July 18, 2026  ·  Reboot 2028 PAC

Billionaires Shouldn't Be Able to Buy Elections — And Nothing Changes Until Citizens United Is Gone

Americans across the political spectrum say they're tired of billionaires controlling everything — the news, the platforms, the economy. But if you want to know where that control actually gets converted into political power, follow the money to one place: Citizens United v. FEC, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that opened the door to unlimited political spending. Until it's overturned, nothing meaningful changes. The numbers make the case.

The floodgates, by the numbers

In 2008 — the last election before Citizens United — outside spending on federal elections totaled about $574 million. By 2024, it had reached roughly $4.5 billion, an eight-fold increase. In total, outside spending has topped $9 billion since the ruling.

Super PACs — the direct offspring of the decision — tell the same story. They spent $62.6 million in 2010, their first year of existence. In 2024, super PAC spending set a record of at least $2.7 billion.

And the money is dark. Groups that never disclose their donors spent less than $5 million in 2006. In 2024, "dark money" hit a record $1.9 billion in federal races, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Who's writing the checks

This isn't millions of small donors finding their voice. It's the opposite.

In 2024, the top 100 individual donors to super PACs — 0.02% of all individual donors — supplied nearly 73% of all super PAC money. Before Citizens United, in 2008, the top 100 donors accounted for just 1.5% of total federal election spending. Today their share sits between 14% and 16% — a ten-fold jump in the influence of one hundred people.

Put names on it. Elon Musk alone spent more than $290 million in the 2024 cycle, per year-end FEC filings — the largest political outlay by an individual in American history, most of it through his own super PAC. Miriam Adelson put roughly $100 million into a single PAC. Richard Uihlein steered $53 million into his. This isn't participation in democracy. It's the purchase of it — one person, one super PAC, nine figures.

What $290 million buys: the DOGE case study

If you want proof that mega-donations purchase power — not just ads — look at what Musk's money bought him: a desk in the White House. Within weeks of the inauguration, the largest donor in American history was running the Department of Government Efficiency, with sweeping authority over federal agencies, contracts, and personnel. No Senate confirmation. No election. Just a $290 million receipt.

The results were disastrous by DOGE's own math. Musk promised $1–2 trillion in savings, then slashed the goal to $150 billion. When DOGE shut down in July 2026, it claimed $215 billion — a figure fact-checkers repeatedly found riddled with errors, including an $8 million contract listed as $8 billion and a $655 million contract counted three times. Meanwhile, one independent analysis estimated DOGE's cuts will cost taxpayers $135 billion, and the IRS projected more than $500 billion in lost revenue from DOGE-driven cuts. Even a Republican House DOGE caucus leader admitted the savings claims were a "massive exaggeration."

The cost wasn't just dollars — it was lives

The accounting errors are almost the least of it. DOGE didn't just fail to save money; it dismantled the machinery that keeps people alive, and the bodies are real.

In February 2025, DOGE helped gut USAID, eliminating roughly 83% of its programs and cutting U.S. humanitarian funding from $14 billion to $3.7 billion. A study published in The Lancet found USAID programs had prevented an estimated 91 million deaths over two decades — 30 million of them children. The researchers projected that the cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including over 4.5 million children under five — roughly 700,000 dead children a year.

The specific failures read like a horror list. When Ebola broke out in the Congo, experts blamed DOGE cuts for intensifying an outbreak that has now killed more than 500 people — nearly the entire USAID team with experience responding to Ebola in the region had been fired, and virus samples reportedly arrived at a lab at the wrong temperature after USAID-run operations collapsed. Musk himself admitted DOGE accidentally cut Ebola-prevention funding, then scrambled to restore it. And in March 2025, DOGE terminated a USAID funding stream tied to monitoring the New World screwworm; months later the flesh-eating parasite reappeared in Mexico and then Texas for the first time in sixty years. (Fact-checkers caution the cut can't be proven to have directly caused the U.S. outbreak — but gutting the surveillance program while a known threat spreads is exactly the kind of "efficiency" that costs far more than it saves.)

That's the Citizens United bargain in full: a billionaire buys an election, gets handed the machinery of government with no confirmation and no accountability, and the bill is paid in dollars, in taxpayer waste, and in dead children.

The money doesn't just talk — it wins

Since Citizens United, outside spending has exceeded the candidates' own spending in 126 federal races. In the five election cycles before the ruling, that happened 15 times. Increasingly, the loudest voice in a campaign isn't the candidate or the voters — it's whoever wrote the biggest check.

And the quieter effect may be worse: candidates know who funds the super PACs, and they legislate accordingly. Every officeholder in a competitive seat understands that crossing a billionaire donor can summon a nine-figure wave of attack ads. You don't have to buy every election. You only have to prove you can.

Voters already agree — across party lines

This is not a partisan grievance. Polling consistently shows roughly three-fourths of Americans — including 66% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats — support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Twenty-two states and hundreds of cities have formally called for one. And 88% of Americans want to reduce the influence of large donors over lawmakers.

When two-thirds of Republicans and 85% of Democrats agree on anything in this country, pay attention.

Why repeal comes first

Reformers offer plenty of worthy ideas: disclosure laws, public financing, contribution limits. All of them run into the same wall. As long as Citizens United stands, the Supreme Court has declared unlimited independent spending to be protected speech — and every serious reform gets struck down or lawyered into irrelevance. Disclosure bills like the DISCLOSE Act have died in Congress repeatedly, and even if passed, disclosure only tells you who bought the election. It doesn't stop the sale.

That's why repeal — by constitutional amendment or a future Court reversing the decision — isn't one reform among many. It's the precondition for all the others. Treating anything else as the fix is bailing water while the hull stays open.

The math of the last sixteen years is simple: $574 million became $4.5 billion. One hundred people went from 1.5% of the money to nearly three-quarters of super PAC funding. A single billionaire now outspends entire national parties' small-dollar operations.

If Americans are weary of billionaires controlling things, the first place to start is Citizens United. Until it falls, nothing is going to change. See our Citizens United explainer and our Agenda for what we're actually doing about it in 2026.