OPINION:
Five years ago last week, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, that “the worth of speech ’does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.’” The government, the court affirmed, cannot censor or ban the political speech of individuals simply because they organize themselves as a corporation or labor union.
Despite its roots in the basic freedom to dissent that this country was built upon, the decision caused a firestorm among incumbent politicians desperately seeking to maintain a stranglehold on the regulation of political speech.
Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin declared that, “overturning the ban on corporate spending on political campaigns opens the floodgates for the corrupting influence and the dominant hand of special interest groups.” Former Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe predicted that the decision would “flood the airwaves with corporate and union advertisements.” And outspoken Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson avowed that, “The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections. If that happens, democracy in America is over.”
Not to be outdone by these dire claims, President Obama, in his 2010 State of the Union Address, stood before the nation and the justices of the Supreme Court, and asserted that “last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”
Five years later, have these predictions come to pass? Have corporations flooded the airwaves? Is democracy in America over?
Let us quickly dismiss some of the factual inaccuracies contained in these early 2010 predictions. Contrary to the president’s claim, foreign corporations cannot, nor could they at any time since the 1970s, contribute to or spend money, directly or indirectly, on U.S. elections. Citizens United did not overturn the ban on corporate donations to political campaigns, despite Mr. Durbin’s hyperbolic allegations. Corporations can, after Citizens United, contribute to groups that run ads independently of campaigns, but it remains illegal for corporations to donate directly to candidates.
Putting the fiery rhetoric and false claims aside, is the prediction that we will see a large influx of corporate cash spent on the discussion of political issues during election season true? The answer, quite simply, is no.
Citizens United (and a related decision, SpeechNow.org v. FEC) permitted the creation of super PACs — independent groups that can receive unlimited donations to express their political opinions, so long as they don’t coordinate with candidates. During the 2014 election cycle, according to the Sunlight Foundation, businesses gave $26 million to super PACs. Just 4.4 percent of the $594 million given to these organizations came from the business community — more of a light drizzle than the so-called “flood” of corporate spending that was supposedly imminent. If you look at all election spending in 2014, the $26 million in corporate spending permitted by Citizens United accounts for just 0.7 percent of the $3.67 billion that candidates, political parties and individuals spent to support their preferred candidate in the midterm elections.
And large corporations — the huge conglomerates one imagines when the term “corporation” is thrown around — gave even less. According to a Sunlight analysis that looked at spending in the 2010 and 2012 cycles, “one thing the [top 200 corporations] did not do, for the most part, was take advantage of the new opportunities to spend on politics that the Citizens United decision afforded them. The 200 corporate donors gave just $3 million to super PACs, with the bulk of that amount a single $2.5 million donation from Chevron to the Congressional Leadership PAC.”
The reality is that the Citizens United decision did not corrupt American democracy or usher in an era of unrestrained special interests. Politicians and pundits who argued that in 2010, including the president himself, were wrong.
Five years after the Supreme Court’s monumental ruling, it is time to put aside this false idea that Citizens United irreparably harmed American democracy. Instead, we should celebrate the decision for what it actually was — an affirmation that the government ought not restrict the speech rights of any group of individuals simply for criticizing politicians.
Scott Blackburn is a research fellow at the Center for Competitive Politics.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.