A new ABC News/Washington Post Poll finds that 69% of Americans disapprove of Super PACs. Even a majority of Republicans oppose them. This means that roughly seven in ten people don’t agree with Mitt Romney that corporations are people whose speech is protected by the First Amendment. It’s also a number that, at greater than two-thirds, should be sufficient to amend the Constitution. Unfortunately, it is the Super PAC money that distorts Congress and makes it unreflective of the will of the people.
That’s why I think we have to do two things. First, we have to work on improving on the 69% number and get it up close to 80% of the population. Second, we have to ask our state legislatures to lobby Congress to amend the Constitution on our behalf. A supermajority of the people want Super PACs to go away. But that doesn’t Congress will listen to us. Maybe they will listen if a supermajority of the states petition them directly.
Here’s the problem – even if you get it out of Congress you have to get 33 or 34 states to ratify it. I believe your absolute ceiling is 35 states because of term limits – state legislatures are much more susceptible to the entreaties of corporate interests (the same interests that benefit from Citizens United) than those without term limits. Term-limited representatives are human, and they have to think about their next job, and if corporate interests can offer a big enough carrot (e.g. a “Consulting” gig for $150K per year to send a PowerPoint presentation once a year after they leave public service) or a big enough stick (unlimited funding for their primary and general election opponents) or both, then they can have their way at the state level.
I agree with the idea of a Constitutional Amendment – I just think it’s a taller order than most will appreciate.
Most people get caught up in the improbability of ever passing an Amendment, but beyond that, the bar for getting the language exactly right is about 100%–which to me is the really scary part about going the Amendment route. How do you craft an Amendment that accomplishes the goal without going too far? And then afterward, of course, you worry about getting anybody to agree on it…
First, we have to work on improving on the 69% number and get it up close to 80%
Nope, can’t get there. The highest you can expect to go is 73 percent. Why 73? Subtract it from 100. There’s your answer.
In our efforts to pressure our congressman here in Pasadena, we run into a lot of people that don’t want to bother signing our petition to start a constitutional amendment because it seems like such an impossible task.
On the other hand, a solid number of people are so fed up at the farmers markets where we have been doing this, that they seek us out to sign.
We need to jump-start this process by getting our congressman to co-sponsor HJR 90. Then maybe it will be easier to get the local politicians to join.