Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court
opened the door for unlimited corporate spending to influence the outcome of elections in
Citizens United v. FEC.
Fast forward two years, and a footnote in Justice Stevens' dissent looks prescient.
FN 64 The majority declares by fiat that the appearance of undue influence by high-spending corporations "will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." The electorate itself has consistently indicated otherwise, both in opinion poll ... and in the laws its representatives have passed, and our colleagues have no basis for elevating their own optimism into a tenet of constitutional law.
A new independent national survey of 500 small business leaders released Wednesday by the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority shows how that decision [pdf] has found that the vast majority of small business owners believe that Citizens United hasn't just increased the influence of large corporations, but hurt them.
Washington, DC—Two-thirds of American small business leaders believe the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case handed down two years ago on January 21 hurts small companies.
In fact, only nine percent of small business leaders thought the ruling positive [....]
The survey also found that 88 percent of small business owners hold a negative view of the role money plays in politics, with 68 percent viewing it very negatively. [...]
"Small business owners aren’t stupid," said Melanie Collins, owner of Melanie’s Home Childcare in Falmouth, Maine and a leader with the Maine Small Business Coalition and Main Street Alliance. "We know who wins when corporate heavy hitters can spend all the money they want, as secretively as they want, to influence our country’s elections—and it’s not us. The Citizens United decision stacked the deck against small businesses. We’ve got to unstack that deck."
That should all come as an unwelcome surprise to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, of course, the Republican Party. This is the second survey in just a few months that shows that small business owners and the Republican members of Congress who claim to be representing them don't agree.