A long-shot effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to curb political spending won the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. USA Today reports:
By a 10-8 vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee approved a measure that would give Congress and the states the power to ban corporations from spending money to influence elections. It heads next to the full Senate.
The proposed amendment stands little chance of winning the required support of two-thirds of Congress, but the heated debate at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday underscores the intensity of the fight over the growing role of unlimited money in elections.
The Supreme Court’s recent campaign-finance decisions have “twisted the meaning of the First Amendment” and “opened the floodgates to billionaires,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Democrats and campaign-finance watchdogs have denounced the court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision that allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts to influence elections as long as they operate independently of candidates. A separate high court ruling this year [McCutcheon v. FEC] abandoned the limits on the total amount of money an individual could give to call candidates, political action committees and political parties in an election.
Senate Tea-Publicans will filibuster the bill, and it will never see the light of day in the Tea-Publican controlled House — bootlickers doing the bidding of their corporate plutocrat masters.
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A step in the right direction but what’s really needed is two simple amendments:
28th: Money is just the amplification of speech, not speech itself.
29th: Corporations are not people.
Probably no chance of happening in our lifetimes but could be used to drive up Democratic base turnout.