Rebut. If you do not have to take the full three minutes, but if you want, you can. Mr. Bonifaz . I do want to clarify something at the outset. We at free speech for people are interested in lifting up voices, not suppressing voices. Our view of the Current Campaign finance system is that it suppresses voices because when you allow the very wealthy, and now very well endowed corporations and unions to drown out other peoples voices, you are effectively suppressing those voices. Jim agrees that money does not equal speech. I think that is fabulous that we have reached agreement on that. I wanted to make clear, however, that when we limit the amount of money in our elections, we are not limiting speech. We are limiting the volume of speech, the d. C. Circuit court of appeals in the buckley case understood that. Scholars of the First Amendment all over the country have understood that. Justice stephens understands that when he says money is property, it is not speech. We limit the volume of speech. This very debate today as time restrictions for jim and for me. I cant stand up here and filibuster because it would not be an open and honest debate. We have time restrictions. We do this all the time under First Amendment jurisprudence. Reasonable time placed in a manner of regulation on speech and Campaign Spending limits operate as a reasonable regulation on the manner of speech. Those who speak very, very loudly without any limit, unlimited, are able to drown out the voices of others who do not have the money to make expenditures at those decibels. Another point of clarification jim says that i think everybody involved in politics are crooks. I happen to run for office. I dont think i am a crook. I dont think everyone in politics are crooks. That is that we are saying at free speech for people. We do believe that a system in which candidates running for office must cater to wealthy interests and big money interests and corporate interestanin order to be successful, that that process is corrupting of the fundamental principle of equality for all. There are a lot of wellmeaning and the decent people in politics and many of them are on the side of saying, we need a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court rulings and reclaim our democracy. Thank you. The last point of clarification is the idea that somehow this is about a liberal agenda. That i somehow want Campaign Spending to promote a liberal agenda. I have to be very, very clear. I am a small d democrat. I am a small r republican. This is not an issue solely for the one side of the little political spectrum. 55 of voters in montana voted for mitt romney in 2012 and 75 voted for our Ballot Initiative with common cause calling for a constitutional amendment for overturning the ruling. Across the political spectrum and across the country, people believe that the system undermines the fundamental promise of democracy, regardless of their ideology. This is about a small d democracy agenda. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Mr. Bopp, the same round rules. Three minutes if you need it. No selfrespecting lawyer would ever Say Something in a sentence that could be set in a paragraph. [laughter] im really glad i have debated john a number of times and i am glad he finally heard me say, which i said for decades, that money is not speech. But that spending money on speech, if you limit that, you are limiting speech. He says he says he wants to lift up, but not suppress lifting up would be public funding. Giving money to people who do not have money so they can speak. Lifting up would be tax credits, which by the way, i am in favor of, for people making modest contributions to candidates, pacs, and parties. That is lifting up. That is enhancing the ability of someone to speak. That is not what he is talking about. What he is talking about is shutting up other people that he thinks he thinks he can get the government to think spends too much. It is not just anybody who spends too much. He has not said a single word about the unions. They will spend 400 million in this election cycle to support their agenda and his agenda. He is talking about suppressing voices that he does not want to hear. He thinks that he can get the government to shut up. The court has repeatedly rejected this idea, that you enhance the voice of somebody by suppressing the voice of another. No, you dont. It is not a question that there is not enough ad time where people can go buy additional ads. It is not like they are not available. They are available. We need to enhance the ability of people to participate and the labor unions want to praise the provisions that would drive them out of the political system and that is the only way that people of average means get to participate. We are not talking about how high the volume is on an ad. We are talking about how many you can buy. He wants to limit or prohibit people from buying ads, particularly that people he does not like. To cater to the wishes of the wealthy, the corporate, whatever things he has been saying, bigmoney interests, isnt that an interesting word . Cater to what does that mean . What is he driving at . Does he think it is wrong that a politician has friends . Does he think it is wrong that they give 100 in a Campaign Contribution . He supported such low limits. You know, we have contribution limits in order to prevent the undue influence of a particular contribution. The court upheld that in order to exclude large contributions that would tend to unduly influence. Excuse me. You have less than a minute. Wrap it up, ok . Theyre talking about undue influence. Not friendship, gratitude, or appreciation. They are talking about quid pro quo corruption. The final thing, the fact that he has absolutely no interest in reimposing the limits that both corporations and labor unions shared before Citizens United. Has no interest in imposing that on unions. It demonstrates conclusively that this is a partisan effort. Unions are the biggest spenders as a group in our political system. They are seconded by trial lawyers and they are rich individuals. He does not want to limit them, either. The two biggest groups he has no interest, as far as spenders and limiting, and though it and they are the two biggest groups supporting the democrats and unions. This is without a doubt a partisan political effort to shut up voices that he personally does not like and this is exactly what our founders wanted to prevent. [applause] thank you. We will give you i know it is not much time, but a minute at the end. We run a tight ship so we have to stay on schedule. We have questions from the audience. I have not seen these. I dont know if theyre directed. Some look like general question. If you dont mind answering from there. I am looking at these for the first time. One question is, did Citizens United allow unlimited donations to candidates . By corporations . If not, what is the problem . I have to make clear that i have not said that we want to support the idea of unlimited union money in elections. We have made it clear and the constitutional amendment we support would equally apply to corporations and unions. We believe the old decision of Citizens United, which allows unlimited corporate and union money in her elections, is wrong. Jim has got that completely inaccurate in terms of how he views what the amendment would say. As far as unlimited donations, directly to candidates, it is correct that there are still direct limits on what you can give to candidates. The problem here is that we have unlimited expenditures. We have the ability of unions, corporations, wealthy individuals to make unlimited expenditures as a result of the super pacs as well, postcitizen united. It goes back to the earlier case i cited and it is why we must engage in overturning these rulings because unlimited expenditures undermine any purpose of having direct contribution limits. The unlimited expenditures allow these bigmoney forces and corporate forces and union forces to dominate our election and our politics. Just one other point on this, which is public funding elections i fully support publicfunding elections. I have been in court defending them. This is not about one reform versus another. Today, in a post Citizens United era, public funding of elections will be very much vulnerable to this idea that wealthy individuals and bigmoney interests and Corporate Union forces can make unlimited expenditures making such a system ineffective. I think we need all of these reforms. A couple of points. John and i have known each other for years and we have debated several times. I know what he supports and he knows what i support. His criticism of Citizens United, as you heard, was all about corporations. When i challenge him, he wants to throw in unions too and i was not talking about his amendment. I do agree that his amendment would encompass unions but it would also encompass the press. This is one of the big secrets out there, that the reformers dont want cspan and others to figure out. That is these amendments will mean the New York Times versus sullivan is overruled. That was a decision New York Times versus sullivan overruled. That was a decision where people running for office it protects citizens and their ability to criticize people running for office by imposing a higher standard for libel actions against citizens politicians. One of the things they had, the courts had to decide because this involved the states, was that the 14th amendment does confer rights on people and the question was, was the New York Times a person . The court has long decided under the 14th amendment that corporations and many other entities and people encompass within those protections. What he does not say is that it would also overturn the New York Times versus sullivan. It would treat the media, which is owned by corporate conglomerates, it would allow them to suppress the speech of the press. If you look before 1974, the court cases, what you will find is all the big freespeech court cases involve the press. Miami herald sued because it was a florida law that if they criticize a candidate, they had to give equal time and space for a candidates rebuttal in the newspaper. The Supreme Court struck that down. The montgomery, alabama paper had to sue because in alabama law said they could not endorse candidates on election day. The press has been a target of reformers who want to control everybodys speech and decide who is worthy of speaking and not speaking and what voices are to be suppressed because he does not like the message and the press has been one of those targets. It is targeted once again in his amendment. We are not going to be able to get to all these questions. I have a few others. This is for you mr. Bopp. Mr. Bonifaz, you can weigh in as well. Mr. Bopp, do you think there is a ceiling on the money a corporation can contribute to a campaign . As a corollary, do you think that money that is contributed has no influence on a legislature once they have been elected . First, limits. Right now, corporations and labor unions can be prohibited from contributing to candidates. Citizens united involve independent speech, not contributions. They are also subject to a lower standard under the law as far as allowing contribution limits to be had. I do think they are abysmally low. I am involved in the Republican Party and i say to republican groups, and i will chance it here, you cant even buy a democrat congressman for 2600. The anecdotal evidence is that it takes six figures. Congressman William Jefferson of new orleans, he had 99,000 in cold, hard cash in his freezer. He went to jail. To be bipartisan, duke cunningham, a republican from san diego, he came in for an earmarked weapon system. He would literally pull out a schedule and the lowest schedule based on the value of your your earmark was 140,000 and a yacht. I dont know where he got the yacht thing, but in any event. To buy these people, it takes much more than 2600 and the effect on our system has been a tremendous distortion, driving money away from the most transparent sources. I think it is great that we have super pacs. I won the first case in the court of appeals saying that super pacs were legal. I am not in favor of driving money to them. By having these low contribution limits, that is what we see. You cannot vote against a super pac. You can only vote against a candidate or the Political Parties candidates. They are accountable. Super pacs are, and of course, what john proposes and supports would continue to create that distortion. The other question on influence yes. I can see, and this is why i go back and forth on whether i really support contribution limits. I can see that there are some politicians that, if you give enough money to them, you will be able to unduly influence them, meaning that you will be able to get them to change their vote from what they would have otherwise voted to something else. Frankly, it takes a lot more money than 2600. If it is a seriously large contribution, i can see some undue influence and i think we have to make a decision on balance, whether we want to be able to know what interests are influencing our politicians because they actually give them the money and we can vote for or against them when an interest gives money to a super pac, how does anybody know that has anything to do with candidate x or y . How did they know it has anything to do with what the super pac does . Leave it to the voters frankly, i go back and forth on that. I will jump in. I think the other dimension of the question needs to be at the promise of the political equality for all. 2600 is not something that the vast majority of the American People have available to contribute to political candidates. The kind of money coming in the system is coming in from. 00001 of the population. Those are the people who are participating in this Campaign Financing process. Jim talks about ordinary voices wanting to participate, but the vast majority of the money coming in is coming from the very top percent of our society. That is undermining the principle of oneperson person, one vote, and the promise of equality for all. I would urge jim to review. There is a section in the amendment Section Three of the amendment says nothing in this amendment would abridge freedom of the press. The questions around freedom of the press are different questions. Editors, journalists, producers, they all have freedom of the press rights as individuals and they are protected under this amendment. Thank you. I guess moderators privilege, i will go off the board. This is more of an issue that occurs in local elections, but the notion of the wealthy candidate who finances his own campaign or does not need contributions for anybody, whether it is mayor bloomberg or recently in the city of miami beach, we had a wealthy person elected to office. Do either of you have thoughts about the wealthy individual who does not take Campaign Contributions . Is that a good or bad thing . I think it is destructive as well for the same equality turns. In buckley, the court faced the questions coming out of congress of Campaign Spending limits that would apply across the board. Independent expenditures, candidate expenditures, including whether they raised it from their wealthy friend or whether they raised it from their own bank account. It is not what democracy is about only allow only those who are very wealthy to play this game, enter into politics, or have access to wealthy friends. I understand that the very local levels of government, it may be different in terms of the kind of money it takes to run for office. The ultimate trajectory that we are on here with this Campaign Fundraising process is even in the local elections, we are going to see Citizens United have a destructive impact. If you dare, at a local level, to go out against a big corporate interest where the union interest, and i did mention union in my opening remarks, perhaps jim needs to read them outside of this event, but if you could if you dare to go against those interests, they now have the ability to come in and make unlimited, independent expenditures targeting you and make that race antidemocratic and i think that is troubling as well. Mr. Bopp, any thoughts . Sure. I do. It is true that johns approach to this is all about equality and nothing about freedom. Of course, he thinks he can shoehorn that in under the first used to think. Good point. Used to think he could shoehorn that under the First Amendment and now he realizes he has to change the constitution in order to get that concept in there. He has his own peculiar view of equality. He is not in favor of equality under the law. What he is in favor of his equality of results. Not that everybody gets the opportunity to spend, but that everybody can spend what any other person can spend. Think about that consequentially. If equality is the driving consideration, that means since there are a significant number of people that cant contribute anything to candidates, then really, equality means that no one can contribute to any candidate. That would only be the context of true ecology. It frankly points to where i think john wants to go. That is governmentrun elections, not free elections run by the people and the government would decide how much you get and how much you spend and what you can spend it on and there we would be. He wants to target labor unions and that demonstrates his view that it is not about rich people. It is about people of average means, pooling their resources. That is what labor unions of all organizations, that is what labor unions do. They are members pooling their resources and participating. He thinks a bunch of people that are very modest and means, because they pool, they had the audacity to pool their resources and purchase rate in our system, participate in our system, are an evil force and need to be suppressed. I think it is fine if the rich participate. I just dont want them to be the only ones that get to participate in that is why we need participatio