The Democracy of the Dollar

By Dylan Chu ’29

On January 21, 2010, eight months before I was born, the Supreme Court decided that corporate money in politics was legally indistinguishable from free speech; consequently, I, alongside a generation of young citizens, have grown up in an age where American democracy is defined by the dollar. Previously, the Supreme Court had viewed corporate “independent expenditures” – the practice of corporations’ spending on a political candidate’s campaign messaging – as a dangerous tool that, if unregulated, could pose a significant risk to our democracy. The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission overturned this decades-long premise, removing the ban on independent expenditures established eight years prior in the McCain-Feingold Act. The end of regulation has since sparked an era where corporate and billionaire influence in our democracy has become an institutionalized reality. Citizens United has allowed politicians to disregard the will and struggle of the constituents they represent in exchange for donor money and corporate support. This widespread influence of corporate money in our government has quietly, over the last sixteen years, priced lower and middle class citizens out of our democratic process. I, alongside millions of others, have inherited this normalization of corporate Political Action Committees’ (PAC) influence within our government. Our representatives show us time and again that our voices come second to the interests of the largest corporate monopolies on earth, and that they are willing to act against us in legislation regarding our food, our healthcare, and our future in exchange for political gain.

Our generation will inherit this country long after the aging politicians accepting fossil fuel PAC money are gone; yet, we are watching them legislate our future away from the comfort of a billionaire donor’s pocket. According to Scientific American, large fossil fuel corporations such as ExxonMobil knew about climate change as early as 1977. Yet, since 2010, Citizens United has allowed ExxonMobil and other corporations such as Koch Industries to drastically increase their political spending, enabling them to protect themselves from climate accountability. According to Fortune, following the Citizens United decision, Koch Industries spent nearly $200 million through their political network to elect politicians that pledged to oppose new environmental regulations. Voting records show the relationship between corporate PAC money and our politicians: a study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that for every 10% more often a member of Congress voted against environmental regulation in 2014, they were rewarded with $5,400 more in fossil fuel donations the following election cycle. Citizens United allowed politicians to sell not only our environment to large corporations, but also our nation’s peace. According to Responsible Statecraft, a nonpartisan foreign policy publication, House members who voted to authorize $886 billion in military spending for the 2024 fiscal year received four times more money from military contractors than those who voted against the bill. Senators who supported the bill received five times as much in campaign donations from the military industrial complex than those who opposed it. The same report found that Lockheed Martin, one of the largest corporations within the arms industry, derives roughly 72% of their revenue from government contracts. Citizens United exacerbated a political system that allows defense corporations such as Lockheed Martin to continuously influence government spending decisions. The barriers that the infamous decision tore down have allowed major corporations across industries not only to reward politicians for acting in private interests, but, in the case of Lockheed Martin, also to manufacture their own survival.

This political cronyism that Citizens United enabled will continue to perpetuate itself, each time deepening its corruption of our democracy, unless our generation chooses to elect differently. We are currently seeing a rise in grassroots politicians who, not unlike us, have spent much of their political careers in the post-Citizens United system, and are choosing to campaign on the promise of rejecting it. Texas Senate nominee and Round Rock native James Talarico, for example, has refused corporate PAC money, with 98% of his donations being under $100, raised from over 215,000 donors. Talarico’s triumph in the Democratic Primary against established Democrat Jasmine Crockett, who transferred over $30,000 in PAC money to her campaign account, is proof that grassroots campaigning can defeat the corporate dollar. While Talarico is a prominent example, he’s far from the only one. Within Massachusetts, State Representative Erika Uyterhoeven of Somerville has reintroduced legislation to limit corporate political spending, directly challenging the status quo of dollar democracy. While many of us are not able to go to the polls and vote, I encourage the reader to seek out and support candidates who refuse corporate money. Our generation will soon inherit this democracy. We must ensure that it is defined by the will of the people, not those holding the dollar.