Dark money and what we can do about it

Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision – one of the most disastrous decisions in modern history. It unleashed a tidal wave of unregulated, unlimited political spending by wealthy special interests that is drowning out the American people.

It’s bad enough that multinational corporations can spend millions to influence the outcomes of our elections. Even worse? They don’t have to disclose any of it to the American people.

Dark money is corroding our democracy, and we need to do everything we can to get rid of it. Overturning Citizens United will take time, but there’s one thing President Obama could do now to make a big difference: Require government contractors to disclose their political spending.

I’m calling on President Obama to do just that and issue an Executive Order requiring contractors to disclose political donations as a condition of submitting a bid for a government contract.

Many of the world’s largest corporations are also federal contractors. They supply the government with everything from jet engines to paper towels, and American taxpayers paid them approximately $460 billion in 2013 alone for goods and services. Companies doing business with our government should not be able to influence our elections anonymously with dark money.

I’m going to keep fighting to end Citizens United, root out dark money from our politics, and restore the integrity of our political process for the American people.

Ron