Mazie Hirono: “I want to thank my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, for his long and strong advocacy for cleaning up the…”

“I want to thank my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, for his long and strong advocacy for cleaning up the scourge of dark money in our country. Our country was built on the founding principles of democracy, where every person has a say--a democracy where the American people can make their voices heard in free and fair elections and we the people can decide the direction of our country. But in 2010, the Roberts Court, in an obvious act of judicial activism, struck down corporate campaign contribution restrictions found in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Suddenly, the Supreme Court said that corporations are people who have First Amendment constitutional rights to make campaign contributions. This decision opened the floodgates to billions of dollars of dark money to influence our elections, our Courts, and our thinking on issues from gun safety to abortion. When the Supreme Court held that political speech by a corporation is protected by the First Amendment, it left for Congress just the narrow authority to take action to require disclosure of donor names. After knocked-down, dragged-out negotiations in the U.S. House in 2010--I was there--the House passed a disclosure bill, only to see it fail in the Senate very narrowly without the support of a single Republican. Back then, we had the chance to require political spending disclosures so that the American people could see who was contributing millions to influence election outcomes.…”