Suggested Constitutional Amendment To Keep Foreign Money Out Of US Politics

Interesting suggestion:

This insight gives a clue to perhaps the most sensible constitutional response to the Supreme Court’s decision. Not, as an angry gaggle of activists have proposed, through an amendment aimed at denying what Citizens United never asserted—that corporations are persons. But instead, through an amendment that recognizes what no one has ever asserted—that whether or not they are persons, corporations are not United States citizens. And if there is something appropriate to keeping the conversation about who is to govern us to us citizens, there may well be something appropriate in protecting elections against undue influence by non-citizens.

A simple amendment would give Congress precisely this power:

Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to restrict the power to limit, though not to ban, campaign expenditures of non-citizens of the United States during the last 60 days before an election.

This amendment would not require that Congress enact any speech-limiting legislation. My own view is that we should encourage the broadest range of free speech, including speech by corporations, Canadians, and curious dolphins (at least when we learn to understand what they’re saying). To the extent members of Congress are, and seem to be, independent of these expenditures, there is no good reason for the state to limit them. But the amendment would give Congress a power to limit campaign expenditures by non-citizens, at least during a narrow window when America is focused upon the question of whom they should elect to represent them.