Keeping Up With Citizens United

There's bound to be some kind of legislative response to last month's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, though at this point it's hard to tell what form it will take.  Here's a quick summary of the types of measures currently on the table: 

• Constitutional Amendment (Senate): a measure proposed this week would expressly authorize Congress to regulate "the raising and spending" of federal election money, and set set limits on federal campaign contributions and expenditures.  States could do the same for state elections.  
• Constitutional Amendment (House): authorizing Congress to regulate "the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity."
• Constitutional Amendment (House): introduced the day Citizens United was decided, this measure would bar corporations and labor organizations from using general treasury funds to pay for a federal campaign ad, regardless of whether the ad expressly advocates for the election or defeat of a particular candidate. 
• The Fair Elections Now Act: this bi-partisan measure seeks to eliminate the influence of corporate money by allocating federal funds to candidates who raise a certain amount through small-dollar contributions. 
• Save Our Democracy From Foreign Influence Act: a bill that would apply the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to domestic corporations whose shareholders include any foreign principles.
• Separate Taxpayer Dollars From the Election Act of 2010: to prevent corporations from using TARP money on campaign expenditures or electioneering communications.
• Stand By Your Ad Act of 2010: requiring that certain radio and television campaign ads disclose the top donors behind them.

-Kathleen Bergin

Comments

[Paul Secunda]

Kathleen:

I have also proposed a response which will prohibit employers from engaging in political captive audience meetings with their employees about the company view on candidates or parties. Such meetings used to be prohibited by the FEC but now are permitted after Citizens United. A captive audience meeting, common in labor law, occurs when an employer forces employees to listen to their views at pain of being terminated.

Here's the link to my political captive audience proposal: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1555427

Paul

[Howard Wasserman]

Thanks for putting this together. The constitutional amendments are just silly--carving out a special First Amendment limitation just for corporations is a non-starter. Separate Taxpayers Dollars arguably is unconstitutional under Simon & Schuster--it singles out expressive activity for different treatment from non-expressive activity. Fair Elections Now, if it finally would bring us to (or close to) true public financing, may be the only enactable, constitutional solution of all of these.

[Kathy]

It's also notable that some of the measures linked in the post, along with many, many others, were introduced by a single lawmaker, without co-sponsorship. Signals to me that some folks wanted to get out front with a political statement before working through the details of a more nuanced proposal that might have some legs.