Hillary Clinton's Big Announcement on Citizens United
Last week at the Netroots Nation 2016 conference, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addressed the attendees through a pre-taped video, announcing that, if she were elected, she would propose a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United v. FEC decision within the first 30 days of her administration.
“Today, I’m announcing that in my first 30 days as President, I will propose a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and give the American people – all of us – the chance to reclaim our democracy,” Clinton said in the taping. “I’ll also appoint Supreme Court justices who understand that this decision was a disaster for our democracy, and I will fight for other progressive reforms including small dollar matching and disclosure requirements. And I hope some of the brilliant minds in this room will seek out cases to challenge Citizens United in the courts.”
Clinton also committed to signing an Executive Order requiring federal government contractors to fully disclose all political spending and urging the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to move on the long-awaited rulemaking to require publicly traded companies to disclose all political spending to their shareholders.
These commonsense requirements for political spending disclosure have long been supported by Public Citizen.
Following the ruling in the Citizens United case, Public Citizen led the the fight to amend the Constitution to overturn the decision, working across the nation. At this point, 17 states from New York to Oregon have passed resolutions in support of an amendment to the constitution to overturn Citizens United.
More than 1.2 million investors and members of the public have already submitted comments to the SEC calling for a rule requiring the disclosure of corporate political spending, including major institutional investors, Secretaries of State, State Treasurers, former SEC Commissioners and Chairs, Senators and more. In addition, another million plus Americans have weighed in on the executive action on disclosure of secret contractor spending, and in December, Public Citizen worked with other progressive organizations to bring those million-plus signatures to President Obama to urge him to take action and curb dark money.
You too can show your support for getting money out of politics by signing a petition to overturn Citizens United here and sending a comment to the SEC regarding disclosure here.