#355 Money in American Politics w/ Jeff Clements
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Worried about money in American politics? We are too, and Jeff Clements is offering up a solution. Jeff is CEO of American Promise, a non-partisan organization dedicated to passing the For Our Freedom amendment to the Constitution, which would differentiate between people and corporations, and allow states to pass their own campaign finance laws. In this episode, he breaks down the history of campaign finance laws, key moments, such as the Citizens United Case, that have brought us to where we are now, and the steps his team have already taken to help add another amendment to the US Constitution.
If you want to sign the Citizen Pledge or just learn more about American Promise, make sure to check out AmericanPromise.net.
This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 0:06.2 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:07.7 | And this is the road to now. |
| 0:10.0 | Yes, it is. |
| 0:10.9 | The road to the Constitution. |
| 0:14.3 | Then and now. |
| 0:15.4 | And our guest today has this incredible initiative, right? |
| 0:20.0 | It's called American Promise is where you can find it. |
| 0:22.8 | And he is working for the ratification of the for our freedom amendment, which we will get to in this episode. |
| 0:29.7 | And I think everyone who's listening, I'm going to say there's going to be like a 99% on board rating with this. |
| 0:35.1 | But let's just start off, Jeff, since we're talking about amending the Constitution and this is a process that hasn't happened at a long time. Let's go back. Could you just take us back in, you know, the founding, when in 1787, when those guys met in that hot room in Philadelphia, one of the seven articles is dedicated to the process for amending this Constitution. It was central to their vision of the country. |
| 1:00.2 | Could you just explain why they were so interested in this and why this was a central feature of the Constitution? Yeah, absolutely, Ben. Bob, thanks for having me on. Great to be here. And, you know, |
| 1:07.6 | when the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention came out that day in 1787 with a proposed Constitution, |
| 1:16.7 | one of the key things, as you say, Ben, was Article 5, which said that the people, remember, the Constitution opens with We the People. |
| 1:27.1 | And Article 5 is what makes that |
| 1:29.2 | real, because Article 5 said that the people, whenever the American people see it necessary, |
| 1:35.6 | can amend the Constitution. And it provided two ways of doing it in the article. One is by a passage |
| 1:43.4 | of two-thirds vote in Congress, which then gets ratified in three-quarters of the article. One is by a passage of two-thirds vote in Congress, which then gets ratified |
| 1:46.9 | in three-quarters of the states. And just in case, Congress was a little bit of non-performing, |
| 1:54.3 | we know that would never happen, but hypothetically speaking, if Congress were to somehow become |
| 1:59.5 | dysfunctional, the states could call a convention with two-thirds vote in the states, |
| 2:04.6 | and then you would still need ratification of any proposed amendments out of that convention in three-quarters of the states. |
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