Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) has just introduced two bills to amend the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision

Dear Kevin – We have two great pieces of news to share with you this week. First: Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) has just introduced two bills to amend the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision: H.J.Res. 20 will enable us to get the big money out of politics, by restoring Congress’ and the states’ authority to limit campaign spending; H.J.Res. 21 will make it clear that corporations don’t have constitutional rights, like free speech, as if they were people, because they aren’t. Now is the moment to build support for these important bills. Can you please call your Representative, and urge her or him to co-sponsor them both? Click here to call your Representative now. If you have time, please also call your Senators and urge them to support similar bills in the Senate (you can do that via the same link, above). The introduction of these bills is really a big step forward for our movement.  For more on why, see our“P.P.S.” below. Second: We hit a big milestone last week: our White House petition urging President Obama to include a call for a constitutional amendment in his upcoming State of the Union address (scheduled for Feb. 12th) reached the threshold of 25,000 signatures required for an official response from the White House.  We couldn’t have done this without your help, and the support of our friends at Avaaz, People For The American Way, and Demos. But we’re not stopping there.  Yesterday, Common Cause engaged its full national membership to support this White House petition, which will add an additional boost, and we’re working on getting other groups on board too.   The White House raised the bar for an official response from 25,000 to 100,000 just after we launched our petition.  Even though we’re “grandfathered” — the lower threshold still applies to our petition, since we launched it before they made this change — we’re still aiming for more signatures.  It would be really cool if we could clear the 100,000 mark.   So ask your friends to sign on if they haven’t already!: http://wh.gov/P9j7 As you can see, our campaign has tremendous momentum now.  Thanks for all you’re doing to help. Sincerely, – Peter Peter Schurman Campaign Director Free Speech For People Wednesday, January 30th, 2013 P.S.: Want to be among the first to receive exciting news updates like these?  You can follow our blog, either by visiting our website or via an RSS subscription.  We also encourage you to like our Facebook page and to follow us on Twitter.  We always post big news to all 3, and we post additional relevant stories just to Facebook and Twitter too. P.P.S.: Here’s more background on Rep. McGovern’s amendment bills: H.J.Res. 21, also known as the People’s Rights Amendment, is the language we helped write, and it’s the best amendment bill we know of addressing the growing problem of corporations claiming constitutional rights – which gives them the power to trump our duly enacted laws on food safety, the environment, and many other areas not limited to campaign finance.  We’re delighted that Rep. McGovern has re-introduced this important bill, with bi-partisan support (again) from Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) and several other members of Congress. Although there’s no companion bill yet in the Senate for H.J.Res. 21, we’re working on it. And we think Rep. McGovern’s introduction of H.J.Res. 20 may help with that, because H.J.Res. 20 is the House companion to a Senate bill that had 24 Senate co-sponsors in the last Congress, led by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM).  Being the lead sponsor of H.J.Res. 20 should bring opportunities for Rep. McGovern to pitch H.J.Res. 21 as well.