Require Federal Contractors to Disclose Their Political Spending

President Obama

Urge the President to require corporations that do business with the government to disclose their political spending

The disastrous Supreme Court decisions of Citizens United and McCutcheon allowed big corporations and the wealthy elite to unleash an unyielding flood of corporate money into our elections, giving them more power over our political process than ever before. Special interest money in politics is one of the biggest threats to American democracy. As we see in our gridlocked Congress, the public interest suffers when our legislators are more interested in listening to big corporations than to everyday Americans.

Right now, big companies like Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Pfizer and even subsidiaries of Koch Industries get highly sought-after government contracts paid for with our taxpayer money. These same companies have the right to spend unlimited funds on elections thanks to Citizens United — and they don't have to tell anyone where they are spending their money.

Recently, President Obama has been talking about creating "better politics" — rebuilding a system that works for the public, not just the privileged few.

Ultimately, we need a constitutional amendment to overturn these bad Supreme Court decisions, but with a fiercely divided Congress, the president can't do that by himself. But we know President Obama can take a meaningful step to start to rein in corporate money now, through an executive order.

The President needs to hear from us today. He has asked the public to weigh in and demonstrate support for an executive order before he moves forward.

This would be an incredibly important step to demonstrate the overwhelming number of people willing to stand up to outsize corporate power.  

This is one birthday we don't want to celebrate.

Tell President Obama: I support an executive order for "better politics!"

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To: President Obama
From: [Your Name]

We, the undersigned, strongly support requiring corporations that bid for government contracts to disclose their campaign spending. Americans have a right to know that government contracts are being awarded based on merit, not money.