On the recordJanuary 28, 2010
I hope the American people watched and heard President Obama's speech last night and were reassured. I know I was. There are so many things that he covered, I will not try to repeat all of them. I would like to expand on one of the very important matters he raised. On this, I will wear my hat as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision last week in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision threatens to allow corporations to drown out the individual voices of hard-working Americans in our elections. By overturning years of work in Congress, years of work by both Republicans and Democrats alike--campaign finance laws, and by reversing a century of its own precedent, the conservative, activist bloc on the Supreme Court reached an unnecessary and improper decision that is going to distort future elections. The Citizens United decision turns the idea of government of, by, and for the people on its head. It creates new rights for Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Congress, on behalf of the American people, struggled for years to enact campaign finance reform. Virtually every American wanted campaign finance reform. We finally did that in a bipartisan way in the landmark 2002 McCain-Feingold Act overcoming a filibuster and passing it with a bipartisan supermajority.
