WASHINGTON - Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and six other Democrats charged Tuesday that modern political campaigns - and democracy itself - are threatened by a pair of "awful" Supreme Court decisions that can only be fixed by changing the U.S. Constitution itself. The senators said during a news conference that adding a new provision to the Constitution is necessary if Congress wants to nullify a 1976 ruling that said campaign spending was the same as free speech and a 2010 ruling that removed all limits on campaign spending for special interests, corporations and labor unions.
"In the mid-70s the activist Supreme Court opened the flood gates to allow special interest money to flow into our elections by falsely equating money with speech," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, referring to the case Buckley v Valeo.
That case was followed last year by Citizens United v Federal Election Commission which opened the way to a surge of campaign spending by corporations, interest groups and labor unions.
Schumer called Citizens United "Buckley on steroids - which really took the First Amendment to an illogical, almost anti-democratic extreme. These are awful decisions that need to be overturned."
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