The Obama administration has released a statement on the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the state of Montana's century-old law that limited the political spending of corporations.
Below is the statement from White House spokesman Eric Schultz:
We are disappointed that the Supreme Court did not take the opportunity presented by the Montana case to revisit its decision in Citizens United.
In the aftermath of the Citizens United decision, we have seen unprecedented amounts of campaign spending, often by groups that won't disclose their donors.
Citizens United was wrong when it was decided and as two Supreme Court Justices have observed since, independent expenditures by corporations are threatening the health of our democracy.
Citizens United mistakenly overruled longstanding cases that protected the fairness and integrity of elections. Unfortunately, the Court today missed an opportunity to correct that mistake.
The president has long been a vocal critic of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which this case determined extends to the state and local levels, so his administration's statement of concern is hardly a surprise. But it also spotlights an issue that is likely to resurface throughout the campaign.
Mitt Romney has been fairly supportive of watering down campaign finance reform laws (though he has argued, in the past, for the elimination of PACs). Obama, however, has said he supports campaign finance reform. He has not lived by the reforms he's preached, embracing super PACs in the wake of their emergence in the Republican primary.
But Obama is also pushing a fairly clear alternative to the GOP platform. And for voters concerned about the dominance of money in politics, he's the main, if not only, option in the 2012 election.
