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John,
Throughout 2022, Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund shone a spotlight on billionaires buying elections.[1] Much of this money is funneled through organizations that aren't required to divulge their donors, how much they are contributing or how they’re using these donations to influence the votes of members of Congress.
With Republicans set to take control of the U.S. House in January, passing the DISCLOSE Act, which would require dark money groups to divulge their big-money donors, will become virtually impossible. But there’s still something that President Biden can do, without the need for congressional approval, that would protect and strengthen our democracy.
With the stroke of a pen, President Biden can issue a contractor disclosure executive order that would shine a light on secret money in politics by requiring contractors that receive over $1 million in federal dollars to disclose their political spending in federal elections.
This is important because big corporations use secret political spending to get their favored candidates elected without having their fingerprints on it. It also has the potential to impact the allocation of federal contracts, which are used to provide us with essential services like repairing our roads and bridges, providing prescription drugs to Medicare and other federal health programs, operating private prisons and immigrant detention facilities, designing new information systems at agencies like the IRS and Social Security, and more.
Click here to send a message to President Biden urging him to issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose all of their political spending. Americans deserve to know who is trying to influence our votes, and what these corporations or individuals want from the government.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, billions of dollars of dark money has flowed into our elections―allowing anonymous corporate and billionaire donors to spend unlimited sums of money to influence our democracy and rig our laws for private and political gain. And they’re not just rigging our elections.
In recent years, there’s been a sharp rise in dark money spending in judicial nominating fights, which helped install three right-wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. This creates a scenario where a judge (or justice) eventually oversees cases involving litigants who spent untold sums of money to get them on the bench―creating serious conflicts of interest that undermine our judicial system.
With judges and justices ruling on everything from abortion rights to labor rights to voting rights, we need transparency in our elections now!
Join Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund and our allies in calling on President Biden to issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose their political spending. Take action today >>
Together, we’re defending the future of our democracy and creating an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few.
Frank Clemente
Executive Director
Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund
[1] Billionaires Buying Elections website, Americans for Tax Fairness
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