WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats took the first step to try and stem the flood of unregulated dark money that's swamped politics since 2010, with a first procedural vote on a constitutional amendment to allow stronger regulation of campaign finances.
The unregulated cash spigot opened in 2010, when the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision reversed decades of precedent to allow corporations, unions and, ultimately, wealthy individuals to spend unlimited sums on political activity. The conservative majority on the high court opened the floodgates wider in April in its McCutcheon ruling by eliminating the overall limit on how much a single donor may give directly to all federal candidates and party committees.
"We are here today to overturn Citizens United," said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a lead sponsor of the measure, who spoke at a press conference Monday unveiling a purported 3 million signatures backing the constitutional amendment.
"We are here to say as strongly and forcefully as we can, 'Corporations are not people.' And were are here to take back our democracy from billionaires," Udall said. "Our elections are not auctions up to the highest bidder."
Several Senate Republicans joined Democrats on Monday to advance a constitutional amendment that would give Congress and the states greater power to regulate campaign finance.
But the bipartisanship ends there.
Many of the Republicans only voted for the bill to foul up Democrats’ pre-election messaging schedule, freezing precious Senate floor time for a measure that ultimately has no chance of securing the two-thirds support necessary in both the House and Senate to amend the Constitution.
The legislation needed 60 votes to advance and Democrats took a cynical view of the 79-18 tally. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the GOP’s tactic was simply to “stall” because it would eat up limited floor time that Democrats are eyeing for votes aimed at encouraging gender pay equity and raising the minimum wage.“They know we’re getting out of here fairly shortly and they want to prevent discussion on other very important issues,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “I would love to be proven wrong. But if the end of this week, we end up getting 67 votes, you can tell me I was too cynical.”