How Billionaires Ruined Politics (w/ Robert Reich)

Do you ever wonder why it seems like billionaires have suddenly become outrageously powerful, while the rights and needs of average Americans are, at best, ignored, and at worst eviscerated?

Hi, I’m Robert Reich, here to talk about one of the most destructive events in our recent political history: a Supreme Court ruling from 2010 called Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.

This decision was the final nail in the coffin for nearly a century of reforms that had been designed to curb the influence of corporations and the super-rich on our politics.

You see, during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, corporations could contribute almost unlimited sums of money to politicians in exchange for legislative favors, and many Americans correctly saw this as a form of legalized bribery.

So, in 1907, Congress banned direct corporate contributions by passing the Tillman Act – beginning an era of campaign finance reform, during which Congress enacted strict limits on election spending, and eventually created an agency responsible for overseeing them: The Federal Election Commission.

Fun fact: The FEC was partly created in response to secret donors and corporations literally handing Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign duffel bags full of cash.

But in the 1970s, the Supreme Court began chipping away at these reforms.

In Buckley v. Valeo, the Court ruled that independent political spending — money that an individual spends on their own to support a candidate without coordinating with the campaign — was protected under the First Amendment and could not be limited. In other words, you can spend as m uch money as you want to put up billboards in favor of a candidate as long as you’re not working with them in any way.

And in Boston v. Bellotti, the Court overturned a Massachusetts law that prevented corporate spending in state ballot measure campaigns, saying it violated the First Amendment rights of corporations. The Court’s reasoning? Political speech was protected under the First Amendment – regardless of its source.

The Court thereby invented a new kind of political free speech for corporations – albeit one limited to spending on state ballot initiatives.

With these two rulings, the Supreme Court set the stage for our elections to be further influenced by powerful corporations.

When Citizens United came up in 2010, the 5-to-4 conservative, pro-business majority struck the final blow to our democracy. The Court proclaimed that any limits on corporate campaign spending violated the free speech of corporations.

This allowed organizations called Super PACs – which could accept billions in “independent” contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals – to flourish.

Super PACs are essentially an "independent" arm of a political campaign with almost unlimited spending power. They can run ads, canvass voters, hold rallies, and compile mailing lists. Really, the only difference between a campaign and a Super PAC is that Super PACs cannot directly coordinate with candidates – but they CAN be run by former campaign staff who are in constant contact with the candidate.

If a corporation or individual making a large contribution doesn’t want anybody to know their identity, they can hide behind a non-profit that makes the donation on their behalf. Huge amounts of money flow anonymously through this dark money loophole.

In other words: candidates receive unlimited sums of money from individual donors and corporations with no accountability or disclosure requirements by using loopholes that amount to legalized bribery.

To give you an idea of how pervasive this is: the 2008 election was, at the time, the most expensive in U.S. history – outside groups spent over $300 million that year. In 2020, outside groups spent nearly $3 billion.

The Supreme Court has effectively transformed our electoral system into a playground for big corporations and the super rich.

So what can we do?

To overturn Citizens United, Congress would have to pass a constitutional amendment, which would require the approval of two thirds of both houses of Congress and three quarters of state legislatures. House Democrats have introduced an amendment to do just this, but the chances of passing it are low.

In the meantime, we have to fight for public financing of campaigns and stronger disclosure requirements, which will help people-powered candidates take on those funded by Big Money.

It’s also up to us as voters to elect candidates who refuse to take donations from corporations and the super-rich.

I know this sounds daunting – and it is. After all, we are fighting to overcome fundamental imbalances of power, and those with power will not give it up without a fight.

But I sincerely believe we, the people, can win. The only way we lose is by giving up.