Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Executive Director Noah Bookbinder released the following statment on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Buckley v. Valeo:

“Today is the fortieth anniversary of Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court case that started us down the disastrous road toward unlimited money undermining our democracy.  CREW has been working for more than a dozen years to try to reverse the effect of that case and its progeny like Citizens United, and we will keep working to restore our democracy to the American people.  We were gratified that President Obama expressed strong support in this year’s State of the Union for curbing the influence of money in politics and returning control of our democracy to regular people, and we hope that he now acts to take an important first step to begin to undo the damage of these past four decades.  With a stroke of his pen, the President can issue an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their political contributions, a step that CREW has strongly advocated.  Money in politics is a huge problem that will take many years and many approaches to solve, but we know Americans share our concern about this issue, and an executive order would be a good start.”