Even though Republican obstructionism has upheld passage of the DISCLOSE Act in the US Senate twice before, the need to pass the bill has grown more urgent following the midterm election which experienced an onslaught of campaign ads funded by secret money from shadowy groups. The DISCLOSE Act will ensure that organizations who run ads to influence elections reveal to the public their donors, as under current law organizations can hide the identities of all of their donors, damaging transparency and the public’s right to know. In the last vote, 59 US Senators supported bringing the DISCLOSE Act to the Floor for an up-or-down vote, but the Republican minority blocked the vote from taking place.
Newspaper editorial boards from around the US are speaking out, calling for the Senate to act on the DISCLOSE Act:
Regardless of which candidates win, voters lose when they are left in the dark about who is signing the checks to pay for the commercials — mostly, attack ads — that dominate political campaigns. Disclosure enables voters to make informed decisions about the message and the candidate. Secrecy leaves them clueless.
The remedy lies in the Disclose Act, which the House has passed and is pending in the Senate. It would expand disclosure requirements to help the public know more about the rivers of money pouring into campaigns. Thus far, it has failed to attract any Republican support, but sponsors say they are willing to drop some nonessential provisions — prohibiting government contractors from making donations, for example — to attract at least one or two Republicans.
This bill should be at the top of Congress’ agenda in the lame-duck session that begins later this month. It’s too late to do anything about this year’s elections, but it can remove the shield of secrecy before the next round of races in 2012. A failure to act benefits only those who thrive in political darkness.
The Supreme Court breakthrough even lets businesses hide their identity as they funnel cash to front committees that buy smear ads. To halt this concealment, Democrats in Congress drafted the Disclose Act, which would force big donors out into the daylight. They still could spend freely to buy elections, but they could no longer hide from the public.
The House passed the Disclose Act, but Democrats in the Senate twice could not overcome Republican opposition. "Not a single Senate Republican and only two in the House have been willing to vote for the Disclose Act," the San Jose Mercury News noted.
The Senate is expected to try again after the election — before more winning Republican senators take their seats. We hope the bill finally passes. It’s disgusting that firms now can spend millions of company money to sway elections, under the silly pretext that such spending is free speech. At least, they shouldn’t be allowed to hide while they do it.
One solution being offered is the DISCLOSE Act (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections), which passed the U.S. House this summer, but not surprisingly stalled in the Senate.
The act, simply summarized, seeks to force those pumping money into campaigns to take personal responsibility for their actions and not hide behind front organizations.
It must be passed. Specifically, corporations, labor unions and nonprofits would have to disclose their donors, and their leaders would have to appear on their television ads noting "I approve of this message."
The DISCLOSE Act, passed by the House of Representatives last year, would require, among other things, that political donors be publicly identified. The bill has majority support in the U.S. Senate, but twice has been blocked when not one Republican senator would vote to break a filibuster – even senators who have supported campaign-finance reform in the past.
There’s one last chance to impose a minimum check on the Wild West environment that campaigns have become: let the disclosure provision of the DISCLOSE Act come to a vote in the "lame duck" session of the Senate that begins next week.