What We Told Congress.

Ben & Jerry’s was invited to provide testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights in July 2012 because of our efforts in the Get the Dough Out of Politics campaign. Here’s what we told them:

What's the Issue?

At Ben & Jerry’s, we love dough so much, we invented Cookie Dough ice cream. But dough doesn’t mix so well with democracy. In fact, there’s so much big money flooding into our elections in the United States that the voice of regular folks is being drowned out. In the 2010 election cycle, nearly half a billion dollars was spent by ‘outside groups’ to influence Congressional elections alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s on top of the almost 2 billion dollars raised and spent by candidates.

Things have gotten even worse since 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its now-infamous Citizens United decision that corporations are allowed to spend unlimited money to influence election outcomes. Ouch! That’s not democracy!
 

What Can We Do?

We think it’s time to Get the Dough Out of Politics and make our elected leaders more accountable to the people — not just to their big donors and allies. But it’s going to take a huge movement of citizens taking action to protect our elections from the flood of money from corporations, SuperPACs, and other deep pockets. The movement is already building. Here’s how you can get involved: