I am Congressman Jim McGovern, sponsor of two

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Hello! I am Congressman Jim McGovern, from the 2nd Congressional District of Massachusetts. Over the past three years, I've been one of the leading voices in Congress to overturn the Supreme Court's misguided decision in Citizens United, which unleashed a flood of corporate and special interest money into the American political system.

I recently introduced two constitutional amendments to that effect. The first amendment, HJ Res 20, advances the fundamental principle of political equality for all by empowering Congress and the States to regulate political spending. It will allow Congress to pass campaign finance reform legislation that will withstand Constitutional challenges. The second amendment, HJ Res 21, would overturn Citizens United and put a stop to the growing trend of corporations claiming first amendment rights. This “People’s Rights Amendment” not only addresses corporate rights as they pertain to campaign finance, but is broader in scope to clarify that corporations are not people with Constitutional rights. Importantly, the amendment clearly protects the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, freedom of association, and all other such rights of the people.

( My floor speech on those two amendments is just about at 100K views on YouTube )

More on me: I dedicate a lot of my time in Congress to human rights and hunger issues as the co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and the House Hunger Caucus. I'm also the second ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, and a member of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition, which has jurisdiction over SNAP, and other nutrition and consumer programs.

I'm a dad, a Red Sox fan, and proud to be from Worcester, MA. Ask me anything!

Proof on Twitter: @RepMcGovern

UPDATE: Thanks for joining me, everyone. This was a lot of fun and I hopfully will get a chance to do it again. Like I said, 10 years ago I never would have thought that a conversation like this would have been possible. I certainly don't have all the answers, but it's really important to have the discussion about money in politics.

Comments: 528 • Responses: 35 • Date: 2013-02-06 19:50:43 UTCsource

ReddiquetteAdvisor556 karma2013-02-06 20:01:34 UTC

Hi Congressman McGovern, thanks for doing this IamA! This is a conversation that many of us need to have. I want to see what you think about this issue in depth.

We have to clear up a number of misconceptions about the ruling that I've seen on reddit, and even heard in your own speech on the House floor.

Citizens United did not rule that corporations could donate as much money as they want to campaigns. In fact, the court reaffirmed that quid pro quo corruption exists in such a scenario, and it could be regulated and limited by the government. At issue was whether a corporation (in that case, a non-profit) could run its own advertisements advocating for a candidate. The Supreme Court ruled that the government has no interest in picking who can speak and who can't before an election.
Citizens United did not rule that "money is speech". If the government could limit how much money you're allowed to spend on speech, they could limit speech. This is long-standing precedent, Citizens United did not invent this concept, and even the liberal justices on the Supreme Court agree.
Citizens United did not rule that "corporations are people". Corporations have always been protected under the first amendment, because the first amendment prevents the government from abridging any speech -- whether it's you, your state, a company, a union or a robot. Here's a list of notable SCOTUS rulings that held corporations have first amendment protections:

Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (1952)

Kingsley Int'l Pictures Corp. v. Regents of Univ. of N.Y. (1959)

New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)

Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974)

Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn

Southeast-ern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad (1975)

Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc. (1975)

Time, Inc. v. Firestone (1976)

Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Willingboro (1977)

First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978)

Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps (1986)

Turner Broadcasting v. FCC (1997)

If an amendment relies on any of those arguments, it's bound to fail many logical tests. Let's take your proposed amendment, for example:

SECTION 2. The words people, person, or citizen as used in this Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected State and Federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

I don't think you realize that the first amendment does not say "people" have free speech. It says that the government cannot abridge any speech. Here's the language:

Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech

This is an incredibly important distinction and it's what protects the government from censoring, say, the NAACP. A good example would be (conveniently) NAACP v. Button:

The state of Virginia argued that it was not regulating the free speech of individual lawyers and citizens, but rather that of a corporation (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and that the U.S. Constitution did not protect the free speech rights of corporations as strongly as it did that of people.

Your law would take away free speech from any organization, period. It would leave it up to Congress and the States to decide. That is terrifying.

Many of the major misconceptions of Citizens United are addressed in this NYTimes article. When you stood on the House floor and said Citizens United resulted in a "dramatic" increase in corporate spending, you were wrong. It's just not true, for many reasons outlined in that article. And if you look at the data (PAC Track) (NYTimes), you'll see that the vast majority of these Super PACs (even in the last election) are predominantly funded by rich individuals -- who were not affected by Citizens United.

It's important to note that before and after Citizens United, rich individuals could spend as much money as they wanted on their own advertisements. But if you and your friends wanted to pool together to run an advertisement advocating for Obama before the election, it was outlawed by the BCRA (the law Citizens United overturned). Instead you had to form a PAC, which limits how much each individual can contribute to fund the advocacy, and requires you to get your advertisements approved by an 11-prong FEC test, attorneys and the whole nine yards.

It's pretty obvious that such a combination results in rich individuals being the number one source of "electioneering communications" while normal people are highly discouraged. Even the ACLU would be prohibited from advocating for Gary Johnson (if they wanted to) under that law. If the ACLU wanted to publish a pamphlet advocating for a candidate, the pamphlet would not only be illegal to distribute but ACLU would be subject to criminal penalties. These restrictions exist in no other area of the law with regards to speech, it's rather unprecedented.

The ACLU, in fact, agrees with the Citizens United ruling and has submitted many comprehensive briefs in support of it.

Quite frankly, these campaign finance laws only serve politicians who want to secure their re-election. Effectively, they want the official campaigns to have a monopoly on advocacy, meaning that the official campaigns get most of the donations. If a union disagrees with Romney, they can't tell people why. Meanwhile, the incumbent politician gets the majority of the 'donations', allowing for this type of corruption to exist in the first place.

It's not just limited to television. In the Citizens United oral arguments, the government attempted to argue that it could ban a book published by a corporation (Amazon/Barnes and Noble/etc.) before an election if even one sentence advocated for Obama. In the Citizens United case they were talking about an on-demand cable feature. Naturally, these restrictions scale up to everything from pamplets to blog posts. Indeed, in the ruling they stated:

Today, 30-second television ads may be the most effective way to convey a political message. See McConnell, supra, at 261 (opinion of SCALIA, J.). Soon, however, it may be that Internet sources, such as blogs and social networking Web sites, will provide citizens with significant information about political candidates and issues. Yet, §441b would seem to ban a blog post expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate if that blog were created with corporate funds. See 2 U. S. C. §441b(a); MCFL, supra, at 249. The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech.

People also need to abandon the notion that if the other side speaks more, they will win the election. Karl Rove's Super PAC was an absolute failure, the vast majority of the candidates they sponsored with hundreds of millions of dollars in advocacy ended up losing anyway. The same went for the Koch brothers. You can't speak your way to the office. People will vote in their own self-interest if you give them a free and unencumbered debate. If you allow everybody to put forth arguments, not just the Republican and Democratic party's official campaign committees, you will have a truly democratic system. (You may even get some worthwhile third parties!)

Many other huge contradictions exist in the idea that the government can prevent "corporations" from advocating for a candidate. In the BCRA they excluded "media" corporations from the limit, even though they also fit within the exact description of the "antidistortion rationale" used to justify the law. And why exactly do people on the left want unions to not be able to advocate for a candidate? They consist of, and are funded entirely by, individuals. Yet they cannot advocate for Obama before an election? You call that free speech?

I believe people are smart enough to vote in their own interests, and assess the speech of others as well. If we start down the road of "protecting" people from speech that might change their minds, we could justify insulating the public from debate entirely. This appears to be the foundation of your argument.

I really recommend that people read the Citizens United ruling. Read the dissent too. Google, wikipedia, whatever it takes. You should not play around with Constitutional amendments unless you are absolutely sure.

I am Congressman Jim McGovern, sponsor of two constitutional amendments to overturn Citizens United and restore “We, the people.” Ask Me Anything!

Jim McGovern