
Billionaires are spending nearly 40 times more on elections than they were 12 years ago thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens UnitedA new report has been published.
Analyzing campaign contribution data, Americans for Tax Fairness foundBillionaires have increased their donations from $31,000,000 during the 2010 election to $1.2Billion in 2020, which is almost 39 times more. 2020’s total doesn’t even include the $1.4 billion total that Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer contributed to their own campaigns, the report noted.
In 2020, almost 40 percent of billionaire election spending occurred since 1990. This totals about 9.3 % of federal campaign contributions. About 55 per cent of donations went to Republicans.
Billionaire donations seem to be on the rise. Billionaires spent $682million on campaign contributions in 2016, or roughly half of their spending in 2020. In 2012, billionaires spent about $233 million.
BREAKING: New analysis finds that America’s 661 billionaires pumped $1,200,000,000 into the 2020 elections.
That’s double what they contributed in 2016, and 39x more than they contributed before Citizens United was decided.
It’s been 12 years. It’s time to #EndCitizensUnited. pic.twitter.com/BXRE6bdeNw
— Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) January 21, 2022
This is a lot more than the billionaires who spent it before. Citizens United. According to Americans for Tax Fairness, billionaires donated approximately $17 million to the 2008 presidential election. the Institute for Policy StudiesLast year. This means that billionaires spent 70 times more on 2020 elections than in 2008 before the controversial Supreme Court ruling.
In January 2010, conservative Supreme Court justices ruled that they were the right to rule in their Citizens United decision that restricting corporate donations was a violation of corporations’ First Amendment rights – a decision that granted individual rights to corporations and enabled them to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaign contributions. As a result, large amounts of money from corporations and deep-pocketed individuals have been funneled into elections.
Citizens United paved the way for the rise of super PACs, which can spend unlimited amounts on campaigns as long as they’re not officially coordinating events with candidates. This is a way for billionaires to influence elections, Americans For Tax Fairness notes.
“On this anniversary of the disastrous Citizens United decision, the escalating campaign donations of billionaires offer the clearest argument possible for why we have to get big money out of politics,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “Weak taxation of the wealthy combined with anemic regulation of campaign fundraising have handed America’s billionaires outsized political influence to go along with their huge economic clout.”
Campaign donations can be used as an investment by the ultrarich. Billionaires are giving more money because they have been allowed unrestricted wealth. virtually tax-free; Right now, that wealth Is growing faster than ever. The report found that $1.2 billion is a large sum of money that a small number of people could have contributed to, but it is less than 0.1% of billionaire wealth.
The wealthy are allowed to accumulate this wealth because their campaign contributions to politicians encourage lawmakers to implement tax breaks to the rich. This creates a vicious cycle in which the two groups feed on each other while the public suffers.
Progressive advocates say that the only way to end the cycle is for legislators or officials to rule. Citizens United. “Corporations are not people, and billionaires shouldn’t get to use their enormous wealth to pick and choose who they want in office,” Americans for Tax Fairness wrote. “It’s well beyond time for Citizens United to go, and to put real action towards getting big money out of politics. Our democracy depends on it.”