Yarmuth Joins Effort to Free Elections from Corporate Cash

Kentucky's own Congressman Awesome, John Yarmuth, has joined the crowd proposing a Constitutional amendment to stop corporations and billionaires from buying elections.

From the Courier:

Rep. John Yarmuth is proposing a constitutional amendment that would overturn a campaign finance ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that the Louisville Democrat says has given special interests undue influence over elections.

Corporate money does not equal free speech but instead is political influence, Yarmuth said in an interview.

“The influence of money is growing and growing,” he said.

The congressman, who represents Kentucky’s 3rd District, is sponsoring the constitutional amendment with Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C.

The lawmakers are aiming to reverse the high court’s January 2010 decision in a case called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the high court ruled 5-4 that the government could not ban or limit political spending by corporations in federal elections.

The majority held that such a ban was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. Dissenting justices insisted that corporate spending would corrupt elections.

The ruling has raised the stakes in the debate over the role of money in politics, Yarmuth said.

“It’s literally raised the amount of special interest and corporate money that comes into the system and now it’s anonymous,” he said.

SNIP

Various groups backing a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United ruling so far have collected more than 750,000 signatures.

Constitutional amendments before Congress must be approved by a two-thirds vote in each house and then ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Yarmuth acknowledged that successfully passing a constitutional amendment will be tough.

“The conversation has to start, and Citizens United made that even more compelling,” the lawmaker said. “And secondly, this has been going on for literally generations, and I think it’s gotten to the breaking point now and you have to start somewhere.”

“There is growing attention to the issue of money in politics and the fact that the system is broken, so I think there are going to be more people looking at how you fix the system,” Yarmuth said.

Yarmuth's bill is at least the second introduced in the House and the third introduced in Congress.

From the Campaign for America's Future:

On Thursday, December 8th, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a constitutional amendment to drive big money out of politics for good. He was not alone. Senator Mark Begich of Alaska joined him. Sanders’ amendment is called “Saving American Democracy” but the language is identical to the “OCCUPIED” amendment offered in the House by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and beginning to attract co-sponsors.

If you like the Sanders/Deutch amendment, visit the website and sign the petition. Forty thousand people did just that within the first 24 hours.