The purpose of the amendment would have reversed the Supreme Court's Citizen's United Ruling. Democrats needed 60 votes to conclude debate on the measure, but failed to do so. In addition, a constitutional amendment needs 67 votes to pass the Senate. The measure failed 54-42 with members voting along party lines.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the amendment would have altered the Bill of Rights and prevented free speech.
“It should worry everyone that there are 54 Senators who think that less free speech is better. Our government is stronger when more citizens participate in the electoral process. That includes exercising the right of political free speech and exercising the right to vote. Free speech creates a marketplace of ideas and fosters participatory democracy, allowing an educated citizenry to cast votes to elect its leaders,” Grassley said in a statement....
The amendment, proposed by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), would have permitted the federal government and the states to regulate and limit fundraising and spending on federal candidates. Sen Ted Cruz (R - TX) blasted the amendment saying Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels would be jailed under the amendment's regulations.
“Congress would have the power to make it a criminal offense; Lorne Michaels could be put in jail under this amendment for making fun of any politician. That is extraordinary. It is breathtaking, and it is dangerous,” the Texas Republican said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
“Citizens United was one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court,” Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) said floor Tuesday. “It was a disaster.”
The 2010 Citizens United decision struck down restrictions banning corporations and unions from spending money from their general treasury funds to support or oppose candidates. The court's McCutcheon decision struck down aggregate limits on individual contributions to candidates.
◼ Silent Coup: Harry Reid’s plan to hand America to liberal billionaires - Matthew Continetti/Washington Free Beacon
Writing in June that the nonprofit “strongly opposes” the so-called Udall amendment, the ACLU’s Laura Murphy and Gabriel Rottman called the Democratic proposal “deceptively complex,” “unnecessary,” “redundant of existing law,” “dangerous for liberties,” “vague,” “overbroad,” “exceedingly dangerous to democratic processes,” and “the first time the amendatory process has been used to directly limit specifically enumerated rights and freedoms.” Reid’s baby, the ACLU said, would “‘break’ the Constitution” by “amending the First Amendment.”◼ Harry Reid is mad that Republicans didn't obstruct his bill - Ashe Schow/Washington Examiner
Two levels of government would be permitted “to criminalize and censor all issue advocacy that mentions or refers to a candidate under the argument that it supports or opposes that candidate.” Recall that Citizens United, which the Udall amendment is supposed to address, was not about Tea Party Astroturf. It was about the FEC’s attempt to censor a film critical of her royal highness.
The mandarins at the FEC and IRS, as well as their counterparts at the state level, would be responsible for distinguishing political communications that “support or oppose” a candidate from those that do not. They would penalize the individuals and groups they subjectively deem violators of administrative diktat. If this is not about “limiting free speech,” what is?
I am not speaking abstractly. Want an image of a post-Udall world? Think Lois Lerner on Spring Break—after a bottle of tequila.....
What we saw in Harry Reid’s Senate this week, when the Udall amendment failed a cloture vote, when 54 Democrats voted to refashion the First Amendment to serve the interests of incumbency and power, was not a noble cause. It was not good government. It was not an example of altruistic intentions stifled by Wall Street.
What we saw in Harry Reid’s Senate this week was an attempt by the ascendant part of the elite, the part that makes its living from abstraction, to vanquish the declining part, the part that makes its living from extraction. And this sorry excuse for a legislative week did more than reveal, in real time, the structure and nature of class struggle in America today. It also occasioned a sentence I never thought I would write. If only Harry Reid listened to the ACLU.
After Monday's bipartisan 79-18 vote, Reid vented to reporters that Republicans were trying to "stall" the Senate, indicating that he never intended for the campaign finance amendment by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., to go to a real floor debate.
Politico reporter Burgess Everett writes that many Republicans voted to advance the amendment Monday in order “to foul up Democrats’ pre-election messaging schedule, freezing precious Senate floor time for a measure that ultimately has no chance of securing the two-thirds support necessary in both the House and Senate to amend the Constitution.”
The move not only guarantees a lengthy debate over Democratic efforts to limit the First Amendment, but it also limits the amount of time left for debates over other doomed measures on gender pay equality and the minimum wage, which were intended to frame the coming elections for Democrats as they defend their Senate majority.
