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"The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United is wrong and should be overturned by a constitutional amendment – but we can’t wait to limit its pernicious effect. As president, Biden will work to enact legislation ensuring that SuperPACs are wholly independent of campaigns and political parties, from establishment, to fundraising and spending."
As a candidate, Joe Biden promised to ensure that super PACs — political action committees that can accept and spend unlimited amounts of money in elections — "are wholly independent of campaigns and political parties."
But his efforts failed.
A bill that would have required this passed the House in 2021 when Democrats controlled the chamber.
H.R. 1 passed the House in March 2021 with support only from Democrats. The bill included elements of the DISCLOSE Act, a measure that had been proposed for about a decade but that had not progressed since 2010, when it passed the House but failed to reach the 60-vote requirement to avoid a Senate filibuster.
Wide Republican opposition in the Senate led to a 50-50 vote in June 2021, and H.R. 1 fell 10 votes short of the 60 required to proceed. Backers couldn't persuade the chamber to carve out the measure to free it from the vote threshold.
The House's flip to Republican control in the 2022 election further hindered legislation to restrict how super PACs operate, and the proposal stalled in the final two years of Biden's term.
We rate this a Promise Broken.
Text of H.R. 1
House roll call vote on H.R. 1
Associated Press, "GOP filibuster blocks Democrats' big voting rights bill," June 22, 2021
Washington Post, "The filibuster debate is (maybe) coming to a head on voting rights. Here's what could happen," Dec. 14, 2021
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to push legislation to ensure that super PACs — groups that are able to accept and spend unlimited amounts of money in elections — "are wholly independent of campaigns and political parties."
This goal of preventing coordination between candidates and super PACs was addressed in the voting and elections bill known as H.R. 1, which passed the House in March with only Democrats voting in favor.
That bill includes "robust provisions to ensure that super PACs operate independently of candidates and political parties," said Brendan M. Fischer, director of the federal reform program with the Campaign Legal Center.
Unlike some other portions of H.R. 1, the super PAC provisions remained in the bill after it moved to the Senate.
However, in a 50-50 vote in June, the Senate version of the bill fell 10 votes short of the 60 required to move forward. That vote effectively shelved the legislation in the Senate, unless Democratic leaders can convince holdouts within their conference, including Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to agree to a carve-out to the 60-vote threshold for election-related bills.
Like other election-related promises that were passed by the House in H.R. 1 but are now blocked in the Senate, this promise is moving to Stalled.
Text of H.R. 1
House roll call vote on H.R. 1
Associated Press, "GOP filibuster blocks Democrats' big voting rights bill," June 22, 2021
Washington Post, "The filibuster debate is (maybe) coming to a head on voting rights. Here's what could happen," Dec. 14, 2021
Email interview with Brendan M. Fischer, director of the federal reform program with the Campaign Legal Center, Dec. 17, 2021