their donors. As a result of the Citizens United decision massive amounts of unlimited contributions, secret money and corporate funds have returned to our national elections in 2012 for the first time since the Watergate era. These are the very kind of funds that were at the heart of the Watergate corruption scandals and the return of these funds has raised basic questions about the state of our democracy. Democracy and Representative Government Webster s Dictionary defines democracy as a system of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation involving periodically held free elections. Representative government is founded on the principle of consent of the governed and the belief that elected representatives will use their best judgments to make governing decisions. But what if large amounts of influencing-money are interposed between the voters and their elected representatives and the money creates obligations and indebtedness on the part of the representatives which determine the outcome of their government decisions? Citizens no longer get the best judgments of their elected officials, and representative government breaks down. This is what we face when we have a corrupt campaign finance system. As we experience the greatest amount of influence-seeking money ever invested in our elections, it pays to keep history in mind. Our Founders were greatly concerned about corruption. Zephyr Teachout writes in Democracy, a Journal of Ideas (Issue #11, Winter 2009) that the Founding Fathers were electrified by the fear of money influencing politics, and they went to great lengths to structure the Constitution to protect against financial interests takeover of the democratic structures. Teachout points out that Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers that for those at the Convention [n]othing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. The following quote goes back a little ways.

6 6 The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining the elections. This sounds relevant to today and it is. But it happens to be Plutarch writing in the first century A.D. about the impact of corruption on the Roman Republic. Or let s look at the thirteenth century rules applicable to the Doge of Venice: Firm measures are built in against corruption: the Doge may accept no presents except stipulated quantities of food and wine not more than one animal or ten brace of birds at a time and even those are forbidden if the donors have favors to ask. We have come a long way from ten brace of birds to $100 million from Sheldon Adelson. The lesson here is simple but important. The problems of influence-buying and political corruption have been with the world through the ages and in all civilizations. We cannot totally eliminate political corruption and influence-buying any more than we can eliminate human nature. But as we have done in the past and as other countries and civilizations have done, we can hold these problems in sufficient check to prevent them from undermining our democracy and our system of government. Watergate In 1972, a third-rate burglary at the Watergate Hotel, in the words of the Nixon White House, began the unraveling of the Watergate scandals, the worst campaign finance scandals of the 20th century. The burglary was financed with secret campaign funds. The Watergate scandals provided a classic example of the dangers of secret money, unlimited contributions and corporate funds in our political system the same kind of money now pouring into our elections. ITT Corp. provided $400,000 to finance the 1972 Republican convention. Shortly thereafter, the Justice Department settled an antitrust case in ITT s favor, with President Nixon personally intervening in the matter to support ITT. The dairy industry gave $2 million to the Nixon campaign. Shortly afterwards, the dairy industry got the increase in dairy price supports it had been seeking. President Nixon again personally intervened to support the dairy industry and override the objections of his Agriculture Department. Ambassadorships were explicitly sold to wealthy donors for requested six-figure contributions. President Nixon s personal attorney went to jail for selling an ambassadorship.

7 7 Twenty corporations were criminally convicted of violating the campaign finance laws. These included major corporations like American Airlines and Goodyear. Watergate Reforms The worst campaign finance scandals of the last century were followed by the most sweeping campaign finance reforms of the last century. Nearly seventy years after first being proposed by President Theodore Roosevelt, Congress in 1974 created a public financing system for presidential elections. Congress also enacted limits on contributions to federal candidates. Opponents of the new law immediately challenged the constitutionality of both of these reforms, which were upheld in 1976 by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo. The Supreme Court said the public financing system was a congressional effort: to use public money to facilitate and enlarge public discussion and participation in the electoral process, goals vital to a self-governing people. Thus, [the presidential public financing system] furthers, not abridges, pertinent First Amendment values. The Court said the candidate contribution limits were necessary: to deal with the reality or appearance of corruption inherent in a system permitting unlimited financial contributions. In other words, the Supreme Court said that a system of unlimited contributions was an inherently corrupt system. To this day, the Court has never moved away from this rationale for upholding the constitutionality of contribution limits. The late Senator Russell Long of Louisiana made the Court s point a few years earlier in a less formal and more direct way. Senator Long said, The distinction between a large campaign contribution and a bribe is almost a hairline s difference. Thirty years after the presidential public financing system was first used in 1976, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote the following about the system: Opponents of campaign finance reform love to claim that the money-in-politics problem is insoluble. But the public financing of presidential campaigns, instituted in response to the Watergate scandals of the early 1970s, was that rare reform that accomplished exactly what it was supposed to achieve. A few facts about the presidential public financing system:

8 8 From 1976 through 2000, almost every presidential candidate in both parties used the public financing system to finance their races. Beginning in 1976, every President elected used the public financing system for his general election race until 2008 when President Obama became the first person elected President since Richard Nixon to run his general election campaign on private funds. The biggest beneficiary of the presidential public financing system was President Reagan. He used the system to run for President three times and to win the presidency twice. President Reagan won re-election in 1984 without conducting a single fundraising event for his presidential campaign. Obviously, times have changed. The presidential system has broken down in recent years, in large part because Congress never made adjustments to modernize the system to recognize the greatly increased costs of running for president. Our organization worked with campaign finance reform leaders in Congress to draft legislation to repair the presidential financing system. That legislation is now pending in Congress. The contribution limits also worked until the Federal Election Commission issued flawed regulations that opened massive loopholes in the law and led to the soft money scandals of the 1990s. Using the loopholes, federal officeholders laundered unlimited contributions, known as soft money, through the national parties to be spent on their campaigns. In doing so, the officeholders evaded the limits on contributions to their campaigns enacted to prevent corruption. The role played by soft money was captured by Johnny Chung who gave $366,000 to the Democratic Party to help reelect President Clinton. Chung said, The White House is like a subway. You have to put in coins to open the gates. The soft money system grew into a $500 million national scandal by 2000 that was ended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known as the McCain-Feingold law. In 2003, the Supreme Court in the McConnell case upheld the constitutionality of the law. Testimony in this case provided by former Senators about the dangers of unlimited contributions to political parties is equally applicable today to the unlimited contributions be given today to Super PACs and nonprofit groups. Former Republican Senate Whip Alan Simpson testified: I have seen firsthand how the current campaign financing system prostitutes ideas and ideals, demeans democracy, and debases debates. Former Republican Senator Warren Rudman testified:

9 9 Individuals on both sides of the table recognize that larger donations effectively purchase greater benefits for donors. They affect whom Senators and House members see, whom they spend their time with, what input they get, and make no mistake about it this money affects outcomes as well. This testimony came from individuals who lived within this corrupt system. In 2010, the Citizens United decision opened new avenues for unlimited contributions to influence federal elections. The decision and later lower court decisions based on Citizens United have brought us the following: Corporations are free to spend, or contribute to outside groups to spend, as much of their trillions of dollars of resources as they wish to use to influence federal elections; Hundreds of millions of dollars in secret, unlimited contributions are being laundered into federal elections through groups claiming tax-exempt status without leaving any public fingerprints of who these donors are; Candidate-specific Super PACs that receive unlimited contributions and support only one candidate are serving as vehicles to eviscerate the limits on contributions to these candidates; Other Super PACs are using huge amounts of unlimited contributions to exercise disproportionate influence on elections, to bombard the races with negative attack ads and to provide opportunities for influence-buying and political corruption. History tells us that unlimited contributions and secret money in American politics are a formula for corruption and scandal. Here are a few specific facts about the 2012 election. There are 308 million residents in the United States according to the latest census. Two-thirds of the money contributed by individuals to Super PACs came from just 100 individuals at an average contribution of $2.3 million per donor, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Forty billionaires have given contributions ranging as high as $10 million per donor to the Super PAC supporting just Mitt Romney. The Super PAC supporting just President Obama hasn t done nearly as well with billionaires. The PAC was in single figures last time we checked. But President Obama has his own form of big money supporters: 179 individuals have gotten credit for raising, or bundling, at least $500,000 each for the Obama campaign.

10 10 Raising $500,000 for a candidate is no different than contributing $500,000 to the candidate when it comes to the potential for influence-buying. Last week, The Washington Post reported an invitation that went to an exclusive list of recipients to become co-chairs of a fundraising event for the Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney. All you had to do to become a co-chair was raise or bring a check for 1 Million/couple. The most famous Super PAC donor in 2012 is Sheldon Adelson. Mr. Adelson is a multibillionaire who owns a gambling empire based in Las Vegas and Macao, a region of China. He reportedly plans to contribute as much as $100 million to outside spending groups to be spent to defeat President Obama. When asked recently why he is giving this money, Mr. Adelson said his top reason is selfdefense. Mr. Adelson s gambling empire, but not Mr. Adelson, has reportedly been the subject of ongoing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles and a civil investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission. So perhaps what Mr. Adelson means when he talks about self-defense is if President Obama goes away the investigations of his gambling empire will also go away under a grateful President Romney. This is not, however, the way in which government decisions should be made about potential criminal prosecutions or anything else for that matter. Ironically, the Washington Post reported today that Mr. Adelson has said he finds the way U.S. elections are financed abhorrent putting too much power in the hands of the wealthy few. He s got that right. And then there are the secret donors. The top two outside spending groups claiming tax-exempt status as social welfare groups are Karl Rove s Crossroads GPS and the Koch Brothers American for Prosperity. These two groups reportedly had spent a combined $173 million in secret contributions to influence the 2012 elections as of September. This is more than the total amount reportedly spent by the top four super PACs combined. In a series of letters to the Internal Revenue Service over the past two years, our organization, joined by the Campaign Legal Center, has challenged the eligibility of Crossroads GPS and a number of other groups to receive tax-exempt status as social welfare groups. The groups we have challenged also include Priorities USA, an organization formed to support President Obama s re-election.

11 11 We have asked the IRS for investigations and appropriate sanctions for misusing the tax laws. By claiming tax-exempt status these groups can keep their donors secret, as long as their primary purpose is social welfare activities. This is a joke as it appears clear that the overriding purpose of groups like Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA is to influence federal elections. Karl Rove is not exactly known for his social welfare activities. And Priorities USA was formed by two politically, experienced White House staff officials shortly after leaving their White House jobs. To date, the IRS has failed to take any action on our complaints and in failing to do so the agency has failed to protect the integrity of the tax laws and the right of citizens to know who is funding the campaign expenditures being made to influence their votes. Impact of Outside Spending Groups Spending by outside groups is least likely to affect the outcome of a presidential race, since both major party candidates and their parties are likely to have the resources necessary to make their case to the public. This is the case in the current presidential race where President Obama and Mitt Romney, including their outside supporters, are expected to spend $1 billion each in the election. But even here, multimillion dollar, spending campaigns by outside groups in closely contested battleground states could have a determinative impact. There is much greater potential for determinative impact in Senate and House races where, on a relative basis, outside groups can spend much larger amounts than congressional candidates have available. Outside spending groups are the political equivalent of drones. They can dive into a close House race where each candidate has $2 million to spend and spend $5 million to defeat one of those candidates. They can do the same in close Senate races and spend $10 million in a race where each Senate candidate has $5 million to spend. Outside spending groups can also buy corrupting influence over government decisions for themselves or their donors if the candidates they support are elected and this is where the greatest damaging impact on our political system can be expected to occur. This is true, furthermore, notwithstanding the Supreme Court s naïve and misguided idea that this money cannot have corrupting influence on candidates as long the money is spent independently from the candidates. Perhaps the best explanation of why the Citizen United decision makes no sense and is just plain wrong has come from Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

12 12 Judge Posner is a conservative federal judge seen by many as the most influential judge outside of the Supreme Court Justices. Judge Posner has said this about Citizens United: Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment. Judge Posner explained: The Supreme Court allows donations to political campaigns to be regulated (and limited) because of fear that donations unlimited in amount corrupt the political process because the candidate recipient knows that a donor of a large amount of money expects something in return, usually favorable consideration of a policy that would benefit the donor, and hence a large donation is likely to be a tacit bribe. Judge Posner stated: [I]t is difficult to see what practical difference there is between super PAC donations and direct campaign donations, from a corruption standpoint. According to Judge Posner, the donors to a Super PAC are known and: [I]t is unclear why they should expect less quid pro quo from their favored candidate if he s successful than a direct donor to the candidate s campaign would be. Citizens Can Achieve Fundamental Change The American people do not like what is going on. National polls this year show that citizens overwhelming reject the campaign finance system created by the Supreme Court. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, Nearly seven in 10 registered voters would like super PACs to be illegal. A Survey USA poll found that more than 75 percent of voters view corporate election spending as an attempt to bribe politicians rather than as free speech protected by the First Amendment. According to an Associated Press poll, More than 8 in 10 Americans support limits on the amount of money given to groups that are trying to influence U.S. elections. And a Gallup Poll found that Americans view reducing government corruption as the secondhighest priority for the next president, behind only job creation. The challenge that lies ahead is to galvanize the widespread concern of the American people into citizen action for fundamental change.

13 13 As long as the Citizens United decision stands, we cannot restrict spending of unlimited contributions by outside groups making truly independent expenditures. Some believe the best way to attack the problem is by pursuing a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision. This is one effort that is being pursued although constitutional amendments are very difficult to achieve. Others believe there are changes within the boundaries of the Citizens United decision that stuill can make a fundamental difference and that these changes may prove to be a more viable approach. This is the path our organization is currently focused on. In this regard, first and foremost, we need a small donor revolution in American politics. We need the symbol of future elections to be ordinary Americans, not Sheldon Adelson. In August, our organization joined with the Brennan Center for Justice to issue a report entitled Empowering Small Donors in Federal Elections. The report included a new proposal to empower citizens to play a central role in financing presidential and congressional elections by matching their small contributions with multiple public funds and greatly increasing the importance and value of the small contributions. For anyone who may be interested, you can find our report on our website at Our proposal has been described in a New York Times editorial (August 22, 2012) as "a plan that could restore a voice to ordinary citizens." By engaging and empowering small donors, and making their contributions far more important in financing elections, we can counter and dilute the role and importance of influence-seeking money and reduce the opportunities for government corruption. We can also provide candidates with an alternative way to finance their campaigns without having to sell their souls to their funders. Last month, many of the recommendations in our proposal were incorporated into the Empowering Citizens Act, legislation introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives David Price (D-NC) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). The Act makes small contributions much more important to candidates by matching individual donations up to $250 per donor with public funds at a 5 to 1 ratio. In return, participating candidates have to agree to cut in half the size of the maximum contribution they can accept from an individual donor.

14 14 An editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer said about the Act, The Empowering Citizens Act could change the game by putting control of the money flow in the people's hands. The editorial described the Act as a bill that could provide an alternative to politicians' dependency on the huge amounts of campaign cash that come with strings attached. The Empowering Citizens Act would also end candidate-specific Super PACs like the ones supporting President Obama and Mitt Romney by defining such PACs to be arms of the candidates they are supporting and therefore subject to the limits on contributions to candidates. The Act also strengthens the ability of political parties to work with their candidates to help respond to spending by outside groups against the candidates. Role for the Internet and Social Media In addition to advocating the Empowering Citizens Act, our organization is pursuing another very important way to increase the role of small donors in financing our elections. The Democracy 21 Internet Project is based on the idea that the Internet and social media have revolutionized our society and can also revolutionize the way our campaigns are financed. The Project is aimed at developing new ways to make use of the Internet and new media to engage and empower tens of millions of citizens to make small contributions to candidates. In order to do this, the technological innovators and digital age platform companies that have transformed our society need to be enlisted to help create a user-friendly system for online giving available to all potential donors and all candidates. The leading new media companies with their enormous ability to reach tens of millions of citizens need to be persuaded to help the nation solve a fundamental problem for our democracy. Our Internet Project has several distinct advantages. The Project does not require legislation to be successfully implemented and therefore cannot be blocked by the partisan divisions that have gridlocked Congress in recent years. For most of the time I have worked on campaign finance reform, we have had bipartisan leadership and bipartisan support in Congress. In recent years, however, this has broken down on the campaign finance issue as it has on most other public policy issues. The Internet Project also does not involve constitutional or legal issues and therefore cannot be thwarted by the Supreme Court majority s hostility to campaign finance laws. A small donor matching funds program and technological breakthroughs in small donor online giving and fundraising can revolutionize the way our campaigns are financed.

15 15 Disclosure We also need to do one more thing: we need to put an end to unlimited, secret contributions being laundered into our elections. In 2010, legislation to close the disclosure loopholes for outside spending groups passed the House and received 59 votes in the Senate, one vote short of breaking a filibuster and being enacted. The legislation received no Republican votes. Our organization helped draft this legislation and has led the outside coalition efforts on its behalf. For more than three decades Republican and Democratic officeholders alike had a consensus view that citizens have a basic right to know who is giving and spending money to influence their votes. This bipartisan consensus ended following the Citizens United decision. In 2000, for example, when Congress passed the 527 Organization Disclosure Act, 48 Republican Senators and 44 Democratic Senators voted for this disclosure legislation. Ten years later in 2010, no Republican Senators voted for the disclosure legislation that is necessary following the Citizens United decision. In 2012, the DISCLOSE Act received 53 votes in the Senate but was again short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Again, no Republican Senator voted for the legislation. The effort to enact the DISCLOSE Act will continue in the next Congress with an emphasis on rebuilding bipartisan support for disclosure legislation. Unlike in Congress, however, there is no partisan divide in the country over disclosure. A poll taken this year by the Clarus Research Group found that 88 percent of respondents believe that all political campaign contributions and expenditures should be publicly disclosed. Other national polls have similarly found overwhelming public support for disclosure. The Supreme Court also has consistently supported and upheld campaign finance disclosure laws for more than three decades. Even in the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court, by an 8 to 1 vote, upheld existing campaign finance disclosure requirements for outside spending groups. The Court said that disclosure serves governmental interests in providing the electorate with information about the sources of money spent to influence elections so that voters can make informed choices in the political marketplace. The Supreme Court, however, wrongly assumed that existing laws would provide the kind of disclosure it endorsed. In fact, the existing laws requiring outside groups to disclose their donors had been gutted by flawed FEC regulations.

16 16 Justice Scalia is perhaps the Supreme Court s strongest supporter of disclosure laws. In a concurring opinion in a ballot measure disclosure case, Justice Scalia said, requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. Despite the Supreme Court s longstanding support for disclosure, opponents are challenging disclosure laws in the courts all over the country. Our organization and the Campaign Legal Center have been successful in defending these disclosure laws and helping to defeat almost all of the court challenges. Conclusion This brings me back to where I began this evening: democracy at a crossroads. The country is faced today with a corrupt campaign finance system that is doing serious damage to our democracy. This will only get worse in the years ahead until we address the problem. There are discussions in the media about which political party and which candidates are benefiting most from the outside spending groups. That is not the issue for the country. The issue for the nation is what is the massive spending of massive amounts of unlimited contributions doing to our political system and to the interests of the American people? In the 1980s, former Republican Senator Barry Goldwater spoke about the dangers of political money. Senator Goldwater said in Senate testimony: Our nation is facing a crisis of liberty if we do not control campaign expenditures. We must prove that elective office is not for sale. We must convince the public that elected officials are what James Madison intended us to be, agents of the sovereign people, not the hired hands of rich givers or what Madison called factions. In 2002, former Democratic Senator Dale Bumpers said in court testimony in support of the soft money ban: People are dreaming if they think a democracy can survive when elected officials and the bills they consider are beholden to big donors. We are the world s oldest existing democracy. We have an obligation to our Founders, to others in the world who look to us as a model for democracy and most importantly to ourselves to clean up our own house. A small donor revolution in American politics will help to restore the integrity of our democracy and the health of our representative system of government. It will also restore citizens to their rightful preeminent place in our democracy.

17 17 Democracy 21, along with others, will undertake an all-out-effort beginning in 2013 to build support from citizens, citizens groups, other organizations, business leaders, opinion makers, editorial writers and officeholders for the enactment of the Empowering Citizens Act and the DISCLOSE Act. We have won these battles before. We can and will win then again. I hope you will find a way to join in this effort. Thank you.