Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer Urges Support for the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 in Senate Testimony Today

In testimony before the Senate Rules Committee this morning, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer urged enactment of the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 and made the case for why this is essential disclosure legislation.

According to the Wertheimer testimony:

The legislation restores a cardinal rule of campaign finance laws:  citizens are entitled to know who is giving and spending money to influence their votes. This fundamental right to know has been recognized for decades in disclosure laws passed by Congress and in decisions by the Supreme Court that have upheld the constitutionality of these laws.

 According to the testimony:

In 2010, more than $135 million in undisclosed, unlimited contributions were injected into the congressional races. The amount of secret money injected into the 2012 presidential and congressional elections is expected to dramatically grow, absent new disclosure requirements.

This has returned the country to the era of the Watergate scandals when huge amounts of secret money were spent in federal elections.

Secret money in American politics is dangerous money. As the Supreme Court held in Buckley v. Valeo (1976), disclosure requirements “deter actual corruption and avoid the appearance of corruption.”

Wertheimer testified:

The DISCLOSE Act would ensure that citizens know on a timely basis the identities of and amounts given by donors whose funds are being used to finance independent campaign spending by outside groups.

The legislation would also fix the problem of untimely disclosure of the donors to Super PACs supporting federal candidates that surfaced in the 2012 presidential nominating race.

According to the testimony:

New disclosure laws were enacted during the Watergate era to address the problem of secret money in federal elections. And from the mid-1970s until 2010 there was a consensus in the country and in Congress, among Democrats and Republican alike, in support of campaign finance disclosure.

Opponents of other campaign finance reform laws supported disclosure during this period as appropriate and necessary to provide citizens with basic information about who is raising and spending money to influence their votes.

In 2000, for example, in response to a disclosure loophole that was allowing certain 527 groups to spend undisclosed money to influence federal elections, a Republican-controlled Congress acted to close the loophole.

Congress passed the new disclosure legislation with overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate. The vote in favor of the legislation was 385 to 39 in the House and 92 to 6 in the Senate.

Bipartisan congressional support for disclosure, however, disappeared in 2010.

Democracy 21 urges the Senate to return to the bipartisan approach in support of disclosure that was the rule for almost four decades.

According to Wertheimer:

The current gaping loopholes in the nation’s campaign finance disclosure laws result from a combination of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010),  and ineffectual FEC disclosure regulations.

This enormously damaging decision struck down the ban on corporate expenditures in federal elections and paved the way for the rise of Super PACs and the return of secret money to federal elections.

The decision also was based on the false assumption that in striking down the corporate ban, there would be effective disclosure for the independent campaign expenditures that followed.

Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority in the Citizens United opinion, “A campaign finance system that pairs corporate independent expenditures with effective disclosure has not existed before today.” This was only half right.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 will provide the effective disclosure the Court majority thought was constitutional, necessary and in existence when it issued the opinion but which in fact was not and is not there.

The testimony stated:

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court held, by an 8 to 1 vote, that disclosure requirements for campaign expenditures “do not prevent anyone from speaking,” and serve governmental interests in “providing the electorate with information” about the sources of money spent to influence elections so that voters can “make informed choices in the political marketplace.”

The Court in Citizens United specifically noted the problems that result when groups run ads “while hiding behind dubious and misleading names,” thereby concealing the true sources of the funds being used to make campaign expenditures.

The Court in Citizens United also specifically rejected the argument that disclosure requirements can constitutionally apply only to ads which contain express advocacy (or its functional equivalent).  The Court stated “we reject Citizens United’s contention that the disclosure requirements must be limited to speech that is the functional equivalent of express advocacy.”

The testimony concluded:

History tells us that secret money in elections is dangerous and leads to scandals. This is not history we should repeat by allowing hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed contributions to be laundered into federal elections through outside spending groups.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 addresses this problem effectively, constitutionally and fairly and deserves the votes of Republican and Democratic Senators. Democracy 21 urges enactment of the DISCLOSE Act of 2012.

DISCLOSE ACT OF 2012 SENATE RULES COMMITTEE TESTIMONY 3 26 12.pdf