of teachers unions which scares democrats from supporting education reforms. to be clear, there is nothing wrong with throwing money toward advocacy. spending to spread a message and build grassroots support is the democratic process in action. but we have seen massive spending tilts the field and so congress placed restrictions on major campaign contributions since back in the days of teddy roosevelt. campaign finance regulations kept expanding until 1976 when in a water shed decision, the supreme court reversed the tide with buckley v. vallejo. the court struck down limits on how much a candidate could spend because under the first amendment, it argued, the spending was in service of advancing their message. in other words, money was a form of speech. this ruling unleashed the flood gates of money into politics. the citizens united case of 2010
extended the logic of buckley and opened the door to outside groups raising and spending unlimited funds to elect preferred candidates so long as they are not coordinating with a candidate. that is all just free speech, supposedly. thanks to the ruling, spending on federal elections grew from under $2.5 billion in 1980 to $4.5 billion in 2020 and that is adjusted for inflation. and after citizens united there were calls to overturn the constitution. the amendments are difficult to pass and several throughout history were designed to over turn supreme court cases. but what really needs to be overturned is the older decision, buckley v. vallejo, that said money is speech. no other major democracy in the world believes this. in the united kingdom s last general election, parties were allowed to spend no more than about $25 million.
build grassroots support is the democratic process in action. but we have seen massive spending tilts the field and so congress placed restrictions on major campaign contributions since back in the days of teddy roosevelt. campaign finance regulations kept expanding until 1976 when in a watershed decision, the supreme court reversed the tide with buckley v. vallejo. the court struck down limits on how much a candidate could spend because under the first amendment, it argued, the spending was in service of advancing their message. in other words, money was a form of speech. this ruling unleashed the flood gates of money into politics. the citizens united case of 2010 extended the logic of buckley and opened the door to outside groups raising and spending
0 this? wow. okay so i don t like obama care. i don t believe it s constitutional. it s riddled with hidden costs that will come out as we go along. your privacy is gone. but my biggest problem here is president obama s inability to grasp what s going on. he has a broken website. this is going to handle 2.5 trillion dollars of our economy. $2.5 trillion every year is going to basically be administered through this website. he has to stop and say, look, it s not ready. we have to pull this back, we re going to do it the right way. we ll fix it and then we ll relaunch it when it s ready. him saying, oh, you know, it s going to get fixed. there are 5 million lines, 5 million lines of code that have to be rewritten according to the new york times today. it s not going to be ready in the next couple of weeks. they shut the system down both weekends the last two weekends. this thing is a disaster about to happen. and forget what the real disaster, when people realize how much they re goi
0 mr. bolling, where do we go with this? wow. okay so i don t like obama care. i don t believe it s constitutional. it s riddled with hidden costs that will come out as we go along. your privacy is gone. but my biggest problem here is president obama s inability to grasp what s going on. he has a broken website. this is going to handle 2.5 trillion dollars of our economy. $2.5 trillion every year is going to basically be administered through this website. he has to stop and say, look, it s not ready. we have to pull this back, we re going to do it the right way. we ll fix it and then we ll relaunch it when it s ready. him saying, oh, you know, it s going to get fixed. there are 5 million lines, 5 million lines of code that have to be rewritten according to the new york times today. it s not going to be ready in the next couple of weeks. they shut the system down both weekends the last two weekends. this thing is a disaster about to happen. and forget what the real disaster, when pe