U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

28–401 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018

S. HRG. 113–889 

EXAMINING A CONSTITUTIONAL 

AMENDMENT TO RESTORE DEMOCRACY 

TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 3, 2014 

Serial No. J–113–62 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

CHUCK SCHUMER, New York 

DICK DURBIN, Illinois 

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota 

AL FRANKEN, Minnesota 

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

MAZIE HIRONO, Hawaii 

CHUCK GRASSLEY, Iowa, Ranking Member 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

JOHN CORNYN, Texas 

MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

KRISTINE LUCIUS, Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

KOLAN DAVIS, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

JUNE 3, 2014, 10:32 A.M. 

STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS 

Page 

Cornyn, Hon. John, a U.S. Senator from the State of Texas, 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 85 

Cruz, Hon. Ted, a U.S. Senator from the State of Texas ..................................... 13 

Durbin, Hon. Dick, a U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois .............................. 11 

Grassley, Hon. Chuck, a U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa ............................ 3 

Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont .................... 1 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 81 

Whitehouse, Hon. Sheldon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode Island, 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 83 

WITNESSES 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 51 

Abrams, Floyd, Partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, New York, New York .. 17 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 60 

McConnell, Hon. Mitch, Minority Leader, a U.S. Senator from the State 

of Kentucky ........................................................................................................... 9 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 54 

McKissick, Hon. Floyd B., Jr., State Senator, North Carolina General Assembly, Raleigh, North Carolina ............................................................................... 15 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 56 

Raskin, Jamin B. ‘‘Jamie’’, Professor of Law and Director, Program on Law 

and Government, American University Washington College of Law, Washington, DC ............................................................................................................. 18 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 73 

Reid, Hon. Harry, Majority Leader, a U.S. Senator from the State of Nevada .. 6 

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 52 

QUESTIONS 

Questions submitted to Floyd Abrams by Senator Grassley ................................ 92 

Questions submitted to Floyd Abrams by Senator Lee ........................................ 97 

Questions submitted to Hon. Floyd B. McKissick, Jr., by Senator Grassley ...... 95 

Questions submitted to Prof. Jamin B. Raskin by Senator Durbin .................... 91 

Questions submitted to Prof. Jamin B. Raskin by Senator Grassley .................. 96 

ANSWERS 

Responses of Floyd Abrams to questions submitted by Senator Grassley .......... 99 

Responses of Floyd Abrams to questions submitted by Senator Lee .................. 110 

[Note: At the time of printing, after several attempts to obtain responses 

to the written questions, the Committee had not received responses from 

Hon. Floyd B. McKissick, Jr.] 

Responses of Prof. Jamin B. Raskin to questions submitted by Senator Durbin .. 113 

Responses of Prof. Jamin B. Raskin to questions submitted by Senator Grassley 129 
Page

IV 

MISCELLANEOUS SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Charlotte Observer, The, ‘‘Another window to corruption; Our View,’’ April 2, 

2014, editorial ....................................................................................................... 138 

Kromm, Chris, Executive Director, Institute for Southern Studies, Durham, 

North Carolina, statement .................................................................................. 154 

Liptak, Adam, ‘‘Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court,’’ The New 

York Times, May 4, 2013, article ........................................................................ 140 

Sanders, Hon. Bernard, a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont, and 

Hon. Theodore E. Deutch, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Florida, statement ............................................................................................ 160 

Udall, Hon. Tom, a U.S. Senator from the State of New Mexico, statement ..... 148 
(1) 

EXAMINING A CONSTITUTIONAL 

AMENDMENT TO RESTORE DEMOCRACY 

TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2014 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:32 a.m., in Room 

SH–216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Patrick J. Leahy, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Leahy, Feinstein, Schumer, Durbin, 

Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Franken, Coons, Blumenthal, Hirono, 

Grassley, Hatch, Sessions, Cornyn, Cruz, and Flake. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, 

A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT 

Chairman LEAHY. I just thought, before I start, I think—and I 

am joined in this by Senator Grassley—that today’s hearing deals 

with a serious issue, and I am delighted to see so many members 

of the public who are interested and are here. Also, of course, as 

is the practice that I began with the Judiciary Committee, we 

stream these hearings live. But I expect all members of the public 

understand this is a serious matter and will act accordingly. 

The rules of the Senate prohibit outbursts, clapping, demonstrations of any kind, including both for or against positions I might 

take or any other Senator might take or Members might take, including the Democratic Leader and Republican Leader. 

Also, you are prohibited from blocking the view of people around 

you, which means if you hold up signs that block people’s views, 

I will have to ask the Capitol Police to remove you—again, whether 

those signs are favorable to our position or not. A lot of people have 

stood in line a long time. Everybody deserves the courtesy of being 

able to watch. I understand—and there will be plenty of room outside for people to demonstrate, hold up their signs, and hope they 

will get in the press, either for or against, or to do whatever they 

want to get press, and I do not want to stop them from doing that. 

But there will be the press corps outside, and the most—I might 

say I find those who can be the most imaginative in stating their 

position, whether they are in the minority or majority, usually end 

up getting in the paper, and God bless them. 

This morning the Senate Judiciary Committee begins its consideration of a constitutional amendment to repair the damage done 

by a series of flawed Supreme Court decisions that overturned 
2 

longstanding precedents of the Court and eviscerated campaign finance laws. I believe that, left unanswered, these rulings will continue to erode fundamental aspects of our democratic process. 

Therefore, the Congress and the American people have to act. 

Years ago, Congress passed campaign finance laws to preserve 

the integrity of the electoral process, to prevent and deter corruption, and to limit the undue influence of the wealthy and special 

interests in our election, rules that each of us have had to follow, 

and these were passed by large majorities, Republican and Democratic, in the Senate and House. But five Justices have now repeatedly overturned these common-sense and time-honored protections—through the Citizens United and McCutcheon cases. In doing 

so, the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to billionaires 

who are pouring vast amounts of unfettered and undisclosed dollars into political campaigns across the country. Justice John Paul 

Stevens had it right when he wrote that the Court’s decision in 

Citizens United ‘‘threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation.’’ 

I have heard from countless Vermonters about how the Supreme 

Court’s decisions threaten the constitutional rights of hardworking 

Americans who want to have their voices heard, not drowned in a 

sea of corporate special interests and a flood of campaign ads on 

television. They also would like to know who is actually behind ads 

for or against a particular person. 

The American people continue to voice their support through 

other avenues. More than 2 million individuals signed petitions 

calling for a constitutional amendment to fight back against the 

corrosive effects of the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding money 

in politics. Those petitions have been brought, I believe, to our 

hearing room today, and they are in those boxes in the back, those 

large white boxes. They are a tangible reminder that Americans 

are calling on Congress to act. 

You know, the ability of all Americans—not just wealthy ones— 

to express their views and have their voices heard in the political 

process is vital to self-government. The common sense of the American people tells us that corporations are not people. The Supreme 

Court says corporations are people, but while we would like a General Eisenhower President, we are probably not going to like a 

General Electric President. Those who claim to adhere to the original intent of the Constitution cannot reasonably argue that the 

Framers viewed the rights of corporations as central to our electoral process. 

I have served in the Senate for nearly 40 years, as Chairman of 

the Judiciary Committee for nearly 10 years. I have long been wary 

of attempts to change the Constitution because I have seen so 

many hundreds of proposals that I have opposed used like bumper 

stickers merely to score political points. Our fundamental charter 

is sacred, and amending it should only be done as a last resort. But 

like most Vermonters, I strongly believe that we must address the 

divisive and corrosive decisions by the Supreme Court that have 

dismantled nearly every reasonable protection against corruption 

in our political process. 

We have tried for years to pass a law to require transparency 

and disclosure of political spending to let people know where the 
3 

money is coming from and from whom and which special interests 

it might be. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans have repeatedly 

filibustered that legislation, known as the DISCLOSE Act. It would 

have at least allowed people to know who is pouring the money 

into our electoral process. So I hope that we will be able to convince 

enough of my friends on the other side of the aisle to overcome the 

filibuster of this transparency matter. But because the Supreme 

Court based its rulings on a flawed interpretation of the First 

Amendment, a statutory fix alone will not suffice. 

I am going to turn first, of course, to Senator Grassley. Then we 

want to hear from both Senator Reid and Senator McConnell. And 

I want to thank my friends Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell for 

being here. I think their joint appearance is a first in this Committee’s history, as near as we can tell. I can only speak for 40 years 

of the Committee’s history, but it underscores the importance of the 

public discussion we are having today. While we may disagree on 

some issues, both of the Senators are good friends of mine, and I 

am glad to have them here. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Leahy appears as a submission for the record.] 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHUCK GRASSLEY, 

A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF IOWA 

Senator GRASSLEY. Mr. Chairman, our Leaders, and my colleagues on this Committee, I cannot think of a more important 

hearing than our Committee could hold. After all, what is more important than protecting our Bill of Rights? 

However, this hearing also shows as clearly as possible the differences between conservatism and progressivism today. So let us 

start with First Principles. The Declaration of Independence states 

that everyone is endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 

rights that governments are created to protect. Those preexisting 

rights include the right to liberty. The Constitution was adopted to 

secure the blessings of liberty to all Americans. In the period of 

time 1787 to 1789, Americans rejected the view that the structural 

limits on government power contained in the original Constitution 

would adequately protect the liberties that they had fought a revolution to preserve. So they insisted at that time on the adoption of 

a Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights protects individual rights regardless of whether the Government or a majority approves of their 

use. The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects the freedom of speech. That freedom is basic to self-government. Other 

parts of the Constitution foster equality or justice or representative 

government. But the Bill of Rights is only about one thing—individual freedom. 

Free speech creates a marketplace of ideas in which citizens can 

learn, debate, and persuade fellow citizens on the issues of the day. 

At its core it enables the citizenry to be educated to cast votes to 

elect their leaders. Today freedom of speech is threatened as it has 

not been in many decades. Too many people are impatient and will 

not listen and debate and persuade. Instead, they want to punish, 

intimidate, and silence those with whom they disagree. A corporate 

executive who opposed same-sex marriage—the same position that 

President Obama held at that time—is to be fired. Universities 
4 

that are supposed to be fostering academic freedom cancel graduation speeches by speakers that some students find offensive. Government officials order other Government officials not to deviate 

from the party line concerning proposed legislation. Now, today, 

S.J. Res. 19, cut from the same cloth, would amend the Constitution for the first time to diminish an important right that Americans have that is contained in the Bill of Rights. In fact, it would 

cut back on the most important of these rights: core free speech 

about who should be elected to govern ourselves. The proposed constitutional amendment would enable Government to limit funds 

contributed to candidates and funds spent by or in support of candidates. That would give the Government the ability to limit 

speech. The amendment would even allow the Government to set 

the limit at zero. There could be no contributions. There could be 

no election spending. There could be no public debate on who 

should be elected. As you can conclude, incumbents like us here at 

the table would find that outcome to be very acceptable. They 

would know that no challenger could run an effective campaign 

against them. Rationing of speech at low limits would produce 

similar results. 

What precedent would this amendment create? 

Suppose Congress passed limits on what people could spend on 

abortions or what doctors or hospitals could spend to perform 

them? What if Congress limited the amount of money people could 

spend on guns? Or to limit how much people could spend of their 

own money on their own health care? Should Congress limit how 

much people can give to charities or how much a charity can 

spend? Under this amendment, Congress could do what the Citizens United decision rightfully said it could not. For instance, it 

could not make it a criminal offense for the Sierra Club to run an 

ad urging the public to defeat a Congressman who favors logging 

in the national forests. It could not stop the National Rifle Association—or it could stop the National Rifle Association from publishing a book seeking public support for a challenger to a Senator 

who favors a handgun ban; or for the ACLU to post on its website 

a plea for voters to support a Presidential candidate because of his 

stance on free speech. That should be a frightening prospect to all 

of us. 

Under this amendment, Congress and the States could limit campaign contributions and expenditures without limit and without 

complying with existing constitutional provisions. Congress could 

pass a law limiting expenditures by Democrats but not by Republicans, by opponents of Obamacare but not by supporters. 

And what does the amendment mean when it says that Congress 

can limit funds spent in opposition to candidates? If an elected official says he or she plans to run again, long before any election, 

Congress under this amendment could criminalize any criticism of 

that official as spending in opposition to a candidate. A Senator on 

the Senate floor, appearing on C-SPAN free of charge, could with 

immunity defame a private citizen. The Member could say that the 

citizen was buying elections. If the citizen spent any money to 

rebut the charge, he could end up being charged. We would be back 

then to the days when criticism of elected officials was a criminal 

offense, and you remember the history of the Alien and Sedition 
5 

Acts. And yet its supporters say this amendment is necessary for 

democracy. It is outrageous to say that limiting speech is necessary 

for democracy. 

The only existing right that the amendment says it will not harm 

is freedom of the press. So Congress and the states could limit the 

speech of anyone except those corporations that control the media. 

That would produce an Orwellian world in which every speaker is 

equal but some speakers are more equal than others. Freedom of 

the press has never been understood to give the media special constitutional rights denied to others. 

After years of denying it, supporters of political spending limits 

now admit that enacting their agenda of restricting speech may require an amendment to our fundamental charter of liberty. But in 

light of recent Supreme Court decisions, an amendment soon may 

not be needed at all. You know, there are four Justices right now 

who would allow core political speech to be restricted. Were a fifth 

Justice with this view to be appointed, there would be no need to 

amend the Constitution to cut back on freedom. 

Justice Breyer’s dissent for these four Justices in the 

McCutcheon decision does not view freedom of speech as an end in 

itself. Of course, our Founding Fathers did view that as an end in 

itself. Just Breyer thinks free political speech is about ‘‘the public’s 

interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech 

matters.’’ 

To be sure, individual rights often advance socially desirable 

goals. But our constitutional rights do not depend on whether 

unelected judges believe they advance democracy as they conceive 

it. Our constitutional rights are individual. They are not collective. 

Never in 225 years has any Supreme Court opinion described our 

rights as ‘‘collective.’’ So as the Declaration of Independence states, 

our rights, they come from God and not from the Government or 

the public. 

Consider the history of the last 100 years. Freedom has flourished where rights belonged to individuals that governments were 

bound to respect; where rights were collective and existed only at 

the whim of a government that determines when they serve socially desirable purposes, the results have been literally horrific. 

So we should not move even one inch in the direction of liberal 

Justices and where this amendment would take us. The stakes 

could not be higher for all Americans who value their rights and 

freedoms. Speech concerning who the people’s elected representatives should be, speech setting the agenda for public discourse, 

speech designed to open and change the minds of our fellow citizens, speech criticizing politicians, and speech challenging government policies are all in this Nation’s vital rights. This amendment 

puts all of them in jeopardy upon penalty of prosecution. It would 

make America no longer America. And so I intend to do what I can 

to stop it and urge others to do the same. 

Thank you. 

Chairman LEAHY. Thank you, Senator Grassley. I appreciate 

what you said about the Supreme Court. Who knows? Someday we 

will have Supreme Court Justices who will actually follow the 

precedents that they swore under oath during their confirmation 

hearing they would follow. 
6 

But what I want to do is hear from Senator Reid and Senator 

McConnell, and then, because they are the Chair and Ranking 

Member of the Subcommittee that will be handling this, very brief 

remarks from Senator Durbin and Senator Cruz. 

Senator Reid. 

STATEMENT OF HON. HARRY REID, MAJORITY LEADER, 

A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEVADA 

Senator REID. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for convening 

this hearing. I know you remind me all the time about all the work 

that is done out of this Committee. Having served in State legislature in a Judiciary Committee, I understand much of the work is 

funneled through this Committee, either on a State level or Federal 

level. 

Senator Grassley, thank you also for your statement. 

I am very impressed with the attendance here today. It is really 

heart-warming to see everyone caring so much about this issue. 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I am here because 

the flood of dark money into our Nation’s political system poses the 

greatest threat to our democracy that I have witnessed during my 

tenure in public service. The decisions by the Supreme Court have 

left the American people with a status quo in which one side’s billionaires are pitted against the other side’s billionaires. 

So we sit here today with a simple choice: We can keep the status quo and argue all day and all night, weekends, forever, about 

whose billionaires are right and whose billionaires are wrong; or 

we can work together to change the system, to get this shady 

money out of our democracy and restore the basic principle of one 

American, one vote. 

Mr. Chairman, just a little bit of history from my perspective. I 

ran for the Senate in 1974, and I had to be educated about the Federal laws, because in Nevada we had an entirely different system. 

Cash was available to politicians. 

In the Federal system, that is not the case, and that was not the 

case. One of Paul Laxalt’s very close advisers, a man by the name 

of Wayne Pearson, who was supporting me, said, ‘‘Under the Federal rules, be very careful. You cannot take any cash from anybody. 

The rules are very strict. Whoever gives you money, there is a limit 

to how much they can give. You give their address, their occupation, and be very careful any money you take. There is a new system.’’ 

Well, Mr. Chairman, I have been asking Nevadans to vote for me 

for decades, and I have seen firsthand how this dark money is 

perverting our political system. Way back then, 40 years ago, it 

was pretty easy to follow the rules. But I have seen it change. 

In 1998, I had a very close election with John Ensign. We each 

spent about $10 million. And we were allowed to do that because 

the Supreme Court again created an opening that said you could 

divert money into the State party. And that money could be corporate money or it could be any kind of money. It could be used 

for denigrating the other person or building the person up. It was 

a bad situation. I felt so unclean, for lack of a better word. A person could give lots of money. One person gave a quarter of a mil-
7 

lion dollars to the State party. Of course, he wanted me to know 

that he had done it. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, I know that did not corrupt me. But it was 

corrupting. And after 1998, two good Senators got together and 

worked very hard to change the system. We passed the McCainFeingold law that took corporate money out of politics. So when I 

ran in 2004, it was like I had taken a bath and I felt so clean. Everyone who was involved in a Federal election had to list where 

they got their money. There was a limit of how much you could ask 

and get from someone else. You listed their occupation and, you 

know, so on. That was wonderful. 

And then comes 2010, and we went back into the sewer with 

Citizens United. In January, the Supreme Court had ruled that no 

holds barred, any money could come from any source, with rare, 

rare exception. And that race was, as far as I was concerned, not 

a lot of fun. 

The race in 2010 made 1998 seem like a picnic in the park, 

money coming from every place, without a suggestion as to where 

the money came from. Citizens for Good Government, good guys, 

sponsored this one. In 2010, in that race in Nevada, probably $120 million was spent 

in that race. Can you imagine that? No one knew where the money 

came from, and the people in Nevada were subjected to false and 

misleading ads, not knowing anything about these shadow groups. 

That was 2010. 

The Citizens United case and the other decisions the Supreme 

Court has made only made it worse. During the 2012 Presidential 

campaign, outside groups spent more than $1 billion. That is a conservative estimate. That is about as much money as was spent in 

the previous 12 elections. But this spike in the amount of shadowy 

money being pumped into elections is not surprising. Recent decisions rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court—I have mentioned Citizens United and McCutcheon—have eviscerated our campaign finance laws and opened the floodgates for special interests. 

The cynics may scoff at the idea of us working together on an 

issue as critical as good government, but it was not all that long 

ago that the issue of campaign finance reform enjoyed support from 

both Democrats and Republicans. Campaign finance reform has 

been proposed a number of times before—even by my friend, the 

Republican Leader, Senator McConnell. 

Senator McConnell’s own constitutional amendment empowered 

Congress to enact laws regulating the amount of independent expenditures by any person which, quote, from his legislation, ‘‘can 

be made to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly 

identified candidate for Federal office.’’ In advocating for this reform, Senator McConnell said, ‘‘We Republicans have put together 

a responsible and constitutional campaign reform agenda. It would 

restrict the power of special interest PACs, stop the flow of all soft 

money, keep wealthy individuals from buying public office.’’ 

There is a lot more that he said, but that gives you the general 

idea that at one time Senator McConnell agreed without question 

with me and most of the people behind me. Senator McConnell had 

the right idea then. And I am hopeful that we can rekindle a way 

to bring forth those noble principles again. 
8 

I find it hard to fathom why my Republican colleagues would 

want to defend the status quo. Is there any Member of this Committee who really believed the status quo is good? 

Although he opposed billionaires using their own money to run 

for office, Senator McConnell now supports billionaires’ ability to 

fund today’s campaigns and independent expenditures. In fact, he 

even declares today, ‘‘In our society, spending is speech.’’ How could 

everyday, working American families afford to make their voices 

heard if money equals free speech? American families cannot compete with billionaires if free speech is based on how much money 

you have. 

My Republican colleagues attempt to cloak their defense of the 

status quo in terms of noble principles. They defend the money 

pumped into our system by the Koch brothers as ‘‘free speech.’’ Mr. 

Chairman, I defy anyone to determine what the Koch brothers are 

spending money on today politically. They have all these phantom 

organizations. They have one on veterans. They have another one 

on senior citizens. They must have 15 different phony organizations 

that they use to pump money into the system, to hide who they 

really are. These two wealthy men are only interested in their bottom line. 

Our involvement in Government should not be dependent on our 

bank account balances. The American people reject the notion that 

money gives the Koch brothers, corporations, or special interest 

groups a greater voice in Government than a mechanic, a lawyer, 

a doctor, a healthcare worker. They believe, as I do, that elections 

in our country should be decided by voters—those Americans who 

have a constitutional and fundamental right to elect their representatives. The Constitution that everybody loves to talk about 

does not give corporations a vote, and it does not give dollar bills 

a vote. 

The ‘‘undue influence’’ that my friend decried three decades ago 

has not magically transformed into free speech. David Copperfield 

in Las Vegas, the great illusionist, could not come up with that 

one. It is still bad for America. It is bad for the body politic. We 

must undo the damage done by the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decisions. And we need to do it now. 

I support this constitutional amendment. I admire and I congratulate Senator Tom Udall and Senator Michael Bennet for their 

authoring this amendment, which grants Congress the authority to 

regulate and limit the raising and spending of money for Federal 

political campaigns. Senators Udall and Bennet’s amendment will 

rein in the massive spending of super PACs, these secret organizations, which has grown so, so much since that January 2010 decision of Citizens United. 

The constitutional amendment also gives the States the authority to institute campaign spending limits at the State level. 

Simply put, a constitutional amendment is what the Nation 

needs to bring sanity back to political campaigns and restore Americans’ confidence in their elected leaders. The American people 

want change. They want their voice in Government to be protected. 

Free speech should not cost the American people a penny, a dime, 

certainly not a dollar. 
9 

So, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I am happy, if 

you have questions that you want to ask me, to wait. I am happy 

to do that. Otherwise, I would ask your leave, and I will leave because I have places to go. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Reid appears as a submission for the record.] 

Chairman LEAHY. Thank you. I know both you and Senator 

McConnell have a great deal of things, and following the tradition 

of the Committee, we will let you both speak and leave. We will 

have enough time for questions on the floor. So I thank you very 

much, Senator Reid. 

Senator REID. And, Mr. President, I want to make sure that my 

leaving does not take away at all from my friendship with Mitch 

McConnell. We have heard each talk and criticized each other for 

years, so he will not be upset that I am leaving. 

Senator MCCONNELL. No. No problem. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman LEAHY. Well, as I noted—and I appreciate the sobriquet of ‘‘Mr. President.’’ I assume you are referring to my role as 

President Pro Tem and dean of the Senate. But ‘‘Chairman’’ is fine. 

And I would also note, as I have said before, both Senator Grassley and I are friends of both Senator McConnell and Senator Reid 

and have been for years. I keep my baseball bat in my office 

that—— 

Senator MCCONNELL. You never know when you might need it. 

Chairman LEAHY. No, I have it from my visit with you in Kentucky. Please go ahead, Senator McConnell. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MITCH MCCONNELL, MINORITY LEADER, 

A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF KENTUCKY 

Senator MCCONNELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Given how incredibly bad this proposed amendment is, I cannot blame my 

friend, the Majority Leader, for wanting to talk about things like 

the Koch brothers or what I may have said over a quarter of a century ago. I am going to confine my remarks to what is before us, 

and I want to start by thanking Senator Grassley for an absolutely 

outstanding observation about what the First Amendment was supposed to be about. And at the very core of it, of course, was political 

speech. 

Americans from all walks of life understand how extraordinarily 

special the First Amendment is. Like the Founders, they know that 

the free exchange of ideas and the ability to criticize their Government are necessary for our democracy to survive. 

Benjamin Franklin noted that ‘‘whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing,’’ as he put it, ‘‘the 

freeness of speech.’’ The First Amendment is the constitutional 

guarantee of that freedom, and it has never, never been amended. 

Ever. 

Attempts to weaken the First Amendment—such as the proposal 

before this Committee—should, therefore, pass the highest scrutiny. Senate Joint Resolution 19 falls far, far short of that high bar. 

It would empower incumbent politicians in Congress and in the 

States to write the rules on who gets to speak and who does not. 

And the American people should be concerned—and many are al-
10 

ready—that those in power would use this extraordinary authority 

to suppress speech that is critical of them, as Senator Grassley 

pointed out. 

Now, I understand that no politician likes to be criticized. And 

some of us are criticized more often than the rest of us. But the 

recourse to being criticized is not to shut up your fellow citizens, 

which, believe me, this is designed to do, to give us the power to 

pick winners and losers in the political discussion in this country. 

That is what this amendment is all about. It is to defend your— 

the solution to this is to defend your ideas, to defend your ideas 

more ably in the political marketplace, to paraphrase Justice 

Holmes, or simply to come up with better ideas. 

The First Amendment is purposefully neutral when it comes to 

speech. It respects the right of every person to be heard without 

fear or favor, whether or not their views happen to be popular with 

the Government at any given moment. 

The First Amendment is also unequivocal. It provides that ‘‘Congress shall make no law’’—‘‘Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.’’ The First Amendment is about empowering the people, not the Government. The proposed amendment 

has it exactly backward. It says that Congress and the States can 

pass whatever law they want abridging political speech—the 

speech that is at the very core of the First Amendment. 

If incumbent politicians were in charge of political speech, a majority could design the rules to benefit itself and diminish its opponents. And when roles reversed, you could expect a new majority 

would try to disadvantage the other half of the country. And on 

and on it would go. 

You can see why this is terrible policy. You can also see how this 

is at odds with the First Amendment. 

That is why the last time a proposal like this was considered, in 

2001—2001, we had a vote on this—it was defeated on a bipartisan 

basis. Now, I get the impression all the Democrats now have 

walked away from the First Amendment. But back then, Senator 

Kennedy and Senator Feingold and several other Democratic colleagues voted against it. A similar proposal was likewise defeated 

in 1997. 

Our colleagues who voted against those proposals were right. 

And I respectfully submit that they would be wrong now to support 

the latest proposal to weaken the First Amendment. This is especially clear when one compares the language of the amendments. 

Senate Joint Resolution 4 back in the 107th Congress would 

have empowered the Government to set ‘‘reasonable limits’’—whatever that is—on political speech. The same was true of Senate 

Joint Resolution 18 in the 105th Congress. As bad as those proposals were—and they were awful—they at least limited the Government’s power to setting ‘‘reasonable limits’’ on speech—again, 

whatever that is. 

By contrast, the amendment we are discussing today would drop 

that pretense altogether. It would give the Government complete 

control—complete control—over the political speech of its citizens, 

allowing it to set unreasonable limits on their political speech, including banning it outright, reminiscent of the Alien and Sedition 

Acts, as Senator Grassley pointed out. 
11 

Not only would S.J. Res. 19 allow the Government to favor certain speakers over others, it would guarantee such preferential 

treatment. It contains a provision, not found in prior proposals, 

which expressly provides that Congress cannot ‘‘abridge the freedom of the press.’’ This is really great if you are a corporation that 

owns a newspaper. This is terrific news for you. You get your 

speech, but nobody else does. The media wins and everybody else 

loses. 

Now, everyone on this Committee knows this proposal is never 

going to pass Congress. This is a political exercise, and that is all 

it is. 

The goal here is to stir up one party’s political base so they will 

show up in November, and it is to do it by complaining loudly 

about certain Americans exercising their free speech and 

associational rights, while being perfectly happy that other Americans—those who agree with the sponsors of this amendment—are 

doing the same thing. 

But the political nature of this exercise should not obscure how 

shockingly bad this proposal is. This is embarrassingly bad to be 

advocating for the first time in our history that we amend the First 

Amendment to restrict the rights of citizens to speak. 

When it comes to free speech, we should not substitute the incumbent-protection desires of politicians for the protection the Constitution guarantees to all Americans. 

I can remember a time when, on a bipartisan basis, we all agreed 

to that, or at least most of us did. It is too bad we cannot agree 

on it now. 

So I would urge the Committee to reject this dangerous proposal 

to dramatically weaken one of our most precious freedoms. 

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to be here and would 

love to stay for the rest of your hearing, but I will have to talk to 

you later. 

[The prepared statement of Senator McConnell appears as a submission for the record.] 

Chairman LEAHY. I have a feeling you will be able to overcome 

your sorrow at not being able to be here, but I know you—to quote 

the statement most often heard among 100 Senators, ‘‘Of course, I 

will read your statement in the record afterwards.’’ Thank you. 

Senator Durbin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DICK DURBIN, 

A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS 

Senator DURBIN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. As Chairman of the Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary on Constitutional 

Amendments, I have had a personal point of view on this for a long 

time when it comes to the nature of amendments being offered. I 

think the Constitution as written, with the amendments that have 

been adopted, constitute a sacred document that has guided this 

country well for decades and centuries. 

Too often I have seen proposals for constitutional amendments 

which, in my view, take a roller to a Rembrandt, and I have resisted many efforts to entice me into cosponsoring constitutional 

amendments with regard exceptions. This is one of those exceptions. I am cosponsoring this amendment offered by Senators Tom 
12 

Udall and Michael Bennet. I believe the time has come for us to 

do something to save this democracy and the political process that 

supports it. 

Second, let me say at the outset that there is hardly a politician 

or elected official alive who has not changed his or her position on 

an issue, and that happens. I can recall when Abraham Lincoln 

was criticized for changing his position on an issue, and he said, 

‘‘I would rather be right some of the time than wrong all the time.’’ 

So we all at least can be charged with having done that in the past 

and maybe be guilty of the charge. 

But it is breathtaking the change that has taken place with the 

Republican Party in the United States Senate on this issue. In 

1987, the Republican Senate leader who just testified, Senator 

McConnell, introduced a constitutional amendment—a constitutional amendment very similar to the one before us today, and this 

is what he said on the floor of the Senate in introducing it, about 

his amendment: ‘‘This would give the Congress an opportunity to 

level the playing field, to eliminate the millionaire’s loophole, put 

everybody on the same footing, so that the meat cutter and coal 

miner and taxicab driver, and anybody else in American society 

who can go out and get a lot of support from a lot of people could 

still raise the money, use the television, get into the race, and build 

a contest.’’ 

He went on to say, ‘‘The fellow who inherited it or is shrewd 

enough to go and get it could not use his personal money to buy 

political office. He would have to get the same broad-based support 

the rest of us who are not millionaires must do. That is a problem 

we can cure immediately.’’ 

That is what Senator McConnell said about his constitutional 

amendment offered in 1987 which parallels the amendment before 

this Committee today. And then time passed, and by 2002 the story 

was different. By 2002 we were debating McCain-Feingold, the 

elimination of soft money in the campaign process. And then the 

position was taken by the Senator from Kentucky and many on his 

side, we just want full disclosure. We just want to know who is contributing the money. The American people have a right to know. 

That was the mantra for a long period of time. I just asked my colleague Senator Schumer, as Chairman of the Rules Committee, 

whether any Republicans supported our effort when we introduced 

the DISCLOSE bill, which would have disclosed the contributors to 

political campaigns. And our best memory is no, they now do not 

support disclosure. 

And so here we are today. Many of us had hoped that Fair Elections Now, a public financing bill which I introduced 7 years ago 

and keep reintroducing, might have a chance. But with the Citizens 

United decision, I am afraid that is not likely. 

When you look at the reality of what we are facing, so far this 

year spending by outside groups in campaigns has tripled—tripled—since the last midterm election: 27.6 million in 2010, 97.7 

million so far this year. In 2006, before Citizens United, these 

groups spent $3.5 million. 

In 2012, super PACs spent more than $130 million on Federal 

elections; 60 percent of all super PAC donations that year came 

from an elite class of 159 Americans. One hundred and fifty-nine 
13 

Americans accounted for 60 percent of the money from super PACs 

going into these election campaigns. 

In North Carolina, that elite group had one member; 72 percent 

of all outside spending in 2010 came from a millionaire named Art 

Pope. Can you guess who Governor Pat McCrory named as North 

Carolina’s budget chief writer in 2013? Mr. Pope, who bankrolled 

the Governor’s campaign and supported the Republican super majority that recently enacted the most restrictive voter suppression 

law in America. 

Mr. Chairman, we need to do this to save the political process 

in America. What is at stake here is going to discourage mere mortals from engaging in this process. When you are up against multimillionaires from the start with unlimited contributions through 

Citizens United, you will lose the appetite for the contest. We cannot let that happen. Neither political party can let that happen. 

Chairman LEAHY. Senator Durbin, I thank you, and I know at 

some point you are going to be taking over the gavel in the hearing. Senator Cruz—— 

Senator GRASSLEY. Senator Cornyn wants a statement in the 

record. 

Chairman LEAHY. And Senator Cornyn has requested a statement for the record, and, of course, without objection, it will be 

made part of the record. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Cornyn appears as a submission for the record.] 

Senator Cruz. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TED CRUZ, 

A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Senator CRUZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

America is an exceptional country. When our country was founded, we crafted a Constitution that Thomas Jefferson explained 

would ‘‘serve as chains to bind the mischief of Government.’’ There 

has never been more mischief of Government than there is right 

now. 

And the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, are precious to every American. The Bill of Rights begins with 

the First Amendment. For over two centuries, Congress has not 

dared to mess with the Bill of Rights. This amendment here today, 

if adopted, would repeal the free speech protections of the First 

Amendment. 

Mr. Chairman, when citizens hear that, they gasp. As immune 

as we are to abuse of power from Government, citizens are still astonished that Members of Congress would dare support repealing 

the First Amendment. 

And let us be clear. This amendment does not just do it for corporations; it does not just do it for billionaires. Nothing in this 

amendment is limited to corporations or billionaires. This amendment, if adopted, would give Congress absolute authority to regulate the political speech of every single American, with no limitations whatsoever. This amendment is about power and it is about 

politicians silencing the citizens. 

Mr. Chairman, when did elected Democrats abandon the Bill of 

Rights? Mr. Chairman, where did the liberals go? You know, in 
14 

1997, when a similar amendment was introduced, here is what Ted 

Kennedy said about it: ‘‘In the entire history of the Constitution, 

we have never amended the Bill of Rights, and now is no time to 

start. It would be wrong to carve an exception to the First Amendment. Campaign finance reform is a serious problem, but it does 

not require that we twist the meaning of the Constitution.’’ 

Mr. Chairman, here is what Democrat Russ Feingold said at the 

time: ‘‘Mr. President, the Constitution of this country was not a 

rough draft. We must stop treating it as such. The First Amendment is the bedrock of the Bill of Rights. It has as its 

underpinnings that each individual has a natural and fundamental 

right to disagree with their elected leaders. Not if this amendment 

passes. If this amendment passes, Congress can say you, the citizens, are no longer citizens, you are subjects, because we have repealed the First Amendment and taken away your ability to 

speak.’’ 

Senator Feingold in 2001 said the following about a very similar 

amendment: ‘‘This proposed constitutional amendment would 

change the scope of the First Amendment. I find nothing more sacred and treasured in our Nation’s history than the First Amendment. It is the bedrock of the Bill of Rights. It has as its 

underpinnings the notion that every citizen has a fundamental 

right to disagree with his or her Government. I want to leave the 

First Amendment undisturbed.’’ 

Mr. Chairman, I agree with Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold. 

And where are the liberals today? Why is there not a liberal standing here defending the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment? 

Mr. Chairman, 42 Democrats have signed their name to a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to muzzle Planned Parenthood and the National Right to Life; 42 Democrats have signed their name to giving Congress the right to muzzle the Sierra Club, to muzzle the National Rifle Association and 

the Brady Center on Handgun Violence, to muzzle Michael Moore 

and Dinesh D’Souza, to muzzle the Teamsters and the National 

Education Association, to muzzle the NAACP, to muzzle the AntiDefamation League, to muzzle pastors and priests and rabbis who 

organize their parishioners to be involved in politics. 

Mr. Chairman, I am today introducing two bills to further protect 

the free speech rights of individuals, and I will be discussing those 

later in this hearing. But I would note this amendment, if adopted, 

would give Congress the power to ban books and to ban movies. 

And, by the way, Citizens United was about fining a movie 

maker who made a movie critical of Hillary Clinton. 

Mr. Chairman, Ray Bradbury would be astonished because we 

are seeing Fahrenheit 451 Democrats today. The American people 

should be angry about this. And, Mr. Chairman, the Senators who 

put their name to this should be embarrassed that they have 

signed up for repealing the free speech amendment, the First 

Amendment. 

Thank you. 

Chairman LEAHY. The statements have been completed, and I 

wonder if Senator McKissick and Mr. Abrams and Professor Raskin 

could join us at the appropriate places at the table. 
15 

The first witness will—you know, it does—Officer, please remove 

the man holding up the sign, contrary to the rulings of the Chair. 

As the Committee knows, I have not taken a position one way 

or the other on these constitutional amendments, but we are having a hearing, and I want people who are for or against them to 

be able to be here. But I do not want people blocking the views of 

others. You have plenty of time to do your photo ops outside both 

for and against it. But let us hear from the witnesses. 

The first witness is Senator Floyd McKissick. He has served in 

the North Carolina State Senate since 2007. He is currently the 

Deputy Minority Leader as well as a partner at the law firm of 

McKissick and McKissick. I would also note in the audience—Senator, I apologize for the voice. It is allergies. But I also would note 

for the record that your son is here in the audience. I note that for 

some day when somebody is looking through the McKissick archives, they will see that. 

Please go ahead, Senator. 

STATEMENT OF HON. FLOYD B. MCKISSICK, JR., STATE 

SENATOR, NORTH CAROLINA GENERAL ASSEMBLY, RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA 

Mr. MCKISSICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a privilege and 

honor to be here this morning. I want to thank all of you for this 

opportunity to testify. My name is Floyd McKissick, Jr. I am a 

long-time resident of North Carolina, and I have the honor of serving in the North Carolina State Senate, where I represent Durham 

and Granville Counties and act as the Deputy Democratic Leader. 

I first entered the legislature in 2007, so my time there can be 

roughly divided into two different periods: before Citizens United 

and after. 

I entered politics for the same reason I am sure that many of you 

did. I saw ways that North Carolina’s government could work more 

effectively to make a difference for the people in my community 

who needed a hand up, a solid education, better jobs, and safer 

communities. 

All that changed after Citizens United. In 2010 alone, Americans 

for Prosperity, a group funded in large part by the Koch brothers, 

spent more than a quarter of a million dollars in North Carolina. 

Another group, Civitas Action, spent more. A new organization that 

sprang up, called Real Jobs North Carolina, spent almost $1.5 million. Overall, three-quarters of all the outside money in State races 

that year were tied to one man: Art Pope. Pope and his associates 

poured money into 22 targeted races, and the candidates they 

backed won in 18 of those races. 

In 2012, $8.1 million in outside money flooded into the Governor’s race. A large portion of that money was tied to Mr. Pope. 

And before he had even been sworn into office, our new Governor 

announced who would be writing the new State budget. Surprise, 

surprise. Art Pope is our State budget director this time. He could 

afford to spend lavishly, and he certainly did, and he got his money’s worth. 

When Justice Kennedy wrote his decision in Citizens United, he 

said that limitless outside spending ‘‘[does] not give rise to corrup-
16 

tion or the appearance of corruption.’’ Try telling that to anyone 

who saw how the sausage got made in North Carolina. 

There are winners and losers in every budget. And in the budget 

he produced, it is undeniable that Mr. Pope won big. Our State 

slashed corporate income taxes and lowered the share paid by the 

State’s wealthiest people. 

As for the losers, there were plenty. Tens of thousands of people 

lost their unemployment benefits. Public education funding was 

drastically cut back. Half a million low-income people were refused 

access to Medicaid that we had already paid for. And while millionaires got a tax break, some working families actually got a tax 

hike. 

But that is not all. After the tide of dark money flooded into our 

elections, we saw two more big changes that should cause great 

concern for all of us. 

First, it got harder for ordinary people to vote. A month after the 

Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, North 

Carolina passed one of the most restrictive anti-voter laws in the 

country. It cut the early vote period from 17 days down to 10 days. 

It eliminated the ability of teenagers to preregister to vote before 

their 18th birthday. And it eliminated same-day voter registration. 

It also enacted a rigid voter identification requirement that required forms of ID that more than 300,000 North Carolinians do 

not have. Those restrictions have had the biggest impact on the 

students, the elderly, the poor, and people of color. Simply put, Art 

Pope, Americans for Prosperity, and the Koch brothers paid big 

money to roll back the civil rights advances that generations of 

Americans have paid for in their blood. 

Second, it got easier for rich people to pour money into elections. 

Big donors got new opportunities to write even bigger checks to 

candidates, and they got more ways to avoid any kind of disclosures. And any public financing system that we had in the State, 

including one that provided for clean judicial elections, was gutted. 

The result of that decision was particularly painful to me this year 

because I watched one of our sitting Supreme Court Justices, Robin 

Hudson, attacked in the most despicable and dishonest way. A million dollars in outside money was poured into that primary race, 

with more than $650,000 coming from a Washington-based organization trying to protect the anti-voter tactics and suppression laws 

that were pushed through the legislature. I cannot think of a more 

vicious cycle than taking a little more power from the voters and 

handing it to the big spenders. 

Well, once big money got into our elections, that is exactly what 

happened. I believe that public service is a calling. We are called 

to use our gifts to create laws, to exercise our judgment, and to administer our cities, our States, and our Nation. Citizens United, the 

McCutcheon decision, and the Supreme Court decisions that have 

occurred have made this a mockery. 

What is left does not look like democracy. Democracy is when the 

Government represents the people. Today it seems that big money 

and big donors pull the strings while ordinary people find it harder 

and harder for their voices to be heard. You have a chance to restore this democracy, to restore the First Amendment, and to make 
17 

clear that our Government should represent all the people, not just 

the wealthy few. 

I urge you to support Senate Joint Resolution 19. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McKissick appears as a submission for the record.] 

Chairman LEAHY. Thank you very much, Senator. 

The next witness is Mr. Floyd Abrams, a senior partner at the 

law firm Cahill Gordon and Reindel in New York, and not a stranger to this Committee or this Senator over the years. 

Mr. Abrams, please go ahead, sir. 

STATEMENT OF FLOYD ABRAMS, PARTNER, 

CAHILL GORDON & REINDEL LLP, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 

Mr. ABRAMS. Thank you, Senator Leahy. I appreciate your invitation for me to appear here today. The description of the constitutional amendment that is before you today states in its text that 

it ‘‘relate[s] to contributions and expenditures intended to affect 

elections.’’ 

That is one way to say it. I think it would have been more revealing to say that it actually ‘‘relate[s] to speech intended to affect 

elections.’’ I think it would be even more accurate to say that it relates to limiting speech intended to affect elections. And that is the 

core problem with it. It is intended to limit speech about elections 

and it would do just that. 

To start at the beginning—and this has been said before; it is 

worth repeating—no ruling providing First Amendment protection 

has ever been reversed by a constitutional amendment. No ruling 

by the Supreme Court. No speech that the Supreme Court has concluded warranted First Amendment protection has ever been transformed by a constitutional amendment into becoming unprotected 

speech and, thus, subject of criminal sanctions. 

Think of what we protect under the First Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts in the McCutcheon opinion observed that money in politics may be ‘‘repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the 

First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades—despite the 

profound offense such spectacles cause—it surely protects political 

campaign speech despite popular opposition.’’ 

The proposed amendment before you today deals with nothing 

except political campaign speech. It does not deal with money that 

is spent for any other purpose other than persuading people to vote 

for or against. And as such, it would limit speech that is at the 

heart of the First Amendment. And the fact that the amendment 

is proposed in the name of equality makes it no less threatening. 

The Supreme Court observed, I think with particular prescience, 

in the Buckley case, in an opinion joined by great liberal jurists— 

Justice Brennan, Justice Marshall, Justice Potter Stewart, stalwart 

defenders of the First Amendment—that the concept that Government may restrict some elements—may restrict the speech of some 

elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment. It is that view, however, which is at the core of this amendment which would reverse 

the Buckley case as well as Citizens United. This amendment is not 

a Citizens United amendment. It goes way back to the 1970s, and 
18 

it would reverse Buckley’s ruling as well that independent expenditures are protected by the First Amendment. 

The title of the proposed amendment goes even farther. It says 

that it would ‘‘Restore Democracy to the American People.’’ I am 

willing to pass over in silence rhetorical overkill about what democracy means, but the notion that democracy would be restored— 

saved—by limiting speech is a perversion of the English language. 

It is inconsistent with any notion of democracy to say the way to 

accomplish it is to limit speech. 

So let me say in the most direct manner that it is deeply, profoundly, obviously undemocratic to limit speech about who to elect 

to public office. 

The other pervasive problem with the amendment is that it is 

rooted in the disturbing concept that those who hold office in Federal and State legislatures, armed with all the advantages of incumbency, may effectively prevent their opponents from becoming 

known as a result of spending money to put ads on describing who 

they are. 

I would just conclude with this thought: It is not a coincidence 

that until today the First Amendment has never been amended. It 

is not a coincidence that no decision of the Supreme Court affirming First Amendment rights has ever been overruled by constitutional amendment. Emotions have run high before about decisions 

of the Court which provided higher levels of liberty than Members 

of this body thought was appropriate. But self-restraint won the 

day, and I urge that self-restraint win the day today. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Abrams appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman LEAHY. Thank you, Mr. Abrams. 

The next witness is Jamie Raskin. Professor Raskin teaches constitutional law, legislation, and the First Amendment at American 

University’s Washington College of law here in Washington, DC. If 

that is not enough to keep him busy, he also serves as a Senator 

in the Maryland State Legislature. 

So, Professor Raskin, welcome. 

STATEMENT OF JAMIN B. ‘‘JAMIE’’ RASKIN, PROFESSOR OF 

LAW AND DIRECTOR, PROGRAM ON LAW AND GOVERNMENT, 

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF LAW, 

WASHINGTON, DC 

Professor RASKIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Delighted to be with you. 

We have built two walls to protect American democracy. The first 

is Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state, which 

protects a flourishing religious realm and a nation free from theocracy. The other is the wall we have built brick by brick in statute 

over a century to separate plutocratic money from democratic politics. 

Starting with the 1907 ban on corporate contributions in Federal 

races, which still stands, we have worked to wall off vast corporate 

wealth and personal fortunes from campaigns, defining the electoral arena as a place of equality. But 4 years ago, in Citizens 

United, a bitterly divided 5–4 Court bulldozed a major block of the 
19 

wall, the one that kept trillions of dollars in corporate wealth from 

flowing into our campaigns. 

Three years ago, in Arizona Free Enterprise Club, the same five 

Justices struck down public financing programs that use matching 

funds to amplify the voices of poorer candidates competing to be 

heard over the roar of big money. In a ‘‘world gone topsy-turvy,’’ 

Justice Kagan wrote in dissent, the majority treated ‘‘additional 

campaign speech and electoral competition’’ as ‘‘a First Amendment 

injury’’ and struck down a State law that ‘‘expands public debate’’ 

and ‘‘provides more voices, wider discussion, and greater competition.’’ 

This year, in McCutcheon, the same five took a sledgehammer to 

aggregate contribution limits, empowering tycoons to max out to 

every Member of Congress and all of their opponents. 

After five 5–4 decisions like these, the wall between democracy 

and plutocracy is crumbling. If we keep waiting around, the last 

few bricks will be removed soon, including contribution limits, the 

ban on corporate contributions, rules against coordinated expenditures, and the ban States have on writing campaign checks in legislative session—all of them at odds with the Orwellian dogma of 

five Justices, that money is speech, corporations are people, and to 

identify corruption you have got to find a bribe. 

S.J. Res. 19 will enable us to protect democratic politics and free 

market economics. In politics, we need to revive democratic selfgovernment where all voices can be heard and not drowned out by 

billionaires who turn up the volume on their sound tracks to earsplitting levels and CEOs who write checks with ‘‘other people’s 

money,’’ as Justice Brandeis called it. 

In economics, we need to strengthen businesses that practice free 

market competition and pull the plug on rent-seeking corporations 

that spend freely on campaigns now to obtain tax breaks, sweetheart deals, and public subsidies later. 

Adam Smith, who favored honest competition and feared industry capture of Government, would tell us that in campaign finance, 

‘‘laissez isn’t fair.’’ 

When Justice Scalia went on CNN and defended Citizens United, 

he invoked everyone’s favorite Founder: ‘‘I think Thomas Jefferson 

would have said, ‘The more speech, the better,’ ’’ he opined. But the 

Sage of Monticello never equated corporations with citizens, and he 

voiced dread at the prospect of plutocracy. He warned future generations not to embrace a ‘‘splendid government of an aristocracy, 

founded on banking institutions’’ and corporations ‘‘riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.’’ This 

nightmare vision sounds a lot like the Citizens United era. The vast 

majority of Americans are appalled. Eighty percent oppose Citizens 

United and unlimited spending; 74 percent of voters in Colorado 

and Montana voted to call for this amendment; and 79 percent of 

the people favor limits on campaign money. 

This amendment protects our power to set such limits, not by 

creating perfect equality—billionaires will always have greater resources—but by assuring that the rich will at least inhabit the 

same polity as nurses, teachers, and small business people. It is 

one thing to tell middle-class Americans that their $100 contribution has to go up against a $5,000 contribution, a scale of 50:1, 
20 

quite another to say it has to go up against a $5 million contribution or expenditure, a scale of 50,000:1. A regime like that fits plutocracy, not democracy. 

I do think the amendment should more clearly empower the people to wall off campaigns from corporate treasury wealth, which 

has been seen as a peril to democracy for more than a century. 

This is no assault on the First Amendment because Citizens United 

did not increase the rights of a single citizen to express his or her 

views. All it did was confer power on CEOs to write checks on the 

corporate treasury account for political campaigns without a vote 

of the shareholders and without notice to the shareholders. The 

case has nothing to do with increasing free speech of the people 

and everything to do with increasing the power of the CEOs over 

the people. If we do nothing now, pretty soon the people will no 

longer govern the corporations; the corporations will govern the 

people. 

At times like this, when the Court has undermined democracy, 

we have amended the Constitution. We did it with the disenfranchisement of women, and we did it when the Court upheld poll 

taxes. Most of the amendments added since the Bill of Rights have 

strengthened the progress of democratic self-government and expanded the political rights of the people even as the defenders of 

inequality and elite privilege protested that their rights were being 

violated. So do not be intimidated. The people are with you. 

[The prepared statement of Professor Raskin appears as a submission for the record.] 

Chairman LEAHY. Thank you, Professor Raskin. 

Let me begin in my time, and then I am going to turn the gavel 

over to Senator Durbin. Of course, I will be followed by Senator 

Grassley. 

Senator McKissick, the story of our Constitution has been one of 

progressive inclusion, as I read it. In fact, many of our Founding 

Fathers believed only white land owners should be allowed to participate in our elections. Each generation of Americans has expanded on the promise of our founding: the march toward a more 

perfect union. 

We have amended the Constitution many times to ensure our 

representative democracy. The 14th and 15th Amendments, for example, they transformed the Constitution. They guaranteed the 

equal protection of law for all Americans, and they prohibited the 

abridgment of the right to vote on the basis of race. 

The 17th Amendment gave Americans the right to elect Senators 

of their choosing because there was a concern that corporations 

were corrupting our State legislatures so they would elect Senators 

who were beholden to those corporations. 

We continued with the 19th Amendment, expansion of the right 

to vote to women; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights 

Act of 1965; the 26th Amendment’s extension of the vote to young 

people. 

Now, I mention all of those because they mark progress on the 

path of inclusion and make our country more representative. And 

I fear that these Supreme Court decisions have reversed that 

course. 
21 

Your father was a civil rights leader. You continue his legacy as 

an elected official in North Carolina. Do you believe the unprecedented money that flowed into State races in the wake of Citizens 

United has led to a more representative State government in North 

Carolina? 

Mr. MCKISSICK. It absolutely has not led to a more representative government in North Carolina at all. The will of the people of 

the State of North Carolina is not being heard, and I think that 

is represented by these Moral Monday demonstrations which have 

occurred in our State. They started out with 500 people coming out 

every Monday when we convened our sessions protesting many of 

these regressive policies that have been implemented. They grew to 

masses of 7,500 people. There were close to 1,000 people arrested 

because they were absolutely opposed to the policies, initiatives, 

and legislation that were coming out of Raleigh. I mean, these were 

actions that were not only impacting voting rights for individuals. 

If you had polled people about these voter suppression laws that 

were passed and asked them whether they liked the early vote period, well, we have eliminated now 1 week of that early vote period. 

In 2008, we had over 700,000 people vote that first week. By the 

time 2012 came, it was over 900,000 people voting. 

People also had the right to do same-day voter registration when 

they came in for early voting. There were people getting able to 

preregister when they were 17 years old so they could vote at 18 

years old. 

If you asked the vast majority of North Carolinians did they like 

the early vote period, did they like the right to exercise their constitutional privilege in a broader, more expansive way, the answer 

would be resoundingly yes. 

Chairman LEAHY. Thank you. 

And, Professor Raskin, you have heard some who have characterized the Udall amendment where we are concerning today as an effort to repeal the First Amendment. Now, I do not believe that is 

accurate, but I hear it in paid ads and others, and I guess if some 

of the billionaires are going to profit by this, paying for that 

enough time in advertisements, Americans may believe it. 

You are a constitutional law scholar. If this proposed constitutional amendment were to be ratified, would it repeal the First 

Amendment? 

Professor RASKIN. Of course not. The first thing we have to remark is that the Citizens United case did not endow a single individual with any right to speak that he or she did not already have. 

All the employees of the corporation, all of the members of the 

board, all of the executives could go out and spend whatever they 

wanted of their own money. All that Citizens United did was to say 

that the CEO could take the corporate checkbook and start writing 

checks to put into politics, and that CEO could already have spent 

his own money in politics. So what we have done is we have converted every corporate treasury in the country into a potential political slush fund. 

But, you know, in a deeper sense, Mr. Abrams raised the question about Buckley v. Valeo and the rights not of corporations but, 

say, of billionaires in order to spend. You know, there is a very important Supreme Court decision called Ward v. Rock Against Rac-
22 

ism in 1989 where there was a terrific group called ‘‘Rock Against 

Racism’’ which would put on concerts in Central Park, but they 

wanted to crank the sound all the way up so that the preschool 

could not meet and the yoga class could not meet and other people 

who were doing other musical exercises could not do it, and the 

Central Park authorities told them they had to turn it down. And 

the Supreme Court said that is appropriate because you do not 

have the right under the First Amendment to drown out everybody 

else’s speech. And I think if you understand that case, you can understand why the billionaires should not be able to take over whole 

States like North Carolina or like Montana. And I would urge everybody to read the filings of the State of Montana in the Bullock 

case because what the State described was a history of massive corporate corruption from outside of the State to take over their democracy, and the ban on corporate spending there was an attempt 

for the people of Montana to govern themselves. And that is really 

what all of this is about—self-government, so that democracy is for 

the people. 

Chairman LEAHY. Well, I have further questions which I will 

submit for the record because I want to keep within our time limits. 

[The questions of Chairman Leahy appears as a submission for 

the record.] 

Chairman LEAHY. My time is up, and I yield to Senator Grassley. 

Senator GRASSLEY. Thank you. Before I ask my first question of 

Mr. Abrams, I want to correct something that often shows up in 

the press, and one of my colleagues has said the same thing today. 

Citizens United said—I mean the comment was made that Citizens 

United opened the door to millions of dollars in contributions. What 

Citizens United dealt with, and only, is with expenditures and has 

no effect on campaign contributions. 

Mr. Abrams, last Friday, a front-page article of The Washington 

Post wrote, ‘‘Political nonprofit groups have become major players 

in elections since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision paved the way for unlimited political spending by corporations 

and unions.’’ 

Now, I know that political nonprofit groups have been active in 

campaigns for at least 10 years, long before Citizens United was decided. My question: Am I right in thinking this point made in The 

Washington Post article as well as other outlets is incorrect? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Well, I would say that I do not think it is correct 

to say that these groups are playing an enormously greater role 

than they used to. As you point out, they have been around for a 

while. There is also nothing wrong with them playing a greater 

role. The underlying thesis of critics of this is that—and you have 

heard it today a lot—outside money is bad money, is money that 

should not be around, should not be allowed. And I reject that, and 

the Supreme Court has rejected that. 

On the specific issue of nonprofits, nonprofits do not have to publicly report their spending, except in certain areas, so it is hard to 

know exactly how much more involvement that they have had. But 

only a small percentage, this we do know, of the $7 billion spent 

in the 2012 election came from nonprofit groups or other unreported sources. 
23 

Senator GRASSLEY. Again, Mr. Abrams, there are organizations 

in Washington that say they want to limit the role or influence of 

money in politics. Is that goal consistent with the First Amendment? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Well, I think what they are really saying is that 

they want to limit the speech that money allows. When people complain that there is going to be more of this and more of that or that 

the speech will contain falsehoods or that politicians or others will 

be accused in ways that they find uncongenial, you know, what 

they are really saying is that the money is doing bad things, and 

that is at its core inconsistent with the First Amendment. The 

First Amendment favors speech. It favors more rather than less 

speech. It favors speech from diverse sources. It rejects the notion 

that speech can be constrained or limited because one person has 

more than another person. 

All of that comes with the First Amendment, and so a general 

denunciation of money in politics is really a denunciation of politics 

itself and of the public debate that we have in politics. 

Senator GRASSLEY. My next question deals with a point you 

made in your opening remarks, and I ask it only by way of giving 

you an opportunity to emphasize what I think is a very important 

point. Supporters of the proposed amendment think that it is needed to prevent wealthy donors from drowning out ordinary citizens 

and to restore democracy. Could you elaborate on how this position 

is fundamentally at odds with the constitutional protection of free 

speech? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes. When somebody says that my speech will 

drown out someone else’s speech and, therefore, I should say less, 

it is the functional equivalent of telling a newspaper, ‘‘You really 

ought to have fewer editorials. You really should not spend your 

space denouncing one candidate for office. It is just not fair. You 

have too much power.’’ 

I grew up at a time when Democrats—Adlai Stevenson was running against the one-party press. Every newspaper was Republican—just about every one in those days. No one would have 

thought that the answer to the so-called one-party press was saying the press cannot print something or they are printing too much 

or they are drowning out the opposition. That comes on the menu 

of the First Amendment, and that menu includes as much speech 

as one wants. 

Senator DURBIN [presiding]. I would like to address my first comment and question to Professor Raskin. We recently invited retired 

Justice John Paul Stevens to testify before the Senate Rules Committee, which was an exceptional opportunity for us to hear his 

thinking, and he raised some interesting questions about this issue. 

He said, ‘‘While money is used to finance speech, money is not 

speech. Speech is only one of the activities that are financed by 

campaign contributions and expenditures. Those financial activities 

should not receive the same constitutional protection as speech 

itself. After all, campaign funds were used to finance the Watergate 

burglaries, actions that clearly were not protected by the First 

Amendment.’’ 

Then in closing in his remarks, he proffered a sample constitutional amendment on the subject of reversing Buckley v. Valeo, and 
24 

I think he made an observation that we ought to consider, even 

those of us who support Senate Joint Resolution 19. He basically 

suggested that we should include the word ‘‘reasonable’’ when we 

are talking about limitations on campaign spending, and here is 

what he said: ‘‘I think it wise to include the word ‘reasonable’ to 

ensure that legislatures do not prescribe limits that are so low that 

incumbents have an unfair advantage or that interfere with the 

freedom of the press.’’ 

Do you believe that the word ‘‘reasonable’’ would be a positive addition to this Senate joint resolution? 

Professor RASKIN. I do, and it appears in the Fourth Amendment, 

of course, and I think it would make sense to appear in the 28th 

Amendment as well. Of course, reasonableness applies to all of the 

constitutional amendments, and you can find dozens of Supreme 

Court cases which read a reasonable requirement in, which is why 

I found some of the rhetoric a little overheated that this is an attempt to impose unreasonable limits. Nonetheless, I would definitely take care of that problem by inserting the word. 

Your other point, though, about money not equaling speech is a 

critical issue for people to understand. I mean, there are lots of 

forms of purchase and exchange that we criminalize—for example, 

buying sex. We do not say if someone wants to purchase the services of a prostitute, well, that is just an expression of their speech, 

because we look at what the social meaning and context of the use 

of money in that way is. We look at the meaning not just of the 

speech involved, but the act itself. 

And I think even Mr. Abrams and the people on the other side 

on this issue take the position that laws against bribery are okay, 

and it is not clear according to their position why. After all, if I just 

feel very strongly about an issue and I want to give you $1,000 or 

$1 million to go my way, why shouldn’t you be able to accept it? 

And I think it is because we believe that within the governmental 

process and the electoral process, there are right reasons for those 

who hold public office to make decisions, and there are wrong reasons. And a wrong reason is the money that you are either going 

to put in your pocket or huge amounts of money that you are going 

to put in your campaign or lots of spending to take place. So why 

can’t we take into account the entire social context of money? Why 

just when the politican gets rich? 

So Justice Stevens has repeatedly argued, money, of course, is 

not speech, money is property. It is a medium of exchange. Speech 

has verbs and adjectives and nouns, and it is simply what the philosophers call a ‘‘category error’’ to mix them up. 

Senator DURBIN. Well, I might say, Mr. Abrams, the Fair Elections Now bill that I have introduced, you suggested incumbents 

are trying to protect themselves by arguing against Citizens 

United. I commend that bill to you because we offer, for those who 

wish to voluntarily become part of that process, a greater opportunity for challengers that experience suggests that they currently 

experience—that they currently have under the law. 

Senator McKissick, one of the things that has been raised consistently is that we ought to let a thousands flowers bloom here, 

and we have been chided, saying we are not being good liberals by 

not expanding this. Let me ask you, when it comes to the issue of 
25 

North Carolina and this gentleman Mr. Pope, whom I have not 

met, it appears that he was responsible for 72 percent of all outside 

spending in your State in the year 2010, the 2010 election. Instead 

of really being an open process in North Carolina, it turned out to 

be a very elite situation, an elite situation where his wealth gave 

him more power than the average person living in North Carolina 

to express his political will. 

Could you comment on what has happened to the North Carolina 

political process because of this favoritism toward the elite? 

Mr. MCKISSICK. Well, I think as a result of Art Pope’s capacity 

to give millions and millions of dollars, he basically tainted the 

whole election process in many respects because he had influence 

substantially disproportional to the number of people who shared 

his beliefs. 

When it comes to the political process, as we have seen it today, 

there are many people who feel as if they have been 

disenfranchised in terms of voting rights, in terms of women rights. 

They have gone in now, and as a result of legislation that has been 

adopted, there will be new ambulatory standards applied to abortion clinics. As a result, in North Carolina—there are 16 abortion 

clinics—all of them will be closed except for one. They have gone 

in and purged people from boards and commissions that have been 

previously appointed by prior Governors and prior members of the 

General Assembly, either by the President Pro Tem or Speaker of 

the House. All of their terms were shortened so they could go in 

and appoint people that shared their philosophies. 

When it comes to public education, there was legislation that was 

passed that would virtually eliminate teacher tenure in our State. 

That was challenged in the court and found to be unconstitutional. 

But many measures affecting public education that the vast majority of North Carolinians are opposed to that in many respects have 

now been adopted and been legislated. I mean, no limitation on the 

number of kids in the classroom; we are 46th in teacher pay in this 

country—things that are putting North Carolina behind. And many 

of these positions, many of these issues, many things dealing with 

unemployment compensation, we have now—rather than giving 

people 26 weeks of benefits, we only have gone to 12 to 20 weeks 

of benefits. We are the only State in America to disqualify our residents from receiving long-term unemployment benefits that were 

eligible for and it cost us $780 million, as well with the failure to 

expand Medicaid. 

So a lot of things have happened in our State that the vast majority of North Carolinians, if polled, would not agree with, but 

they have been implemented as a result of the amazing level and 

financial capacity of Art Pope to give and to influence the outcome 

of 18 critical races. 

Senator DURBIN. Senator Cornyn. I am sorry. Senator Hatch. 

Senator HATCH. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Abrams, I am not the only one who believes that you are the 

leading First Amendment lawyer in the country. You have—and 

you are not a member of my party either. 

Mr. ABRAMS. That is true. Not yet. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator HATCH. I would like that. I like the thought. 
26 

We are very privileged to have you here today, and we are grateful to have you other witnesses as well. 

Now, Mr. Abrams, this is not the first constitutional amendment 

proposed to restrict political speech. This one, however, goes beyond what we have seen in the past. As far as I can tell, for example, Senator Joint Resolution 19 is the fifth one for the purpose of 

achieving what it calls political equality. Under this amendment, 

the Government could constitutionally redefine political equality 

and decide whose speech must be suppressed or should be suppressed or allowed in order to achieve it. 

Isn’t this at odds with America’s entire history regarding Government control of speech? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Well, it is. It gives, you know, enormous power to 

the legislatures, to Congress and to the State, to enforce the law. 

And I would assume that the courts would be very deferential to 

anything that those legislatures did. And that being said, while 

there might be an equal protection or other arguments made, I 

really believe that an amendment of this breadth would change 

substantially and in an irrevocable way, except if there were another constitutional amendment, the whole nature of American society as a speech-protecting society. 

Senator HATCH. Well, another difference is that this amendment 

would give the Government authority to control not only money but 

also what it called ‘‘in-kind equivalence.’’ Like the notion of political equality, this is something completely new. 

Now, it appears to me that if this amendment passes, the Government will be able to define this category however it wants and, 

therefore, control of what—they would be able to control whatever 

Government wants. 

Now, how far do you think this new dimension of regulation extends? And do you expect there would have to be litigation to figure 

out how it applies? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Oh, there is no doubt of that. There would have to 

be enormous litigation. Look, the reality is—how shall I say this to 

Members of Congress here? If you provide the Congress or State 

legislatures with power, they are likely to use it. 

Senator HATCH. Right. 

Mr. ABRAMS. And they are likely to use it in this area in a 

speech-destructive way. I mean, that is what this whole thing is 

about. I understand the argument of equality that more people— 

few people have great wealth, that wealth gives more power, as has 

been said. But the effect of this amendment would be to embody 

into our law by changing, substantively changing and limiting the 

First Amendment in a way in which at the least we are going to 

have years and years of litigation. But I fear—I do not mind that 

personally—but what we are going to have beyond that is a significantly diminished ability to have the sort of ongoing confrontations 

at length that we have in our electoral process. The 2012 election, 

in my view, was a good example of the system working. There was 

lots of money out there. There was lots of speech. People heard, 

sometimes more than they wanted to, but they heard the views of 

the parties and had a chance to vote. That is the way the system 

ought to work, and that is threatened by this legislation, this 

amendment. 
27 

Senator HATCH. In his prepared statement, Professor Raskin 

says that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC 

eliminated the statutory provision ‘‘that kept trillions of dollars in 

corporate . . . wealth from flowing into Federal campaigns.’’ I think 

that is a misleading description of the case. As I read it, the Citizens United case involved a nonprofit organization, not a wealthy 

for-profit corporation, and the case did not involve campaign contributions at all. Am I right? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes. It did not involve contributions at all, and it 

left standing the contribution section. 

Senator HATCH. Also, have we seen a flood of corporate wealth 

flowing into Federal campaigns since the Citizens United decision? 

Mr. ABRAMS. We have seen a lot of individuals giving money. 

That is where the big money has come from. We have seen an increase in the amount of money from what I would call Main Street 

rather than Wall Street. What we have not seen is precisely what 

was predicted. We have not seen enormous sums, let alone trillions 

of dollars, from the biggest companies in America flowing into the 

electoral process. That just has not happened. 

Senator HATCH. My time is up, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator DURBIN. Thank you, Senator Hatch. 

Senator Schumer? And I might note that there are two roll call 

votes on the floor, so if you see the movement around here, it is 

an effort to try to make the vote and keep the Committee hearing 

continuing. Senator Schumer? 

Senator SCHUMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate 

all the witnesses being here, as well as Leader Reid and Leader 

McConnell being here as well. 

I have been sort of really surprised at the level of rhetoric that 

we have heard from Senator McConnell and Senator Cruz. In fact, 

I think they want to replace logic with hyperbole. The bottom line 

is Senator McConnell says how shockingly bad this proposal is. 

Well, I will tell you what most people, most Americans think is 

shockingly bad: that our system has become distorted by a few who 

have a lot of money drowning out the voices of the others. 

When John Stuart Mill said the answer to restrictions of speech 

is more speech, he did not mean just from one side. And the world 

did not exist that way then. But it exists now. 

Then Senator Cruz said Americans would gasp if they heard 

what Democrats are trying to do. I will tell you what makes the 

American people gasp: It is that a small handful of people can have 

a huge effect on our political system, and not just defending incumbents. What a canard that is. Most of the money that has come 

from the super PACs and from many of these groups are knocking 

out incumbents, particularly those from the other side, whether 

they be Republican or Democrat. 

Senator Cruz says that we should be embarrassed about this 

amendment? I will tell you, Senator Cruz, I am embarrassed about 

how our system is distorted by literally now billions of dollars coming into this system undisclosed, unregulated, and unanswered. 

And Senator Cruz, maybe he fancies himself to be a constitutional expert. He knows that no amendment is absolute. His rhetoric, his over-the-top rhetoric here makes it seem like if you support this amendment, you are against the First Amendment. 
28 

Well, I want to ask you, Senator Cruz. Are you against anti-child 

pornography laws? He is not here, but would he be against antichild pornography laws? Does that make him against the First 

Amendment? Is he an absolutist on the First Amendment? Is he 

against the ability to falsely scream—that you should—does he 

think everyone should be allowed to falsely scream ‘‘Fire’’ in a 

crowded theater? And if anyone is opposed to that, are they opposed to the whole First Amendment and against free speech? Libel 

laws? If you are for libel laws, does that mean you are against free 

speech and you are against the First Amendment? Absolutely not. 

We have always had balancing tests for every amendment. 

Some of my colleagues on the other side I know do not believe 

there should be one for the Second Amendment. I believe there 

should, but I believe there is a right to bear arms. And I do not 

like seeing it through a pinhole. But that is neither here nor there. 

We have always had balancing tests for every amendment. They 

are not absolute. And to say that you cannot have some regulation 

when billions of dollars cascade into the system and that is unconstitutional is false. It is absolutely false. It is against 100 years of 

the tradition in this country. 

And we know what is going on here. I guarantee you that Senator McConnell would not have flipped his position, particularly on 

disclosure, if the vast majority of the money, unregulated money 

coming into the system were from Democrats not Republicans. We 

know that, because I remember him being here, the strongest advocate of disclosure. We cannot get a Republican to be on a single disclosure bill. I am sure even Mr. Abrams would agree that disclosure—the Supreme Court does agree—is not against the First 

Amendment. 

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes. Yes, that is correct. 

Senator SCHUMER. And I am sure he might agree that disclosure 

would be salutary even if he were not for limiting the amount of 

money that could be spent. Would you agree with that? 

Mr. ABRAMS. I think some more disclosure would be salutary, 

yes. 

Senator SCHUMER. Okay. So here is what I—I mean, to say that 

when it comes to money there should be no balancing test but 

when it comes to other parts of this amendment and other amendments there should be a balancing test is logically false, demonstrably false. And all the rhetoric, the overheated rhetoric, the hyperbole that we heard from Senator Cruz just defies logic, defies 

constitutional tradition. And it is not going to make us back down. 

I do not believe the Koch brothers are being denied their First 

Amendment rights or would be under any legislation this Congress 

would pass. I do not believe it is the same exact part of the Constitution, same dearness that we hold in free speech to get up on 

a soapbox and make a speech or to publish a broadside or a newspaper as it is to put the 11,427th ad on the air, in fact, to make 

sure you buy all the available ad space on the air so your opponent 

cannot get a word in—I do not believe that is in the spirit of free 

speech, not just today but when James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, 

and our great, great Founders, the most brilliant group of men ever 

assembled, in my opinion—people, although they were just men; we 

wish there were some women there. 
29 

[Laughter.] 

Senator SCHUMER. I do not think this is—I think if Thomas Jefferson were looking down, the author of the Bill of Rights, on what 

is being proposed here, he would agree with it. He would agree 

that the First Amendment cannot be absolute. He would agree that 

to keep a democracy going you cannot have a handful of a few who 

are so wealthy that they can influence the process and drown out 

the voices of the others. Any of us who has run for office and faced 

one of these super PACs knows, yes, you can get on your soapbox 

and distribute a leaflet and answer it, but in the way our political 

system works, you do not have a choice. 

So I would like to get back to a fact-based, history-based debate 

on this measure and not this overheated rhetoric that if you are for 

this constitutional amendment, you are against the First Amendment. The First Amendment has always, always, always had a balancing test. It did then, it does now. And if there ever is a balance 

that is needed, it is to restore some semblance of one person, one 

vote, some of the equality that the Founding Fathers sought in our 

political system. 

I have gone over my time because I was a little bit excited. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Okay. They are asking us to take a brief recess, or I will miss the vote, which will be monumental. So we will 

return very soon when Senator Durbin returns. Thank you very 

much. We are in recess. 

[Whereupon, at 12:14 p.m., the Committee was recessed.] 

[Whereupon, at 12:21 p.m., the Committee reconvened.] 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. My apologies for what we are facing here, 

but we are trying to get two votes in and keep the Committee active. And so Senator Whitehouse has already voted on the first 

amendment, and I am going to recognize him at this point. So if 

you see the musical chairs here, it is an effort to keep two things 

going at once. Senator Whitehouse? 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. We can indeed walk and chew gum. 

Nice to have you all here. I appreciate this, and I appreciate the 

lively debate that has taken place. I think the debate about the 

First Amendment and the lurid descriptions of how this is the first 

time in history Congress has tried to amend the First Amendment 

does overlook a rather significant fact in the room—indeed, the elephant in the room—which is that five conservative activists sitting 

on the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time decided that unlimited spending in elections was A-OK. And in doing so, they departed dramatically from the American people. Recent polling 

shows the Court in unprecedented bad odor with the American people as a result of that. The most damning polling information was 

from a recent Melman poll that shows by 9:1—by 9:1—Americans 

believe that this Supreme Court will favor corporations over individuals. And I would suggest that there is plenty of evidence in the 

Supreme Court’s recent record, particularly the record of 5:4 decisions driven by the right-wing activists, to justify that concern. I 

do not think you can get by 9:1 Americans to agree that the sun 

rises in the east. So when they are concerned that this Court will 

favor corporations over individuals in that kind of number, I think 

that is a real warning shot across the bow of this Court that they 
30 

need to stop being activist and start trying to find consensus and 

start trying to rebuild this. 

So if you omit the fact that five activist conservatives for the first 

time kicked down hundreds of years of controls over election spending and unleashed corporations, which are not even mentioned in 

the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, to spend unlimitedly in elections, you are omitting a relatively salient fact from the discussion. 

And I think that fact is really at the heart of this discussion. I see 

what we are trying to do as to repair an erroneous decision by the 

Supreme Court, a decision that is likely to end up in the category 

of Lochner and Plessy as really embarrassing moments in the history of a Court. 

Let me make one additional point, and then I will ask anybody 

who wishes to comment, point one being we are trying to fix a 

Court that kind of went berserk by a narrow five conservative 

judge margin and did so to massive benefit to the corporate interests that in many cases actually backed those judges getting on the 

Court. 

The second point is that the decision overlooked some very important factors. First of all, they got the whole business of the 

transparency totally wrong, and they have not admitted that they 

got it totally wrong, but it is undeniable that they got it totally 

wrong because it is totally untransparent. 

But another important thing that they overlooked is that there 

is—I think I am correct in this, Mr. Abrams—a First Amendment 

limit in this area that allows us to protect the electoral process 

against fraud and against corruption. That is well-established First 

Amendment doctrine, is it not? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Yes, and so in order to get around that little problem on the way to unlimited corporate spending, they had 

to pretend that unlimited corporate spending could not—not just 

might not or probably would not—could not create any risk of corruption in campaigns, because if it did, which it obviously does, 

then Congress would have the right and ability under the First 

Amendment—under the First Amendment—to legislate in this 

area. And the thing that as a prosecutor I have noticed—and it is 

not just me; Senator McCain and I wrote a brief together to the Supreme Court that made precisely this point, so it is a bipartisan 

point. If a corporation is allowed to spend unlimited money, particularly if it is allowed to do it anonymously, guess what? It is allowed by them to threaten and to promise to spend unlimited 

money. And all the safeguards that the Supreme Court said were 

going to be there about seeing the ads up on the TV and knowing 

who was behind them and having it add to the public debate falls 

to ashes when you are talking about a corporate lobbyist going into 

a Member of Congress and saying here is the ad we are going to 

play, we are going to put $5 million behind it in your district unless you vote right. 

And so the power to spend that kind of money is also the power 

to threaten, and that power to threaten is the power to corrupt. 

And that is a nexus that I think we have to remember, and I will 

yield back my time. 

Professor Raskin, would you care to comment? 
31 

Professor RASKIN. Please. Thank you very much, Senator 

Whitehouse. There are several points I would like to make. 

One is that the Citizens United decision overthrew essentially 

two centuries of understanding of what a corporation is. If you go 

back to 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall, the great conservative 

Justice, said in the Dartmouth College case, that a corporation is 

an artificial entity, invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law, and possessing only the rights that the State legislature confers upon it through the charter. Because of that, for more 

than a half century we have forbidden corporations—— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Which was also the understanding of the 

Founding Fathers, correct? 

Professor RASKIN. Well, there were very few corporations and 

they were on an extremely short leash, and you can find lots of 

quotations from Thomas Jefferson who said we have got to keep 

them on a short leash because something that Justice White ended 

up saying might happen. Justice White said in First National Bank 

of Boston v. Bellotti, the State has created the corporation and the 

State need not permit its own creation to consume it. But, of 

course, they have made that the law in Citizens United. 

But in the Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce case and 

in the McConnell v. FEC decision, the Supreme Court said, of 

course, the Government can keep corporate money from flowing 

into political campaigns on an independent expenditure basis because this is money that is in there for economic purposes. The reason why McDonald’s has billions of dollars is because you eat their 

hamburgers, not because you agree with their politics. And so Justice Marshall, Thurgood Marshall, noted that there was a distinct 

corrupting effect in taking that money assembled for economic purposes through lots of State-conferred advantages—perpetual life, 

limited liability of the shareholders, favorable treatment of the assets of the company—and using it to entrench the political power 

of the corporation. This goes all the way back for two centuries, 

this understanding of why the corporation has got to be confined 

to the economic realm. 

And the Court did say—and I wish Senator Hatch were still 

here, because he said that I was somehow unfair in taking a case 

that was just about a not-for-profit’s use of a movie and saying that 

it applies to all of the political spending by private corporations in 

America. I agree it is unfair, but it was not my decision. That was 

the decision of the Supreme Court. When the case came to the Supreme Court, there was a very simple claim made by the Citizens 

United group, which I think they should have won on. It was a 

statutory claim, and they said what we have got is a pay-per-view, 

pay-on-demand movie that we are putting up there. It is not like 

a 30-second attack ad that everybody has got to see. We do not 

think that comes within the prohibition of McCain-Feingold. The 

plaintiffs could have won and they should have won on that point. 

They also could have won because even if you counterintuitively 

view it as a TV ad, 50,000 people would have had to see it. They 

would have been lucky to have had 500 people watch their movie, 

right? 

So there were lots of statutory ways to solve this case, and Chief 

Justice Roberts, who said he was committed to judicial minimalism 
32 

and the canon of constitutional avoidance, a central principle of 

constitutional adjudication, which is you do not reach a constitutional issue if there is a better statutory way of coming out in the 

same way, they destroyed the canon of constitutional avoidance for 

the purposes of Citizens United in that case. They rushed over five 

different ways that they could have found for the not-for-profit 

group in order to give the parties the command to go back and 

reargue the case based on all corporations everywhere at all times. 

So when the Supreme Court came back and said all corporations 

have a First Amendment right to spend money in politics, that was 

way beyond what they were being asked to do originally, and it depended on reargument and rebriefing in the case. This was pure 

judicial activism. 

Let me just say one other thing, which is a series of questions 

have been posed to the other side about whether they have an absolutist perspective on the First Amendment in terms of child pornography and libel and defamation and so on, and I would be curious on Mr. Abrams’ take on that. But I think there are more direct 

questions that need to be asked, because what we see is a tremendous momentum on the Court and the people bringing these cases 

to strike down all campaign finance law, all of it, including the Tillman Act, going back to 1907. I think I saw an interview with Mr. 

Abrams where he agreed that contribution limits should be abolished. I think he would take the position, that since contribution 

limits should be lifted, and since corporations have now been transformed into citizens, they should also be able to give money directly 

to candidate campaigns, so as to abolish a century of practice of 

saying that there is a wall of separation between corporate contribution money and Federal political campaigns. 

So what we are facing is the complete wipeout of campaign finance law if they have got the courage of their convictions. If Senator Cruz is right, which is that money is just speech, then you 

have got to let it flow entirely. And I would be curious at what 

point they stop. 

Mr. ABRAMS. Could I respond? 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Mr. Abrams, go ahead. 

Mr. ABRAMS. These issues have been with us a long time. The 

Court did not make this stuff up in Citizens United. Harry Truman 

vetoed in 1947 the Taft-Hartley bill, which was the first bill that 

imposed limits on expenditures. He vetoed it and said that a reason 

for vetoing it was it violated the First Amendment, the very sort 

of issue that your constitutional amendment would be passing on. 

The constitutional amendment that is before you is one which 

would not just reverse, as it were, Citizens United but the Buckley 

case as well. So we are going back, and we are not just talking 

about conservative jurists. We are talking about Justice Brennan, 

we are talking about Justice Marshall, we are talking about Justice 

Stewart, all of whom—— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. None of them signed off on Citizens 

United. Mr. ABRAMS. No, but all of them signed off on the proposition 

that independent expenditures could not be limited. That is what 

Buckley was about. Citizens United was not about contributions. 

Citizens United moved from Buckley, which dealt with independent 
33 

expenditures, to the independent expenditures of corporations—and 

unions, by the way, who have yet to be mentioned here today. But 

my point is simply that there has been a philosophical disagreement about this for many years with many Justices on the Supreme Court taking different positions so that this is—I really do 

not think—— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. But through it all, through it all, the laws 

of the United States have limited contributions in Federal elections. 

Mr. ABRAMS. And they still do. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. But in very important ways they do not. 

The idea that Citizens United did not change anything runs contrary to everybody’s experience who is involved in politics. We see 

all around us how it has changed anything. You cannot just say it 

is part of an ongoing debate. It is a huge inflection point in the way 

in which democracy operates in this country. Look at the super 

PACs out there. 

I see other Senators here, and I have used more than my time. 

So I will—— 

Mr. MCKISSICK. If I could comment briefly on that issue? 

Senator DURBIN. Senator. 

Mr. MCKISSICK. And I am an attorney, but obviously I am not 

an expert on First Amendment/free speech issues. But I can say 

that really as a practical reality, Citizens United has profoundly 

changed the landscape. I look at this recent May primary involving 

our State Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson. These entities 

have gone in there with their dark money, spent over $1 million 

to disproportionately impact the outcome of that race, to taint that 

Supreme Court Justice in a way that was unlike anything we have 

ever seen. And the only thing it is going to take is one race after 

another race after another race. In North Carolina, the control of 

that Supreme Court is at stake right now. And why is it a very significant issue? Because these laws that have been enacted in our 

State that superior court judges are determining to be unconstitutional will ultimately end up there. And if you can use these dark 

money fund to go in there and start changing the balance on a Supreme Court in our State, it can be done in any State. Should there 

be reasonable limitations? In my mind, it is absolutely imperative 

that we do so; otherwise, this disproportional impact that can come 

from people who are millionaires and billionaires to control the way 

decisions are made through our legislatures and our courts is—we 

are opening up a floodgate to change that is going to have a very 

negative impact on our political process and the rights of individuals. 

Senator DURBIN. I am going to recognize Senator Cruz. I think 

Senator Hatch has already asked. I will recognize Senator Cruz 

and ask Senator Franken if he would come up here and preside 

while I go vote. 

Senator FRANKEN [presiding]. Sure. 

Senator CRUZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

At the outset I would like to say I understand that in my absence 

Senator Schumer very kindly gave a lecture on civility and encouraged me not to go over the top while he then in the same breath 

accused me of supporting child pornography. So I appreciate that 
34 

demonstration in senatorial restraint from the senior Senator from 

New York. 

Let me say to the members of this panel, welcome. Thank you 

for joining us. Let me in particular welcome Floyd Abrams. Mr. 

Abrams, you have been a lion of the First Amendment. 

Mr. ABRAMS. Thank you. 

Senator CRUZ. And I have admired your career pretty much all 

my life, the passion with which you have defended the First 

Amendment against assaults from members of your own party and 

pretty much anyone else, so I appreciate your being here. 

Mr. ABRAMS. Thank you. 

Senator CRUZ. I do wish there were Democratic Senators willing 

to defend the First Amendment. In our history, Democrats have 

been willing to do that, and we are in a strange point in time when 

Democrats abandon the First Amendment and, indeed, propose repealing it. 

I want to address three canards that are put forth in support of 

this constitutional amendment. 

Number one, this is all about nefarious billionaires. You know, 

it is interesting, if you look at the Open Secrets website, which I 

would note is a nonpartisan group, the top 16 donors to campaigns 

from 1989 to 2014, 100 percent of them support predominantly 

Democrats who are on the fence. The top three donors are Act 

Blue, which has spent over $102 million; the American Federation 

of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which has spent over 

$61 million; and the National Education Association, which has 

spent over $58 million. Those are the top three. Koch Industries, 

who we have heard so much about, they are number 59. 

You know, there is a pattern in politics where, when Government 

is trying to take the liberty of the citizens away, they try to distract them with shiny objects. So we have seen the Majority Leader 

repeatedly slandering two private citizens, the Koch brothers, on 

the floor of the Senate. 

There is a rule in the Senate that when one Senator attacks and 

impugns the character of another Senator, you can rise on a point 

of personal privilege. And I would note there is unfortunately no 

rule in the Senate that allows a private citizen whose name is 

being dragged through the mud by the Majority Leader of the Senate for partisan political purposes to rise on that same point of personal privilege. 

The second canard that is put forth is money is not speech. That 

has been repeated over and over again in this hearing. I would 

note any first-year law student who put that as his or her answer 

on an exam would receive an F because it is obviously demonstrably false, and it has been false from the dawn of the Republic. 

Speech is not just standing on a soapbox screaming on the sidewalk. From the beginning of the Republic, the expenditure of 

money has been integral to speech. The Supreme Court has said 

that pamphlets, The Federalist Papers, and Thomas Payne’s ‘‘Common Sense’’ took money to print and distribute, putting up yard 

signs, putting up bumper stickers, putting up billboards, launching 

a website—every one of those requires the expenditure of money. 

I guarantee you every person in this room, if you think about it, 

disagrees with the proposition that expending money is not speech. 
35 

Publishing a book is speech. Publishing a movie is speech. Blogging 

is speech. Every form of effective speech in our modern society requires the expenditure of money from citizens. 

The third canard is that corporations have no rights. That gets 

repeated an awful lot. Again, you would get an F in law school if 

you embraced that position. 

The New York Times is a corporation. CBS is a corporation. 

Paramount Pictures and Simon & Shuster are corporations. The Sierra Club is a corporation. The NRA is a corporation. The NAACP 

is a corporation. La Raza is a corporation. None of the people who 

say corporations have no rights would possibly suggest that, well, 

Congress can then prevent the NAACP from speaking, can prevent 

La Raza from speaking, can muzzle the New York Times. That position is obviously false. 

Nobody has disagreed with the litany of harms that could occur 

if Congress passed this bill, the ability to muzzle citizens, to muzzle labor unions from organizing because that is an in-kind expenditure, the ability to silence bloggers. 

Now, I have today introduced two amendments to protect the 

free speech rights of Americans. The first is entitled, ‘‘The Super 

PAC Elimination Act of 2014.’’ What this bill will do is, number 

one, eliminate campaign limits on individual contributions to Federal candidates. Right now the current system we have is stupid. 

You have got super PACs spending on the side, out of the control 

of campaigns, and it has grown because Congress has attempted to 

regulate and silence speech. The bill I have introduced would eliminate the individual contribution limits and provide immediate disclosure within 24 hours of any contribution made to a Federal candidate. 

What that would do as a practical matter is make it all transparent and make super PACs irrelevant. A number of States have 

systems like this, and it works quite well. 

The second bill that I have introduced today is the Free Speech 

for All Act. We have heard over and over again corporations are 

not people. What this bill says is very simple: Any restrictions on 

the rights, the free speech rights of citizens shall apply with equal 

force to media corporations like the New York Times, CBS, ABC, 

and NBC. That is provision one. And provision two simply says, to 

the extent any restriction is found unconstitutional as applied to 

that media corporation, it shall also be deemed invalid as applied 

to an individual citizen. 

So if everyone who is arguing corporations are not people, I hope 

and expect all the Democrats to happily cosponsor this bill, because 

it says an individual citizen is at a minimum entitled to the same 

First Amendment protection that we give to these giant media corporations. It is free speech for all. We should be defending the Bill 

of Rights, not debating, amending, and repealing the free speech 

protections of the Bill of Rights. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator FRANKEN. Thank you. I will recognize myself—or have 

you questioned yet? 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. No. 

Senator FRANKEN. Okay. Senator Klobuchar is our senior Senator and, therefore, gets to ask questions before I do. 
36 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman Franken, and thank you so much to the witnesses for being 

here. 

I was actually in North Carolina, Mr. McKissick, and was able 

to speak at the Frye-Hunt Dinner and see ‘‘Meet your first African 

American Justice,’’ and also former Governor Hunt, and also hear 

about all the things that you have talked about today in terms of 

the effect of the big money in North Carolina and some of the policies that we have seen. And what was of particular concern to me 

was getting rid of the same-day registration, something that has 

put Minnesota at the top of voter turnout time and time again, 

whether we elected Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, or Governor Dayton, a Democrat, or Jesse Ventura, an Independent. The fact that 

we have people participate matters, and the fact that that has been 

cut back on in North Carolina matters a lot. 

And I was interested hearing Mr. Abrams talk about how this 

should not be about bad policies, and I would agree. But I think 

what we are trying to get at here is that there is a line here between what is corruption and what is not corruption and what this 

leads to that I do not think was defined in the Supreme Court case, 

and I think for me is really the basis for why we have to look at 

this constitutional amendment. 

I do not think anyone takes the idea of a proposed 28th Amendment in the Constitution lightly, but we know there have been 

times in our history where Congress has needed to act to restore 

our understanding of the constitutional rights of everyday people, 

and everyday people are getting drowned out. 

In the past, the Supreme Court ruled that women did not have 

the right to vote. We responded with the 19th Amendment. After 

the Dred Scott decision, Congress responded by passing the Civil 

War Amendments. After the Supreme Court recent decisions about 

money in politics, we have been working on disclosure bills. But I 

have come to the conclusion and feel very strongly that those disclosure bills are important, and I appreciate you do not see them 

as unconstitutional, Mr. Abrams. But they are not going to fix this. 

They are not going to fix the fact that what I have seen in my 

State, where we used to have limits before these decisions, and still 

some of them are in place, that allowed someone like Jesse Ventura 

to run a campaign without having tons of money spent in and 

brought in from out of State that was undisclosed, that came as a 

result of that Citizens United decision. 

My first elections I ran in, the maximum was $500 for a local office. It allowed someone like me that had a third of the money of 

my opponent to still win an election. Otherwise, it would have been 

unlimited, and I know I never would have won, because as it was, 

my opponent ran all her ads on network. I could only run on a 

very, very few local cable stations with a black-and-white ad because of money. And I won by two votes per precincts. So I know 

this story. 

I want to start out with a question of you, actually, Mr. Raskin, 

Professor Raskin, about the major shifts you have seen since the 

Citizens United and how you see this trend is continuing in the future. 
37 

Professor RASKIN. Thank you. Well, others have spoken about the 

deluge of money which has overtaken our politics. The Washington 

Post had a good piece on this showing how in 2006, before Citizens 

United, there was $25 million in outside expenditures; in 2010, after the decision, there was $250 million; and in 2012, it was over 

$1 billion. And we are on pace to exceed that. 

But the thing that I want us to focus on here is that there is a 

free market ideology which is animating the Justices on the Court, 

and I think this also infuses Mr. Abrams’ testimony, and it will 

threaten to wipe out all of the campaign finance laws we have got. 

I would be curious to know, do they think we should have limits 

on contributions? Or is that an unacceptable violation of people’s 

speech? Should we continue to have the Tillman Act since 1907 

which bans corporate contributions to people running for Federal 

office? Or is that an unacceptable violation on the freedom of 

speech—— 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. I think that is a good question to ask Mr. 

Abrams. You said, Mr. Abrams, that you supported disclosure laws 

when I was here when Senator Schumer asked that question. Do 

you support any other limits on campaign contributions such as the 

ones that Professor Raskin just mentioned? 

Mr. ABRAMS. I have pretty well come to the conclusion that contribution limits as well ought to fall. I think they should be disclosed, but it seems to me that we have reached a point both in 

our jurisprudence and our politics where if we know what the 

money is and where the money is coming from, I think we can 

trust the public to make a rational decision. And where they do not 

make that decision, I think that we are constantly unnecessarily 

going through a cost-benefit analysis in terms of there is cost with 

speech. Speech does not do only good things. It is a good thing that 

we protect speech, but speech does some harm sometimes, and 

maybe the impact of having more speech paid for by fewer people 

will sometimes be harmful. But my view is that at the end of the 

day I think for myself that contribution limits as well probably 

should fall. 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Mr. Raskin, do you want to—— 

Professor RASKIN. I am taking it since he thinks that corporations should have the same rights as the people that corporations 

should also be able to give on an unlimited basis to every Member 

of Congress. This is where I think we are going. We have one philosophy which says that money should be treated like speech, corporations like people, and let the free market reign. We have another which tries to adhere to what I think is the American political tradition, which is that within the electoral realm, within the 

political realm, we try to maintain some rough approximation of 

political equality based on the core idea of one person, one vote. 

I appreciate Mr. Abrams’ candor because that is certainly where 

all the litigators on that side are going. That is where at least four 

Justices are going. But let me just say there is one Supreme Court 

decision which gives me a little bit of hope if people would pay attention to it. It came the year before Citizens United. It is called 

Caperton v. Massey, a 2009 case from West Virginia, a fascinating 

case where the CEO of the Massey Coal Mine Corporation had litigation against him and the company going, and they were losing 
38 

all the way up. So he decided to get involved in the election for the 

West Virginia Supreme Court, and he threw everything he had into 

a candidate, who later became Justice Benjamin. He gave the 

$1,000 contribution that he could give. Then he gave $2.5 million 

to a conveniently created and named not-for-profit entity called 

‘‘For the Sake of the Kids.’’ So $2.5 million went to For the Sake 

of the Kids. Then he spent another half million out of his own pocket on his own independent spending. 

When that happened, the money he spent on his favorite candidate drowned out everybody else. It was more money than everybody else gave put together by a huge factor. Benjamin won the 

election, he gets in, and he serves on the Supreme Court panel reviewing the case. And what do you know? They reverse the verdict 

3–2 against the corporation, against the Massey Company. 

Well, that goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that 

was too much not for the four Justices, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and 

Thomas. They thought that there was no problem with it. But Justice Kennedy flipped over, joined the liberals there, and said, okay, 

that does compromise at least the appearance of due process, so we 

are going to send that one back and say that the judge should not 

have sat on the case. 

Now, what is fascinating to me about it is the next year, we had 

the coal mine collapse from the Massey Company; 29 people died. 

The Governor issued a report and said that one of the factors in 

what happened was the failure of politicians to try to zealously enforce the laws and the regulations against the Massey Corporation 

because they were afraid of the political spending and the willingness to engage in independent expenditures of the CEO. 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Okay. Thank you, Professor Raskin. I think 

that I will have to look at that case. I have heard about it, and it 

is just one example, that story, of what has been going on. And I 

think your argument about the corruption and what this is leading 

to is of great merit. And I would also say that I am glad that you 

have come out there—Mr. Abrams said this. I mean, basically 

under this scenario, we would have no rules, we would have no limits on contributions, no limits on corporate contributions. And I just 

see more of the same. And I do not think this is what our Founding 

Fathers wanted. 

Senator FRANKEN. Senator Sessions. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Thank you all. It is an interesting 

and important panel and discussion. 

When I came here, I felt a bit aggrieved. I had some opponents 

who had opposed me and spent millions of dollars. I did not have 

any money, but I was able to win. But I had some grievances. But, 

you know, as I looked at this, I asked myself a very simple question, 3 months into my tenure when this constitutional amendment 

was first brought forth, and the question was: At a fundamental 

level, do we want to pass an amendment to the Constitution that 

allows the Government of the United States to tell an American 

citizen or business they cannot run an ad and say, ‘‘Jeff Sessions 

is a skunk and ought to be voted out of office’’? Or are they not 

able to advance their view that coal is good or coal is bad? Is America going to benefit if we constrict that right? Isn’t that contrary 

to the First Amendment? I suggest it is because we have an 
39 

amendment to amend the First Amendment, and I do not think the 

Supreme Court took any extreme position. I think the Supreme 

Court fundamentally interpreted the Constitution as it is written. 

And with regard to that first constitutional proposal or amendment in 1997, it failed 38–61. Only 38 voted for it. And then when 

it came back in 2010, it failed 40–56, all well below any prospect 

of becoming a passage. 

And it seems to me, Mr. Abrams, that this amendment would go 

further. Those amendments set reasonable limits which would at 

least given the Supreme Court, or five members thereof, some ability to constrict congressional power. Do you interpret this as giving 

almost carte blanche to the Congress to limit spending? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes, I think it does just that, and I think that the 

Supreme Court itself would read it that way. And if a litigant go 

up in court and said but, look, this is really unreasonable, you cannot have a $500 limit, one case out of Vermont, just a few hundred 

dollars, which the Court struck down, another case which this 

amendment would overrule, the Court struck it down just saying 

that is just not enough money to run a campaign. I do not think 

that would be at all the same. 

I mean, under this amendment the State legislatures and the 

Congress would have, I believe, all but absolute authority to make 

these decisions and would be essentially unreviewable and certainly not reviewable on a reasonableness basis. 

Senator SESSIONS. So you could not go to the Supreme Court and 

say we think this is an unreasonable limit because the Supreme 

Court would say you did not put that test in it; in fact, you explicitly passed this amendment after having rejected that word that 

was in a previous draft. I just think that is one of the things we 

need to recognize. 

Mr. Abrams, one more thing. I do not know if you have commented on this, but the dissent, four votes, said that the public interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech 

matters, does that cause any unease? Should we be concerned? 

Some people have expressed concern. Do you share that—— 

Mr. ABRAMS. Well, I have expressed concern in writing about 

that. That is Justice Breyer’s dissent, and, you know, my view is 

that the First Amendment is about protecting the individual’s 

right. And it is not a collective right, and it is not to be interpreted 

in terms of in legal terms of everybody being able to work out social problems, which is a good thing, but not a First Amendment 

concern. The First Amendment concern is protecting the public 

from the Government. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I just left simultaneously with this an 

Environment Committee hearing in which one of the witnesses, a 

professor, said he was severely damaged as a result of his questioning of some of the global warming arguments that are made out 

there. I think we are in a period of time when speech is being 

threatened more than we would like to admit. Political correctness 

has often run amuck, and it is fundamental that Americans be able 

to express their views without intimidation. 

I think the great Democratic Party that was so classically liberal 

is now becoming the party of the progressives, and progressives 

tend to believe that little things like tradition, procedures, rules, 
40 

even sometimes I think honesty can be subjected to the agenda 

that they believe is best for America. And I am telling you, I think 

this is serious. And I feel it repeatedly in our country and in the 

debate that we are engaged in. I just think tradition and constitutional order should be respected, and in the long run we will be 

better off that we do not try to muzzle somebody who happens to 

have money and to keep him or her or this business from being 

able to express views that they think are important to the public 

and maybe even their own interest. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator FRANKEN. Thank you. I am going to recognize myself. I 

think I just heard—— 

Senator SESSIONS. Are you sure you recognize yourself? 

Senator FRANKEN. I do. If I look in the mirror, I recognize myself. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator FRANKEN. And I recognize myself here. 

Senator SESSIONS. I knew you would handle that deftly, and you 

did. 

Senator FRANKEN. Thank you, and so did you. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator FRANKEN. It is good to see you, Mr. Abrams. You actually defended me on a First Amendment case. 

Mr. ABRAMS. So I did. 

Senator FRANKEN. And you won. It was a brilliant—— 

Mr. ABRAMS. Thank you. I remember what you said to me after 

I won. 

Senator FRANKEN. What did I say? 

Mr. ABRAMS. ‘‘Even a chimp could have won that case.’’ 

[Laughter.] 

Senator FRANKEN. And I was right. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator FRANKEN. But you are a brilliant lawyer. And I noticed 

that in your testimony, in your written testimony—and, Professor 

Raskin, I want you to speak to this. Mr. Abrams says that it ‘‘appears’’ that Citizens United has not caused a flood of new money 

in politics. He says it twice, actually. He uses the word twice. It 

‘‘appears’’ that way. 

Now, from my experience, I know Mr. Abrams is an excellent 

lawyer, so I know he chooses his words carefully when he says that 

it appears that way because there is really no way that we know. 

There is really no way that we know. And Mr. Abrams himself has 

said that he is for getting rid of all limits entirely. And we are talking about intimidation about speech. Suppose a corporation comes 

up—and there are no limits—and says to a Senator, ‘‘If you vote 

this way on this bill, we will spend $100 million to defeat you.’’ It 

is fine. Isn’t that fine? I mean, according to this logic—— 

Professor RASKIN. Yes, but that is just free speech. Look, on the 

empirical question, let me just say this—— 

Senator FRANKEN. No, no. Then they need to put the $100 million in or not. They do not even have to put it in to intimidate you. 

Professor RASKIN. That is right. The numbers that I have seen 

have gone up dramatically, and for the numbers that we have not 

seen, the 501(c)(4)’s, the social welfare groups, the (c)(6)’s, the trade 

associations, the dark money, the estimates run into the billions. 
41 

But I do not even know why Mr. Abrams would bother to deny it. 

On his perspective that is just more speech, and that is something 

terrific. 

Now, that is at odds with, I think, the people who are actually 

involved in politics, what they think is going on out there. And I 

think that, you know, the Senator from North Carolina has a much 

better sense of what this money actually means, you know, on the 

ground when it gets spent. 

It seems to me that before we go any further, we have got to ask 

ourselves the question: Do we want to completely deregulate 

money? Because that is where the Court is going, that is where the 

litigators are going, that is where all the political argumentation 

is. Or do we think that there should be a structure in place? 

The position that they are committed to is one where the people 

will have no say over it; that is, as a matter of First Amendment 

law, despite the fact that the people who wrote the First Amendment did not know anything about super PACs, dark money, or $1 

billion bailouts. In fact, on their campaigns they basically spent 

nothing. They stood for office. They did not go out and spend any 

money. They did not do it. 

So in the name of the Founders, they are going to give us a completely unregulated political finance system, far more extreme than 

any other democratic nation on Earth, and then take away from 

the people the right to have any say over it. 

Senator FRANKEN. Now, Senator Cruz talked about, you know, 

media companies like the New York times or Fox News or whatever. When there is an editorial in the New York Times, it is in 

the New York Times. It is disclosing. So, I mean, we had a vote 

on disclosure. We had not one Republican join us on disclosure. 

And, Mr. Abrams, you said that you are for unlimited contributions, but you would prefer to see disclosure. But we are not going 

to see that if you have to get 60 votes to do that. 

So here is the key quote to me in Citizens United opinion, the 

majority opinion by Justice Kennedy: We now conclude that ‘‘independence expenditures, including those made by corporations, do 

not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.’’ That 

is just to me horribly outside of—that is out of touch with reality. 

The Minnesota League of Women Voters—the Minnesota League 

of Women Voters, it is, like, you know, on a trust level with the 

Visiting Nurses Society. I mean, they issued a report in which it 

concluded that, ‘‘the influence of money in politics represents a 

dangerous threat to the health of our democracy in Minnesota and 

nationally.’’ 

I agree with that. I know Senator McKissick agrees with that. 

What do you think of the Court’s analysis, Justice Kennedy’s analysis on this point, Professor Raskin? 

Professor RASKIN. Well, I think it contradicts—— 

Senator FRANKEN. Is it too narrow? Is it too narrow a view? 

Professor RASKIN. Okay. It is a far too narrow view that contradicts both what the Court has said before and what Justice Kennedy said in the Massey decision, Caperton v. Massey. Now, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Court said that we could regulate 

not just in the interest of combating quid pro quo corruption, something like a bribe, but also the reality, the appearance of improper 
42 

influence and undue influence, and there is a whole sequence of 

Supreme Court decisions that follow in its train to say that the 

people understand, and legitimately so, that corruption can go far 

beyond just a narrow quid pro quo. 

If you go back to Caperton v. Massey, Justice Kennedy joined the 

moderate-liberal Justices in saying that we are going to take that 

verdict away from the Massey Corporation precisely because of an 

independent expenditure that was spent in that way. And, by the 

way, Justice Kennedy in his decision in Massey v. Caperton, refers 

to independent expenditures as ‘‘contributions.’’ I mean, for him 

they are so closely connected that he calls them ‘‘contributions’’ in 

the first paragraph of the decision. 

So I think that it cuts against logic and common sense and what 

the Court has always said before. 

Senator FRANKEN. Thank you very much. And I will hand both 

the microphone and the gavel over to Senator Coons. 

Senator COONS [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Franken, and 

thank you to our panel and to all who participated today. 

Like many of my colleagues, I have been deeply disturbed by 

legal developments over the past few years and by what I think 

were the inevitable consequences of those decisions, particularly 

with regard to unrestricted campaign spending. As Professor 

Raskin just commented, Buckley v. Valeo established a principled 

framework for evaluating how and to what extent spending might 

be fairly characterized as speech and, therefore, entitled to protection under the Constitution and when it might be appropriately restrained. 

Recent decisions, however, have lost all sight of that balance and 

of the importance of that balance and of the consequences of destroying that balance. And in my view, the recent Supreme Court 

majority opinions seem singularly focused on whether a specific 

person’s or corporation’s intended giving constitutes quid pro quo 

corruption while failing to consider other forms of corruption that 

are corrosive of our political order, that undermine public confidence, and that distract the deliberative workings of legislative 

bodies at all levels. And the cumulative impact of money, particularly secret money and big money in politics, I think is very negative, and we need to work in a bipartisan way to find a responsible 

solution to this challenge. If you look at the trajectory of recent decisions, I think we are just one or two decisions away from the removal of all limitations whatsoever. 

So if I could, first, Senator McKissick, I just would be interested 

in your comments on what the elimination of restrictions presented 

through Citizens United, what has the impact of that been on your 

district, on politics in North Carolina, on campaigns using North 

Carolina as an example? In Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, some years ago, the Supreme Court held Congress’ interest 

in ensuring that expenditures that reflect actual public support for 

political ideas espoused by corporations justified a prohibition on 

political spending by corporations. They were concerned that corporations not be able to drown out the actual free speech rights of 

real living people. Post-Citizens United, what has the ground been 

like in North Carolina and what have the consequences been? 
43 

Mr. MCKISSICK. The consequences have been grave, to say the 

least, and what you really have unleashed is the capacity for these 

independent expenditure organizations to come in, some of which 

are based in North Carolina, many of which are based outside of 

North Carolina, they are having an impact on our council of State 

races, our legislative races, judicial races, you name it. And what 

you really see is simply a barrage of negative ads that are run literally around the clock that disproportionately highlight some specific issue that they think is narrowly based, but the design of 

these commercials, all of these barrage of commercials, it is simply 

to elicit an emotional response upon persuadable voters. And unfortunately at times it is doing so. It is having exactly that impact. 

So, I mean, you find that perhaps these deep-pocket corporate donors, whether they are millionaires or they are coming from outside 

of the State, perhaps even billionaires on occasion, they have a 

vested self-interest. Many of them are highly conservative. Many of 

them do not perhaps share the mainstream perspective of the vast 

majority of North Carolina voters. I am not going to tell you that 

North Carolina is a progressive State. I am not going to tell you 

it is a conservative State. I am going to tell you it is basically a 

centrist State. But when you have a centrist State with voters that 

are centrist in perspective frequently, and you can see this massive 

amount of spending that is in some situations is three, four, five 

times the amount of money that individual candidates can put toward an issue or their campaigns, you see distorted outcomes—distorted outcomes across the board. 

Senator COONS. Thank you, Senator. Thank you for that experience-based testimony about the impact of this flood of money on 

elections in North Carolina. 

Professor Raskin, if I might turn to you, I have a limited amount 

of time left. Mr. Abrams referenced that the First Amendment is 

an individual right that is protected, a right to free speech that is 

embedded in our First Amendment. Is it true that money equals 

speech in the context of the current majority in the Supreme Court 

in recent decisions? And what grounding do you think there is in 

the text of the Constitution for extending that right to corporations 

equally with individuals? And what is the consequence? 

Professor RASKIN. I think everybody would agree or should agree 

that money is not speech. Money can be a courier of speech. It can 

amplify speech. Furthermore, because the First Amendment right 

is an individual right and not a collective right, that is why the Supreme Court had always said up until Citizens United that corporations as artificial entities chartered by the State governments do 

not have the First Amendment rights of the people. As Justice Stevens put it, ‘‘Corporations do not have consciences, beliefs, feelings, 

thoughts, desires.’’ 

And so there are three basic rationales for why we have a First 

Amendment. One is so people can express themselves. That obviously does not apply to a corporate entity. Two is for democratic 

self-government so that citizens can govern themselves. But we certainly do not allow foreign governments or foreign corporations and 

we did not allow our corporations to take over that process. And 

the third is the search for the truth. But corporations are not interested in the truth. Corporations are interested in profit, as they 
44 

should be, and our economy has been fantastically productive organizing it that way. To bring the press into it just confuses the issue 

because we have a whole separate clause that defends freedom of 

the press, and they have never been regulated under our campaign 

finance laws and never would be. And they certainly would not be 

under the constitutional amendment that is being suggested today. 

Senator COONS. Thank you, Professor. Thank you to the panel. 

I will now defer to Senator Blumenthal. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL [presiding]. Good afternoon. I am going to 

take over the gavel. I am the latest and very likely the last of the 

Chairmen that you will have today. And I am going to ask Senator 

Hirono, who was before me in the line of questioning to go ahead. 

Senator HIRONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The current Supreme Court is one of the most corporate-friendly 

Courts in history. Rulings like Citizens United and others have expanded the rights of corporations significantly in a variety of areas 

that undermine our democracy. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into the record a 2013 New 

York Times article that reports on this troubling trend entitled, 

‘‘Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court.’’ 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Without objection. 

[The article appears as a submission for the record.] 

Senator HIRONO. I would also like to enter into the record an 

April 2, 2014, editorial from the Charlotte Observer entitled, ‘‘Another window to corruption; Our View,’’ talking about the Supreme 

Court’s continuing on its path to dismantle the country’s campaign 

finance laws. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Without objection. 

[The editorial appears as a submission for the record.] 

Senator HIRONO. Senator McKissick, you described for us the 

post-Citizens United situation in North Carolina, and we have 

heard testimony today that the next step, because the Court is on 

the path of saying that constitutional rights are at stake in these 

decisions, the path of eliminating individual contribution limits. 

Now, would you describe for us what you think would happen in 

that instance? Because I think there is agreement that is the next 

Supreme Court campaign spending decision coming down the line. 

Mr. MCKISSICK. Well, Senator, that certainly appears the way 

the Supreme Court is drifting. I think it would be certainly the 

wrong direction for this country to move at this point in time. I 

mean, it is bad enough that you have unlimited corporate contributions coming in today that did not exist before. The worst possible 

thing that could happen is if you also eliminated these limitations 

on individual giving. What you would essentially do is distort the 

whole playing field. And when I say that, right now, whether those 

contributions are $4,000 or $5,000, let us say, in a State race in 

North Carolina, if you eliminate that cap, those individuals that 

want to give $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 assure that their policy, 

their view, their perspective is actually the perspective that wins 

the day before our General Assembly, that the laws are adopted 

that protect those potential contributors’ interests. When you really 

think about it, it undermines the integrity of our whole system. 
45 

Senator HIRONO. Well, these decisions, the Citizens United and 

the McCutcheon decisions, basically did not touch the individual— 

the contributions of individuals. 

Mr. MCKISSICK. That is correct. 

Senator HIRONO. Now, so there is kind of a little barrier. But 

when one can contribute in an unfettered way to individual candidates, that is you, that is all of us. 

Professor Raskin, do you think that that is the kind of undue influence that led States and the Federal Government to pass campaign spending laws in the first place? 

Professor RASKIN. I think you are absolutely right, Senator. You 

know, first of all, on your first point about corporations, I did a report for people for the American Way, the session after Citizens 

United, to situate it in precisely the context you identify, which is 

an aggressive pro-corporate jurisprudence on the Court. And in 

that term of the Supreme Court, corporations won against shareholders, they won against workers, they won against consumers, 

they won against Government regulators. They won essentially 

every case that they had going on in the Supreme Court. 

But the idea of undue influence and improper influence has now 

been taken away from Congress and the States as a legitimate rationale for regulating contributions, and the McCutcheon decision 

presses up very hard against the individual contribution limit because the idea is you cannot limit what people give overall, they 

should be able to give to everybody, because aggregate limits are 

limiting the overall quantity of speech. 

Senator HIRONO. Yes. 

Professor RASKIN. So does the regular contribution limit. The 

regular base limit also ultimately reduces what the candidate can 

spend, because if I could give you $1 million instead of $5,000, you 

could spend to the heavens. We have just deprived you of $995,000 

to spend. 

Senator HIRONO. I think that I share the concerns that you express about unfettered giving to individuals, and I think that that 

does raise the undue influence concern that the people of America 

already have with regard to what goes on in the political arena. 

So with these decisions and the next decision, I have no doubt, 

I have very little doubt that Senator Coons is correct and Mr. 

Abrams acknowledged that the lifting of those individual contribution limits will be next. I think that is a huge concern, which is 

why I believe we need to move ahead with this constitutional 

amendment bill. 

Now, I think there is also agreement that we can put the reasonableness standard into this bill so that the States and the Federal 

Government do not go hog wild. 

In addition, the Supreme Court—I am running out of time, but 

they set up a standard that is probably impossible, which is that 

the only way that we can enact legislation in this area, aside from 

disclosure, would be that we have to prevent a quid pro quo, basically bribery, which is already illegal. So basically the Supreme 

Court is saying, would you agree, Professor, well, aside from disclosure you all cannot do anything about what the Supreme Court is 

saying? 
46 

Professor RASKIN. I think that is absolutely right. And, by the 

way, the same people who brought us this line of decisions are now 

attacking disclosure, not just legislatively, and we know that there 

is a partisan divide on that. But, legally speaking, they are saying 

this is unconstitutional compelled speech under the First Amendment. It is like making the Jehovah’s Witness kids salute the flag. 

And they are insisting there is a right to anonymous speech which 

makes disclosure laws impermissible. 

So look at the political realm that they want to give to the American people. Corporations are treated like people. They can give on 

an unlimited basis directly to candidates. They can spend on an 

unlimited basis. And they do not have to tell anybody. And then 

they whine if anybody even calls a corporation out for doing it saying that somehow their First Amendment rights are being violated. 

That is a pretty special First Amendment they have got. 

Senator HIRONO. Thank you. I am out of time, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. I will be very brief. I want to begin by 

saying to Mr. Abrams, I hope that when Senator Franken said that 

a chimp could win that case, you doubled your fee to him. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. And you and I have been on different 

sides of cases, and I would never have—— 

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL [continuing]. Referred to you as a ‘‘chimp’’ 

in your argument. Far from it. You have been a very formidable 

and forceful advocate, as you have been today, and thank you all 

for being here. 

I want to take a slightly different line because I think a lot of 

the ground has been covered, but from an institutional standpoint—and I want to pose this question to Mr. Abrams first, but 

any of you are free to comment. In its decisions, and most recently 

McCutcheon, the Supreme Court makes certain factual conclusions. 

For example, it says that the Government’s scenarios are ‘‘implausible’’—implausible factually to occur, the scenarios used to justify 

its argument. It concludes that technology offers a robust leavening 

sort of process to combat some of the evils that are raised. And, you 

know, I have worked for a Justice as a clerk. I have argued before 

the Court. I have come to know some of the Justices. And one fact 

about them has impressed me: They are enormously able, erudite, 

smart, and caring people, but they generally are not well informed 

as to the mechanics and the practical impacts because they have, 

by and large, never run for office, never been involved in campaigns, and many not even contributed to them. 

Does it concern you—and I know they have to issue rulings on 

a great many areas from patents to communications cases where 

Internet—they may not be familiar with the details and so forth, 

and that is their job. But in this area that so vitally affects the fabric of our democracy and indeed their being where they are, because they are in those positions because of this system that they 

are now ruling on, are you concerned with the institutional weaknesses of this process that may lead them to reach conclusions that 

have huge unintended consequences way beyond what they thought 

would happening? 

Mr. ABRAMS. I would like to answer that in two ways. 
47 

First, I think you are right that for members of the Court, secluded as they are and certainly out of the political mainstream, 

it is difficult, very difficult, difficult—the patent example is a very 

good one, just as some other very difficult areas of law where they 

have to reach to try to make decisions about impact of something 

on the future which is very hard to do, yes, that is a problem. I 

think it goes with the territory; that is to say, I do not think they 

can avoid it. 

My own view and my second point is I believe that instead of 

characterizing as many members of this panel have, the Court, as 

I would say, simply conservative or simply pro-business, et cetera, 

I believe that the conservative members of this Court have concluded that the First Amendment impact of many campaign finance regulations are very real and very severe; that is to say, 

from their perspective and mine, the First Amendment side is really breached or at least threatened very badly by some of the legislation that has appeared before them. 

Because of that, having reached that conclusion, I think they deliberately strive to impose tests that will not allow the First 

Amendment too easily to be overcome. And that is where I think 

the notion, for example, that only quid pro quo corruption is ‘‘corruption’’ for purposes of these cases. It is not that they do not understand that there could be some impact on the process or that 

money can be intimidating and necessary for candidates. It is that 

I think that, having concluded that the potential First Amendment 

harm is so great and that the First Amendment risks are so real, 

they deliberately narrow the legal test that they then apply that 

is necessary to overcome it. 

So I do not think it is that they are being unrealistic. They may 

be wrong, as your question suggested, because they do not have the 

background. That is something else. But what I am saying is that 

they are doing it in the service, as they view it, of the First Amendment. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. I do not know whether anyone else had 

any observations on that question. 

Mr. ABRAMS. That is so incontestable. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MCKISSICK. What I would say is, if I could be recognized 

briefly, I recognize the direction the Court is moving. I recognize 

that when the appropriate case comes, they might just eliminate 

individual contribution limitations. But I think what the Court has 

failed to do is to understand the potential impact upon First 

Amendment rights and other constitutional rights when you unleash the opportunity for those who are the wealthiest in our society to buy elections and to change outcomes. And there has to be 

a balancing of competing interests. I think the proposed amendment, if it were to go forward, and if it was passed by our States, 

it would allow for that careful balancing of competing interests by 

establishing in Congress the ability to have these reasonable limitations, and likewise within the States. There has to be a leveling 

of that fundamental playing field, because if it is not, what will 

simply be unleashed is the ability of the wealthiest in our society 

to dominate, control, and unduly influence outcomes in our political 

process, our judicial process, but, more importantly, the rights of 
48 

those that may be disenfranchised along the way, such as that occurred in North Carolina through our voter suppression laws that 

have been passed. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Let me ask, Mr. Abrams, and I apologize 

if this question has been asked before, but can you imagine any circumstances or scenarios where you would favor some kind of limits 

on contributions? 

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes, I mean, I do not have a firm view on contributions. I was asked that question, and my answer was I was sort 

of coming to the point where I thought that contributions too 

would—probably ought to be over the line. But that is not the most 

considered, certainly not final opinion on my part. 

Now, I can see a distinction between contributions and expenditures, and I think that the Buckley case offered a perfectly rational 

and defensible compromise in treating expenditures differently 

than contributions. I do think, though, that if in this session or, 

you know, some later session of this body that you proceed with an 

amendment, you really ought to seriously consider why Buckley is 

even on the table. If your concern is what you think—I do not 

think, but you may think Citizens United did, indeed as one of the 

previous Senators observed that the Buckley case was a principled 

decision, if that were your view, you ought not to reverse it. And 

this constitutional amendment reverses a slew of constitutionally 

rooted cases, which require very serious deliberation. Thank you. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Sir. 

Professor RASKIN. Thank you, Senator. Let us see. A couple of 

things about that point. 

One is that Buckley has been taken to an extreme. This is the 

problem, that we have a runaway faction on the Court which now 

has used the ideas of Buckley to strike down, for example, the public finance regime in Arizona, which got more candidates involved, 

increased speech, encouraged competition, as Justice Kagan pointed out, and they struck that down. And, by the way, the ACLU position is pro-public finance. And they have dramatically narrowed 

the meaning of corruption from Buckley, too. 

Now, you know, I yield to no one in my respect and deference to 

Mr. Abrams in terms of his career as an ACLU and civil libertarian 

lawyer, but there is a big division within the ACLU and within 

civil libertarians on this. There is a letter that was written by Burt 

Neuborne and Norman Dorsen, Aryeh Neier, John Shattuck, and 

Mort Halperin taking the opposite position, because in our history 

free speech and democracy go together, and they stand best when 

they stand together. And what has happened in the name of free 

speech is now the development of alarming corporate domination, 

which had always been rejected both by democrats—small ‘‘D’’ 

democrats—and civil libertarians in the past. 

So I think that we need to reunify democracy and civil liberty, 

and this constitutional amendment gives us the framework to work 

it out, because this faction on the Supreme Court is stealing away 

from democratic institutions the power to regulate money and to 

establish what has been a wall of separation between plutocratic 

wealth and democratic politics for a century. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Thank you. My thanks to all of you, and 

to all of the audience for attending, and I am going to adjourn this 
49 

hearing, keep the record open for 1 week. Your testimony has been 

excellent and very helpful and informative, and on behalf of the 

Committee, our thanks. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

[Additional material submitted for the record follows.] 

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