Center for Competitive Politics officials will testify at two House hearings Wednesday examining the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
CCP president Sean Parnell will testify at Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties) hearing. CCP board member Allison Hayward, a professor of law at George Mason University, will testify at Wednesday’s House Administration Committee hearing. Hayward and CCP vice president and co-founder Steve Hoersting testified at Tuesday’s Senate Rules Committee hearing.
Congressional leaders and President Obama have suggested further restricting supposedly foreign spending, blunting business corporation political speech and even a constitutional amendment to limit independent expenditures, as several Senators endorsed Tuesday.
“Congressional leaders should take a breath, and see if any potential issues from Citizens United develop instead of relying on baseless, inflammatory assertions about hypothetical corporate control of our republic,” said Hayward, who authored a Citizens United brief on behalf of campaign finance scholars examining the legislative history of the corporate and union expenditure provisions.
Over half the states permitted unlimited independent spending by corporations and unions before Citizens United with no apparent evidence of corruption, malfeasance or foreign-connected spending.
“Existing shareholder governance regulations allow stockholders a voice in corporate decisions. Further restrictions would only restrict congressionally-disfavored business corporations, which the Supreme Court rejected in Citizens United,” Parnell said. “Company directors should be free to make decisions on political expenditures, as they do for lobbying and charitable contributions to campaign finance ‘reform’ groups like the Brennan Center for Justice.”
CCP’s Citizens United policy primer:
https://www.ifs.org/docLib/20100201_citizenslegmemo.pdf
CCP’s policy primer details constitutional and policy problems with further restricting business corporation political spending after Citizens United, as all major congressional proposals to date suggest.
Instead, we suggest restoring tax credits for small contributions, lifting limits on coordinating candidate spending with parties and raising contribution limits to account for inflation.
