Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door for unlimited corporate spending to influence the outcome of elections.

On the eve of the anniversary, a new survey reveals that small business owners overwhelmingly say the ruling hurts their business:

Two-thirds of American small business leaders believe the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case handed down two years ago on January 21 hurts small companies.

In fact, only nine percent of small business leaders thought the ruling positive, according to an independent national survey of 500 small business leaders released today by the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority.

The survey also found that 88 percent of small business owners hold a negative view of the role money plays in politics, with 68 percent viewing it very negatively. [...]

“As we approach the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United case, the verdict is loud and clear: the ruling hurts the small businesses that we need to be strong for economic recovery,” said David Levine, executive director of the American Sustainable Business Council. “Business owners are frustrated because they have to compete with big business bank accounts to be heard, and they are fighting back.”

Small business has been hailed by legislators of both parties as the undisputed engine of economic growth. 51 percent of Americans are employed by small business, and small businesses generate 70 percent of new private sector jobs. But they increasingly find their needs ignored by lawmakers who favor corporate contributors with deeper pockets.

“America’s entrepreneurs feel corporations have an outsized role and say in politics—to the detriment of the small business community,” said John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority. “They’re looking for a level playing field, and as the country’s primary job creators, they should have it.”

Later today, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is expected to drop out of the Republican presidential race and endorse former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Not too long ago, however, Gingrich provided Perry with an endorsement of his own. In 2010, Perry published Fed Up!, a screed against the federal government which claims that Social Security, Medicare and, indeed, most of the progress of the 20th century is unconstitutional. Gingrich wrote the foreword to Perry’s book, and he wholeheartedly endorsed the book as a “handbook” that will arm “every American” with “the facts so that you can inform your family, friends and neighbors”:

Lest there be any doubt, Fed Up! is not the least bit ambiguous when it claims that America’s safety net violates the Constitution. The passage calling Social Security unconstitutional, for example, clearly and unequivocally states that Social Security exists “at the expense of respect for the Constitution” (note: the font in this clip is different because it is not available online and had to be captured on a Kindle reader):

Eighteen months after Gingrich lavished praise on Perry’s narrow vision for America, he will now share a stage with the radical governor and accept his endorsement. Given Fed Up!‘s complete clarity in laying out Perry’s view of the Constitution, however, it is difficult to believe that Gingrich did not know exactly what he was praising when he drafted such an effusive foreword to Perry’s book.

Now that Gingrich has emerged as one of the two leading contenders for the GOP presidential nomination, he has an obligation to explain whether he still believes, as Perry does, that Social Security is unconstitutional. Moreover, if Gingrich has since abandoned that belief, he has an equal obligation to explain what happened in the last eighteen months to change his mind on such an important constitutional question.