As we note in our current feature story, the recent Supreme Court decision gives foreigners basically an unfettered right to spend money on US elections — China, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, take your pick. The majority tried to paper over this. But now foreign corporations, foreign individuals and even foreign governments can use corporations as pass-throughs to spend millions or tens of millions of dollars supporting their candidate of choice in a US election.
There are some efforts underway to create some regulations on the margins. But that’s a mistake. If the Democrats are smart they’ll see that smart policy and smart politics come together in this case. There is certainly a strong public interest in preventing non-US citizens from meddling in US elections. So the Dems should get behind a bill that would essentially overturn the decision simply by plugging the hole that would allow unfettered foreign money into US elections. There’s just no way to have one without the other since corporations have nothing in their DNA that ties capital, ownership or management to US nationals. Any restrictions with teeth would make it essentially impossible for any large public company to use the decision and probably others as well.
Get behind the bill. Dare Republicans to oppose it.
