Statement of Democracy 21 President at Press Conference to Support Obama Administration’s Proposed Executive Order Requiring Government Contractors to Disclose Campaign Finance Activities
Democracy 21 joined today with more than 30 organizations to announce our strong support for the Obama Administration’s proposed Executive Order requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign finance activities.
We would not be here this morning if groups led by the Chamber of Commerce and Republican Senators had not blocked the DISCLOSE Act in the last Congress, which fell just one vote short of the sixty votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster and enact the legislation.
Now the same voices are objecting to the proposed Obama Executive Order, arguing that requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign finance activities would have a chilling and stifling effect on free speech rights.
I want to make the following points in response to these arguments and to what clearly is an attempt by the Chamber of Commerce to continue hiding from the American people the corporations and others that are providing the tens of millions of dollars they are spending to influence federal elections.
First, the chilling effect argument ignores the reality that government contractors already make a number of campaign finance disclosures.
Government contractors already are required by law to disclose the campaign contributions and expenditures made by their PACs, as well as the individuals contributing to their PACS. They are also required to disclose the campaign expenditures they directly make on “independent expenditures” and “electioneering communications.” The contributions made by officers and directors of government contractors also have to be disclosed by their recipients.
What is missing today, however, and what the Executive Order would require is disclosure of the funds given by government contractors to third party groups that are then spent by the third party groups to influence federal elections.
For example, if the Executive Order had been in effect in 2010, government contractors would have been required to disclose the amounts they provided to the Chamber of Commerce that were used by the Chamber to spend nearly $33 million on “electioneering communications” in the 2010 congressional races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
All told, more than $135 million in secret contributions were spent in the 2010 congressional races through third party groups that hid the original sources of the funds.
The Executive Order also would facilitate disclosure and make it easier for citizens to know what government contractors are doing to influence federal elections by providing all of the relevant campaign finance information regarding a contractor in one centralized location.
This campaign finance information is necessary for public accountability and to guard against pay-to-play efforts involving decisions by the Executive Branch and actions by Members of Congress.
Second, for more than three decades the Supreme Court consistently has held that campaign finance disclosure laws are constitutional and necessary. In doing so, the Court has consistently rejected the argument that such disclosure laws chill free speech rights and should be struck down.
In Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 the Supreme Court explained the need for campaign finance disclosure, stating that “disclosure requirements deter actual corruption and avoid the appearance of corruption by exposing large contributions and expenditures to the light of publicity.”
Thirty-four years later, the Supreme Court in Citizens United rejected the chilling speech argument, stating that campaign finance disclosure requirements “do not prevent anyone from speaking.”
The Supreme Court in Citizens United noted the importance of disclosing the new corporate campaign activities it was authorizing stating that with disclosure:
Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.
In Doe v. Reed (2010), a case that upheld disclosure for petition signers for ballot measures, Justice Antonin Scalia in a concurring opinion made a forceful defense of disclosure. Justice Scalia wrote that “requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.”
Third, claims made by opponents that the Executive Order is an attempt at an end-run around Congress have no merit and make no sense.
The Obama Administration is simply doing what it appropriately can do under its own authority to obtain campaign finance disclosure for the American people of activities that are currently being hidden from the public.
The Executive Order is just one of various ways to provide citizens with important campaign finance information that they have a fundamental right to know.
The American people overwhelmingly support the disclosure of campaign finance activities being conducted by outside groups. According to a New York Times/CBS Poll last year (October 28, 2010):
92 percent of Americans said that it is important for the law to require
campaigns and outside spending groups to disclose how much money
they have raised, where the money came from and how it was used.
Democracy 21 supports and is pursuing legislative, litigation and administrative avenues to ensure that citizens are provided with this campaign finance information.
The United States Congress can and should enact comprehensive legislation to require disclosure for all groups of the new campaign finance activities permitted by the Citizens United decision. But Congress has no monopoly on whether voters are informed about the campaign money being used to influence their votes and government decisions.
If Congress fails to enact necessary campaign finance disclosure legislation, then all other available avenues must be pursued to obtain this essential information for voters.
Last month, for example, the Democracy 21 legal team filed a lawsuit and FEC petition on behalf of Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) challenging as contrary to law FEC disclosure regulations that have eviscerated existing contribution disclosure laws. The existing disclosure laws already cover the new campaign finance activities permitted by the Citizens United decision.
Democracy 21 intends to pursue additional administrative and litigation avenues to obtain disclosure of the secret funds being spent to influence federal elections.
