Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) hold a press briefing on their bill to ban Super PACs from federal elections.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Okay, well hello everyone. My name is Alexandra Flores-Quilty. I am the campaign director
00:06of Free Speech for People. We are a national non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated
00:11to strengthening our democracy. Thank you for gathering us with here today for this press
00:16conference. We're gathered here on Capitol Hill regarding the introduction of an incredibly
00:22exciting new bill introduced by Congresswoman Summer Lee and Congressman Ro Khanna. The
00:28Abolished Super PACs Act, bill number HR-2352. This is an important piece of legislation that
00:36addresses one of the most critical issues facing our democracy. A small number of wealthy donors,
00:42ultra-wealthy donors, have an outsized influence in American politics, corruptly impacting our
00:48elections and our government and making it harder for regular people's voices to be heard.
00:54That's why Congress must pack the Abolished Super PACs Act. Today we will hear from bill champions,
01:00legal experts and advocates from grassroots organizations. After the remarks from our
01:07speakers, there will be time for a Q&A for the press. There are also a number of live streams
01:13here today reaching people from across the country. Thank you to everyone tuning in via
01:18the live stream. We are really excited for Americans from across the country to learn
01:23about the serious problem facing our democracy and how Rep Lee and Rep Khanna's bill will address it.
01:29We know that people from every corner of our nation have been waiting for reform like this.
01:35I'm honored to now turn it over to Congresswoman Summer Lee.
01:43Thank you all so much. Good afternoon. It's a beautiful day. Spring is here.
01:47It's summer. Hopefully, I'll bring us a little farther as we get into the better weather. Thank
01:51you all so much. I'm Summer Lee, Congresswoman for representing Pennsylvania's 12th congressional
01:56district, Pittsburgh, Western Pennsylvania. One of, I would say, a district that has known
02:04the ills of super PACs way too much. Before we get into that, I do want to thank Congressman
02:10Khanna for his partnership on this bill, for the advocacy of the folks who are gathered here with
02:15us today, including Free Speech for the People, so many other voices that are here, the speakers
02:20who are going to contribute to this really crucial conversation. This is an initiative that is dear
02:26to my heart. We're not going to mince any words today. I think that if you are paying attention
02:32to what's going on in our country, then you realize that our democracy is in a free fall.
02:37One could argue that our democracy is failing in a sense that if you can see the fissures in your
02:44democracy, then we are in big trouble. Our government is run by billionaires. The White
02:49House, Congress, and the Supreme Court answer to corporations and the ultra wealthy more than they
02:55answer to the American people. Fifteen years ago on this day, the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of
03:01Speech Now, effectively putting our democracy up for sale. The decision created what we know as
03:07super PACs. It has put our campaign finance and our system straight into the hands of
03:14billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeffrey Yaz and a few others. Right now, we're seeing historic
03:23levels of spending in each election cycle as we proceed. Last year, we saw some of the most
03:29expensive primaries in our nation's history. Not even general elections. Primaries, right?
03:38To keep folks out of Congress who are representatives of their communities,
03:43everyday people, your neighbors, your family, your local leaders who care about their communities.
03:48They can't run for Congress or for office because they're being crushed by millions and millions
03:54of dollars. So one of the first lessons we learn in our civic system is one person, one vote. But
04:00the reality is right now is that your vote is being obstructed by corporations and billionaires.
04:04They're pushing out the voices that you want to be representing you and they're replacing them
04:10with their own voice, making it seem like their will, their agenda, their priorities are yours.
04:17Let me be clear. Billionaires do not have a constitutional right to own your government.
04:24When billionaires and dark money groups target your district, they're obscuring
04:28their agenda and denying you the priorities that you want. That doesn't just look like attack ads
04:33against working class or progressive candidates. It looks like guns in our schools because
04:39Congress is too afraid to go up against the NRA. It looks like prescription drug costs
04:45that are life threatening because your Senate is afraid to go up against Big Pharma and lose
04:50his or her election campaign. It looks like black and brown people being unable to pick
04:55their representatives because groups like AIPAC and others decided that their interests
05:00are more important than your communities. It looks like folks like Jeffrey Yass spending millions
05:05and millions and millions in Pennsylvania to influence the outcomes of elections, including
05:11my own and PA12. This money isn't fair and it isn't without motive. Take a look at our Supreme
05:18Court justices, right? Those who have been flown out on private jets and put up in luxury yachts
05:24and then they rule in favor of whatever these billionaires want them to do. Look at our White
05:29House hosting Tesla commercials because Elon Musk planned to donate $100 million to Trump's
05:36super PAC. These things are all connected and everything is contingent on us getting money out
05:42of politics. That's why I'm introducing the Abolish Super PACs Act today to start putting it
05:48in to super PACs in our federal elections. This bill would place a $5,000 limit per calendar year
05:54on contributions to super PACs effectively abolishing them. Right now billionaires and
05:59corporations and other wealthy interests are making unlimited contributions to these super PACs
06:04to support or oppose specific candidates or causes. This turns into multi-million dollar
06:10campaigns against candidates, usually progressive or working class, to ensure that their interests
06:17are protected or codified into law. An average person, for perspective, an average person donates
06:23less than $100 to a political campaign. When folks are juggling the cost of eggs, of gas, of housing,
06:30of transportation, that $100 is a major commitment into our political system and
06:36it's a commitment that should be honored. But it can't be if that $100 is offset by a billion,
06:43given a billionaire giving a hundred million. So if you believe that your kid deserves to have
06:48clean air and clean water, I want you to know that getting money out of politics should be one of the
06:52most important things that we prioritize right now. If you care about getting guns out of our
06:56schools so your kids do not have to consistently go through the trauma of active shooter drills,
07:02then getting money out of politics should be one of the most important things to you right now.
07:06If you care about housing affordability and big developers buying mayors and local electeds,
07:11you gotta get money out of politics. And if you care about democracy and nothing else, if you care
07:19about the checks and balances of our system, if you care about our government existing for another
07:24250 years, then we must get money out of politics. Money in politics is a democracy reform issue,
07:30it's a civil rights issue, it's an environmental justice issue, it's a safety issue. All of these
07:35things wrapped into one and we need to ban these super PACs because power should always be vested
07:40in the people and the people deserve that power, not the billionaires, not the corporate interest,
07:46we the people. So we must strategize, we must mobilize, and we must make it harder for billionaires
07:52to buy our politics, to buy our government, and we must pass the Abolish Super PACs Act and take
07:58that first step towards restoring our democracy for, of, and by the people. And I thank you so
08:04much for being with us today. Thank you so much Congresswoman Summer Lee for your incredible
08:14leadership on this issue. I'm now honored to introduce Congressman Ro Khanna who is also
08:20spearheading this important piece of legislation.
08:26Well thank you Alexandra, thank you Representative Summer Lee for your leadership, for
08:36being a voice of the grassroots and people instead of special interests. You've always shown courage
08:43in standing up for people and grassroots causes and thank you to Larry Lessig. I was a research
08:51assistant from him once a long time ago. He's been sounding the alarm on the money in politics for
08:59almost 20 years and Larry keeps getting worse. I don't know how effective you've been but
09:05but you've been sounding the alarm and at some point people are going to realize how
09:12corrupt the system has become. We have an unholy alliance in this country between wealth and power.
09:22We fought a revolution in America so that people would have a say in self-governance,
09:28not so they could be passive bystanders watching billionaires fund television and digital ads
09:38and having little say in outcomes. Obviously it's been most abused in the past election
09:48by Musk and by super PACs that are now threatening members of Congress and senators if they vote the
09:55wrong way but being honest it's being abused by all parties on both sides. I mean you have
10:01billionaires that funded the Harris campaign with super PACs, you have billionaires that funded
10:07super PACs, you have billionaires that funded the Trump campaign. It has to end and what
10:12Representative Summer Lee is proposing is common sense because it passed, as Larry will go into
10:17I'm sure in more detail, in May. It passed with Republican support, it passed with independent
10:24support and Democratic support. All it's saying is you shouldn't be able to give a super PAC more
10:28money than you give a candidate in a simple sentence. I mean why is it that someone who's
10:36a billionaire is restricted in contributing to me? They can't contribute more than seven thousand
10:41dollars in an election cycle to me and yet they can go spend millions of dollars on a super PAC.
10:48It makes no sense. The Supreme Court, even this Supreme Court, has held that contribution limits
10:53to candidates are constitutional even under Citizens United. Well there's no reason if
11:00contributions to candidates are constitutional, if contribution limits to candidates are
11:05constitutional, that you shouldn't have contribution limits be constitutional for the
11:09Supreme Court. And Maine passed it and what Summer Lee is trying to do is make sure that what Maine
11:14passed with 70% becomes federal law so that if you want to have a super PAC for seven thousand
11:20dollars you can, but what you can't do is have multi multi millions of dollars in these super PACs
11:26taking away agency from citizens. There should be a whole group of Republicans here. They should be
11:33here more than anyone because they're the ones are facing the biggest threats of these super PACs.
11:39And it really, I don't view this as a partisan issue. I view this as an issue of restoring
11:45the heartbeat of democracy, of restoring a democracy where you have to actually go be in
11:52town halls, earn people's votes by knocking on doors and talking to people, not just by relying
12:00on a couple of very very wealthy people to run elections. Let me end with this point.
12:11I think that the country at this moment is very similar to where we were in the 1920s.
12:18They called them the roaring 20s. There was at the time a lot of technology advance, the automobile,
12:25radio, television, and there was a view amongst the entrepreneurial business class and that view
12:31was embodied by Andrew Mellon who was the treasury secretary. He was sort of the
12:37quote-unquote billionaire of his time who had come into government and what Mellon believed
12:42is that the country's progress was being led by business leaders and technology leaders
12:50and ordinary Americans sort of were unworthy. He actually called them incompetent and he said that
12:56they were on the public dole, they shouldn't really have a place, just give the power to
13:02the technology and business leaders. Liquidate, he said, government, liquidate labor, liquidate stocks,
13:09and Herbert Hoover listened to him and he did exactly that and then they learned their lesson.
13:14We had a Great Depression and the lesson that we learned was that actually what builds the American
13:19economy, what builds our country are ordinary hard-working Americans. Well we learned that
13:25lesson up till about now and now they're trying to unlearn that lesson and go back to the 1920s.
13:31Same attitude, different generation, they think they're original but it's the same story in history.
13:37They think they know better than ordinary Americans and they're making the same mistakes.
13:41That's why consumer confidence is down, inflation is up, because we know in this country that it's
13:46ordinary Americans who build the nation and what this bill does is it restores power to those
13:52ordinary Americans. So thank you Summer for working on it. I hope we can get a wide bipartisan group
13:58of our colleagues on this bill. Thank you Congressman Khanna. I'm excited to now introduce
14:08John Bonifaz who is the President of Free Speech for People. Good afternoon. Free Speech for People
14:17applauds Congresswoman Summer Lee for championing this critical legislation to abolish super PACs
14:23and we commend Congressman Ro Khanna for joining Representative Lee in introducing this bill along
14:30with Representatives Jim McGovern, Pramila Jaipal, Rashida Tlaib, Chris DiLuzio, and Delia Ramirez.
14:37Elon Musk is exhibit A for why we need to abolish super PACs. He used super PACs to funnel hundreds
14:45of millions of dollars into the 2024 election, distorting and corrupting the electoral process.
14:53As a result, Mr. Musk now holds enormous power in this Trump administration which he is using to
15:00unlawfully attack and dismantle government agencies and programs established by Congress
15:07while ensuring that he stands to reap billions in government contracts. This is rampant corruption.
15:16It is obscene and it must be stopped. But Mr. Musk is not the only example of why we need to abolish
15:23super PACs. In the 15 years since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit created super PACs
15:31through its ruling in SpeechNow v. FEC, the nation has witnessed the corrosive and corrupting effects
15:39of allowing billionaires and other wealthy interests to make unlimited contributions
15:45to political action committees. The SpeechNow ruling was based on the false premise that since
15:52according to the Supreme Court, independent expenditures cannot corrupt, then unlimited
15:58contributions to political action committees making independent expenditures also cannot corrupt.
16:0415 years of history of the corruption associated with super PACs has proven that the D.C. Circuit's
16:12ruling in SpeechNow was wrongly decided. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld limits
16:19on contributions to candidates as constitutionally justified to prevent corruption and the
16:25appearance of corruption in the political process. Unlimited contributions to super PACs circumvent
16:33the very purpose of those contribution limits to candidates. It is long past time to abolish
16:40super PACs. This legislation represents a critical step in reclaiming our democracy.
16:47We urge members of Congress to join in co-sponsoring this bill and in demanding
16:52an end to the big money corruption of our elections and our government. Thank you.
17:00Thank you, John. I'd now like to introduce Lawrence Lessig, the founder of EqualCitizens.us
17:07and Roy L. Fuhrman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School.
17:11Thank you so much, Congresswoman Lee and Roe. It's wonderful to see you and you still owe me
17:16that memo, but I'll forgive you right now. This is an incredible story. 15 years ago, today,
17:26a bunch of smart lawyers in a court somewhere over there made a mistake. They said,
17:33through an opinion of Judge David Santel, that the logic of the Supreme Court's decision
17:39in Citizens United meant that James Madison's First Amendment required super PACs in America.
17:49It was a mistake. And I'll confess, when I first read the opinion, I didn't see the mistake.
17:55It took an article by the other Larry at Harvard, Larry Tribe and Al Schuler and Richard Painter
18:02and Norm Eisen to point out that under the logic of Citizens United, there's no reason that you
18:09couldn't limit contributions to an independent political action committee. And when they wrote
18:15that article, Free Speech for People took up the fight to make sure that the Supreme Court
18:22Free Speech for People took the case to the D.C. Circuit, asking them to reverse their decision.
18:44They refused. We took the case to Alaska and the Alaska Supreme Court refused. John and I then
18:51joined together in Massachusetts to try to get the Massachusetts courts to agree that Citizens
18:57United did not mean super PACs were mandatory. We lost. But last year on Election Day, the people
19:05of Maine voted 74.9% to enact an initiative, which is exactly the law that Summer Lee and Roe
19:14Kahana want Congress to enact. And that initiative has now been challenged, surprise, surprise,
19:21by a group backed by Leonard Leo, one of the most important super PAC advocates in America.
19:27And it is working its way up the courts. I think by the end of May, we will have a decision by the
19:33district court that will then give us a chance to go to the first circuit, which has never
19:37considered the question. And I'm confident they will get the right answer. And then we can take
19:42it to that court and give that court the chance to correct an extraordinarily embarrassing mistake.
19:50You know, I make lawyers for a living. The idea that we've had 15 years of this mistake,
19:56this legal mistake, destroying the opportunity for democracy in America is an embarrassment to
20:02profession. And I want us to fix it so that we have a chance again, to have a democracy that
20:09answers number one to the people. As Madison said, he promised this house would be, quote,
20:16dependent on the people alone. And he then went on to say in Federalist 57, by the people, I mean,
20:23quote, not the rich more than the poor. Well, that conception of democracy has been deeply corrupted,
20:31not by the Supreme Court. We have a lot to disagree with that court, but not by that court,
20:36by a mistake of a lower court. And we're going to fix it. And when we do it, this legislation
20:41will be constitutional and we'll have a chance to restore something important in America's
20:46democracy again. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Lessig. I want to highlight also in Maine,
20:56just the incredible amount of bipartisan support amongst Maine voters for this issue.
21:04And I think that more than anything also, in addition to this movement in Congress to address
21:09this issue, there's also the need to build a powerful grassroots movement. And so many people
21:14are ready to take up that fight. So I'm excited to introduce Akib Yacoub, who's the chief of staff
21:19of Women's March. Hey, y'all. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here and for joining us.
21:28My name is Akib Yacoub, chief of staff of Women's March. I'm coming in today from Houston, Texas.
21:33I wanted to start by getting something straight. Our democracy should be for our people,
21:40by our people, but instead it's by bullies, for the bros and the oligarchy coming together.
21:50I want to start, I want to share a little bit how I started in this work.
21:54I started organizing my friends, my classmates and my neighbors in middle school.
21:58It was about 19 years ago. And a couple years later, some law folks out here made some rules
22:06and made way for super PACs. And super PACs then allowed billionaires to come through and
22:11push agendas that on their own couldn't pass by the will of the people.
22:16Across the country, across the U.S., we are everyday folks. We are teachers. We are nurses.
22:21We're construction workers. We're organizers. We're out here knocking on doors. We're out here
22:28looking our neighbors in the eyes. We're out here doing everything we can to leave our communities
22:33better than we found them. That is democracy. That's what practicing democracy looks like.
22:38Super PACs allow billionaires a backdoor into the system. They are making and cutting deals,
22:44spending unlimited cash to decide elections before we even get a chance to vote.
22:51This bill, the Abolish Super PACs bill, draws a line in the sand. It says enough.
22:58Enough backdoor dealings, enough loopholes for billionaires, enough billionaires to
23:04buy our elections. It gives power back to everyday people across our country.
23:10And it says to all of them, we are here, and this is how we want our futures to be.
23:16Not one driven by billionaires. We're grateful for Representative Hannan, Representative Summers,
23:22for bringing this bill today forward for the people and standing with us for a future we all
23:29deserve and want. Thank you. Now I'd like to introduce Lauren Manas,
23:36who is the political director of If Not Now movement.
23:42Hi everyone. My name is Lauren Manas. I'm political director with If Not Now,
23:48a movement of American Jews organizing our community to end the war on terrorism.
23:56Organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel's system of apartheid and demand
24:04equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.
24:10My shirt here, if you can see it, says Jews reject APAC. And that's because we refuse to
24:18let right-wing billionaires speak on behalf of our community, tell lies, and villainize
24:25leaders like Representative Lee, all for their unpopular pro-war agenda.
24:32Right-wing billionaires will stop at nothing to achieve their agenda of unlimited wealth
24:38at the expense of the destruction of our democracy, free speech, genocide, a burning planet.
24:46Our elections are simply not democratic as long as billionaires can buy and sell seats at their whim.
24:54Instead of a contest between which candidate is most favored to represent a district,
25:01elections have become a contest for which corporate interests, whether big oil,
25:05APAC, tech companies, can spend the most money. And super PACs are just one tool in the right-wing
25:15toolkit to dismantle our rights and freedoms. Across the board, right-wing billionaires are
25:21threatening our civil liberties, whether it's having our voices heard through elections,
25:29or being able to freely and safely express dissent on our campuses, in our workplaces,
25:36and in our communities. As Elon Musk annihilates the government programs that so many of us need
25:43to survive, only to redirect trillions to his space exploration pursuits, he is also committed
25:50to pouring millions of dollars into primary elections to defeat any candidate that stands
25:55in his way. So at the most foundational level, in order to protect our First Amendment rights
26:04and the foundation of American democracy, we must abolish super PACs and stand up to the
26:10billionaire agenda of stripping away our rights. Thank you.
26:17Thank you so much, Lauren. I want to highlight for everyone who's tuning in on the live stream
26:22that there is a way for everyone to learn more and also take action. If you want to go to
26:27abolishingsuperpacs.org, you can learn more about this issue and also take action to support it and
26:33help advance it in Congress. We want to see every member of Congress across the political spectrum
26:39join and support this policy and join as a co-sponsor. We're now going to move over to
26:44the Q&A. I'm going to turn it over to Congresswoman Lee to lead us in that,
26:48but all of our speakers are available to answer questions from the press. Thank you.
27:09I actually really appreciate that question because when you think about the people who
27:26are most vulnerable to this type of spending, it's almost always working class people,
27:30black and brown people, right? We're the folks, the type of candidates who are less likely to have
27:36just access to the type of money that your traditional candidate is expected to have.
27:41When you first run for anything, the first question that people usually ask you is,
27:46how much money can you raise out of your own phone? The higher the level that you want to run
27:51for, the more that the number is. If you want to run for Congress, can you raise a million dollars
27:57out of your own network, your own Rolodex? For working class people, the answer is always no.
28:03We couldn't possibly, but so many institutions, so many community organizations,
28:08just the entire system really judges viability of candidacy based on that one ability. Before
28:14we get into any other thing, what is your background? What is your resume? How have
28:18you worked or served in your community? What is your agenda? What's your platform? The question
28:22is, can you raise money? But it doesn't stop there because that's only part one of that question.
28:27The second part of the question is, can you do it consistently? For us, you have to run every
28:32two years. Are you able to raise that million dollars now? As we talked about the most expensive
28:39house races in history, that number for Congress is closer to 5 million, 10 million, 20 million
28:45dollars. Can you raise 20 million dollars every two years? The answer is no for an increasingly
28:54large number of people. If you're just a working class person and you have working class ideas and
28:59working class priorities, they're less likely to ever see the light of day in a place like this.
29:04But what is likely to see today are people who are willing to answer to corporations,
29:09to the corporate billionaires, but also what it does is it makes people more cowardly.
29:13People who maybe come with, I want to run because I'm a young black woman from the working class,
29:18and I want to talk about public education, or I want to talk about environmental racism,
29:22or I want to talk about the cycles of gun violence, or whatever it is that comes from
29:26your community, your district. Well, now that agenda is replaced by the agenda of whoever can
29:30give you the most money, whoever can keep other people out of your race by not giving that money
29:35to them. So it completely, it completely turns on its head what our electoral system is supposed to
29:41be about, which means that it just keeps working class people out of politics. So we're going to
29:45see a system where we get more and more and more wealthy folks from particular backgrounds,
29:52and fewer and fewer and fewer people from the type of backgrounds, the type of communities that
29:56we want. In our system, this is supposed to be a representative democracy. We have 435
30:01house districts, which means that we're supposed to have 435 distinct perspectives in this place.
30:08But we cannot have that with this type of money. We just can't.
30:11Congresswoman, Elon Musk is now spending in Florida's 1st and 6th congressional districts
30:18for special elections, also in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. But we've seen across the
30:23country over the past week in red and blue districts, there's been this backlash to DOJ.
30:28Is there a liability for Elon Musk, in your mind, getting involved?
30:34I think that we should make a liability, right? There should be a legal liability to operating
30:40in our system that way. When we think about the limitations that we put, we are constitutionally
30:45capable of putting limitations on the ways in which we engage systems, right? We recognize that
30:53money into politics is freedom of speech, but we still put limits on that. For instance,
30:56you can only give me $3,500 for a primary and another $3,500 for a general. We can put limitations
31:02on that so that we can keep the system operating in the way that is naturally intended to do.
31:07But when we have someone who has this type of unfettered money, access to money, who can then
31:13funnel that into these types of super PACs where they are not as regulated as they are, then that
31:19just allows them to basically get around the rules that we have. We recognize that, but for him
31:25spending the type of money he spent, he would not be taking press conferences out of the White House,
31:30out of the Oval Office. The liability, I think, will come from the people, obviously.
31:34That's the final failsafe in so much of what happens within our democracy, whether or not
31:39the people have determined that they think it's unacceptable the way that we act. I think that
31:42people think it's unacceptable that he has access to their data. I think they think it's unacceptable
31:46that he has conflicts of interest, that he is clearly working through, and that's what
31:53obviously informs even the way that he navigates through Doge, right? I think people think it's
31:59unconscionable and really beyond the pale that somebody like him has that type of access
32:06to our leaders who have not been elected. I know that across the country, polls and
32:10anecdotal evidence will show you that it is a liability for him to move that way.
32:13But the problem with money in politics is that it doesn't matter, because the super PAC doesn't say
32:17Elon Musk super PAC. It says America super PAC or America first. None of these super PACs are
32:24named for what they actually do, which is what allows them that cover, that veil of secrecy
32:30to be able to move. By the time people actually realize who's putting the money in,
32:33it's almost always too late. The damage has already been done. I mean, not only that,
32:37is that we have very loose regulations for what you can say through your spending,
32:42what type of information or disinformation you can spread. We know that he's one of the biggest
32:47perpetuators or spreaders of disinformation on X, his own site. We know that. That is
32:52objective fact. What would keep him from being someone who spreads disinformation through his
32:56super PACs, through ad buys and through text messages? So that's why we need
33:00more regulation, but also that's why the people are fed up.
33:15This does keep super PACs in some way. It just puts limitations on them the same way that you
33:21or I have a limitation to spend on a candidate directly. What would make a super PAC less
33:27corrupt or more free to be able to just work with unlimited amounts of money? We are simply
33:34saying that if you cannot give a candidate unlimited amounts of money, which you shouldn't
33:38be able to, you shouldn't also be able to then funnel it or aggregate it in a super PAC that
33:43has very, very little oversight and accountability. When it comes to the rest of just the
33:48portfolio around getting money out of politics in Citizens United, campaign finance reform,
33:52I think these all go hand in hand. This is one piece of the puzzle, but there are others. There
33:57are some that have been introduced in the past and we expect to be introduced probably within
34:02weeks, if not sooner within Congress. This is a compliment to that. The end game is that we
34:08want to restore a true democracy. We want to restore a fairness to the system that simply
34:13doesn't exist anymore and that we see is growing out of control at a rate that I'm certain
34:18even the Supreme Court could not have or maybe should have been able to predict
34:23after in Citizens United, should have been able to predict after free speech,
34:26free speech now and so many of the other instances that came up.
34:30So let me put this, let me put it this way first.
34:59Getting money out of politics is the most bipartisan issue that we have in national
35:03politics outside of the halls of Congress. If you leave this building, if you leave this complex,
35:08wherever you go and whatever city you go and whatever state, red, blue or purple,
35:13you will find a majority of people in this country who believe that we have to get money
35:18out of politics. You will find increasingly as we are navigating this new administration,
35:23more evidence for why we need to get money out of politics. And I think that the argument you
35:29get from both sides is that they don't want to unilaterally disarm, which is why we're trying
35:33to take that argument away from them. We don't have to unilaterally disarm. We should bilaterally
35:37disarm so that no one has the excuse of, well, it helps us or it hurts them. We want it,
35:43we want it out so that everybody has an even playing field to play on. So, yeah, I expect
35:48that we're going to get pushed back. I think that both sides, I'm going to say both sides,
35:52I don't speak for both sides. I know that on our side, we have given a lot of lip service,
35:56particularly to ending Citizens United. It's one of those things that we say often,
35:59we want to end Citizens United. We want common sense gun legislation. We understand that our
36:03climate is an existential crisis, right? We want to end and eradicate poverty. We want
36:09housing affordability. But at the end of the day, the policies don't match the politics.
36:13Getting money out of politics is the politics. It's the politics in what we do. It's to say
36:18that we can do none of the other things that we care most about because we will not take that
36:23first step to be to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. So, yeah, I'm challenging. We are
36:28challenging, but not just challenging. We are welcoming whoever it is, Democrats, Republicans,
36:34Independents, to come on to the side because this was right to do. Because as our democracy
36:38arose, as our checks and balances begin to fail right before our eyes, that we see more clearly
36:44than ever how important it is that we do this. So, yes, it will take some courage. It will
36:49absolutely take political bravery. But they will find that the water is warm when they come.