Kerry And Feingold Slam Supreme Court In Hearing On Campaign Finance Ruling
2/2/2010 12:36 PM ET

(RTTNews) - Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., testified before a Senate Committee on Rules and Administration hearing Tuesday, criticizing the Supreme Court's decision to ease restrictions on the amount of money corporations, unions and non-profit organizations can spend to support political candidates
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"The Supreme Court has issued a decision inflating the speech rights of large faceless corporations to the same level of hard-working everyday Americans," Kerry said in his testimony.

He added, "In doing so, the Court has struck at the very heart of our democracy, a democracy in which corporations already have too much influence."

Kerry went so far in his testimony as to suggest that Congress would need to introduce a constitutional amendment "to make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals."

Meanwhile, Feingold, one of the authors of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill impacted by the ruling, called the Court's decision a "tragic error."

"By acting in such an extreme and unjustified manner, the Court has badly damaged its own integrity," Feingold said. "More important, it has harmed our democracy in ways that may not be fully understood today, but will likely become clear over the next few election cycles."

He said that the Court's "terrible decision deserves as robust a response as possible. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake."