Thread: Senate GOP Unanimously Votes to Block DISCLOSE Act

Senate GOP Unanimously Votes to Block DISCLOSE Act
By John Aloysius Farrell
July 16, 2012 | 7:05 p.m. | 5



In a 51-44 vote Monday night, Senate Republicans unanimously voted to block the Democratically backed DISCLOSE Act, which would have required political organizations to disclose the names of donors who give $10,000 or more.

Earlier Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that if Congress doesn't do something to curb the torrents of money being spent on political campaigns by secret donors, said today, then "17 angry old white men will wake up" on the morning after Election Day, "and realize they've just bought the country."

With that rip-snorting salvo at the wealthy donors who have been giving seven-figure contributions to shadowy political groups and Super PACs, the Senate Democrats opened debate on Monday on the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act - a measure that would require that political organizations disclose all donors who give them more than $10,000.

The current system permits "legalized political money laundering" that is "a perfect recipe for corruption," said Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the bill's lead sponsor. "Hang on to your wallets. Here come the special interests. And you won't even know who they are."

Democrats were planning to hold a "midnight vigil" for the bill on the Senate floor that will go well into Monday night.

Leading the opposition, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the DISCLOSE Act represents a desperate act by Democrats to hamper GOP fundraising.

It is "member and donor harassment and intimidation," said McConnell. "We have serious problems in this country. Too much free speech is not one of them."

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch called the Democratic ploy "pathetic," and called DISCLOSE "one of the most deliberately political pieces of legislation you will ever see."

The White House on Monday said it strongly supports the act, which it called a "necessary measure to ensure transparency and accountability," according to a statement from the Office of Management and Budget.

Photo: Harry Rreid (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Updated at 4:55 p.m.



Senate GOP Unanimously Votes to Block DISCLOSE Act - Influence Alley






[b] Really Harry!!!! Do you need 18 pages of rules and regulations on this bill to stop this one thing your complaining about did you read the whole thing, prolly not!!!!!? Bet if the Democ rats were getting the most money they wouldn't be complaining about the donations now would they...[b]

Senate to vote on Orwellian DISCLOSE Act…again


Always look under the Astroturf mat.

Senate Democrats have failed to pass a budget in nearly 1,200 days.

But they are carving out time today to vote on the loophole-ridden, incumbency protection racket, masquerading as “campaign finance reform,” dubbed the DISCLOSE Act.

Wait a minute. Didn’t they already vote on the DISCLOSE Act?

Why, yes. Yes, they did.

They voted on it in September 2010 before the midterms. And it failed to meet the 60-vote threshold.

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Michelle Malkin » Dem distraction: Senate to vote on Orwellian DISCLOSE Act…again; Update: Fails…again

Dem distraction: Senate to vote on Orwellian DISCLOSE Act…again; Update: Fails…again
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By Michelle Malkin • July 16, 2012 09:26 AM


Always look under the Astroturf mat.

Senate Democrats have failed to pass a budget in nearly 1,200 days.

But they are carving out time today to vote on the loophole-ridden, incumbency protection racket, masquerading as “campaign finance reform,” dubbed the DISCLOSE Act.

Wait a minute. Didn’t they already vote on the DISCLOSE Act?

Why, yes. Yes, they did.

They voted on it in September 2010 before the midterms. And it failed to meet the 60-vote threshold.

I told you two years ago in July 2010 why the DISCLOSE Act was a sham:

You know when a politician starts a sentence with “frankly,” he’s about to lie to your face. The same principle applies to campaign finance legislation dubbed the “DISCLOSE Act.” The voter’s instinctive reaction should be: What are they trying to hide now? Drafted out of public view with left-wing lobbyists and rammed through Congress after bypassing committee hearings, this bum bill would have been better named the CLOSEDDOOR Act.

At a Rose Garden press conference on Monday, President Obama decried the influence of “shadow groups” on elections and urged the Senate to pass the “reform” sponsored by N.Y. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. But the loophole-ridden package exempts large nonprofits with 500,000 or more members. Behemoth labor unions get preferential treatment. Bradley Smith, former Federal Elections Commission chairman, noted that the law places radical speech-squelching restrictions on companies’ ability to run independent political ads: “(I)f you’re a company with a government contract of over $10 million (like more than half of the top 50 U.S. companies) or if you’re a company with more than 20 percent foreign shareholders, you can’t even mention a candidate in an ad for up to a full year before the election. … There are no similar prohibitions for unions representing government contractors or unions with foreign membership.”

GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell put it more starkly during Tuesday’s debate before the Senate cloture vote on the bill: The DISCLOSE Act, he said, is a “transparent attempt to rig the fall elections.” At bottom, McConnell diagnosed correctly, this is a jobs-protection bill for entrenched incumbents more interested in protecting their hides than protecting the Constitution. While the cloture vote fell three votes short of the needed 60 on Tuesday, Schumer vowed to resurrect the issue “again and again and again until we pass it.”

…Team Obama and their allies on Capitol Hill have some nerve gnashing their teeth about transparency after two years of backdoor kickbacks, secret Big Labor deals, C-SPAN camera evasion, White House disclosure-ducking coffeehouse meetings, and sunlight-shirking holiday and midnight floor votes. And while they preached about America’s right to know and posed as crusaders for open access, Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate continued to stonewall on public hearings for health care rationing czar Donald Berwick — Obama’s recess-appointed head of Medicare and Medicaid.

A White House spokesman called the battle over the DISCLOSE Act a “defining moment for the public.” Nah. It’s just another example of the Democratic majority’s endless hide-and-seek hypocrisy.

Related from former FEC chariman Bradley Smith: A proposed campaign-finance law attempts to scare and regulate opponents into silence.

More: McConnell vows a filibuster today. He talked to Mark Levin about disclosure theater here.

The Soros-backed Center for American Progress is aggressively pushing the DISCLOSE Act today on Twitter. Tells you all you need to know.

I’ll update the post with roll call vote and predictable shrieking from Sen. Schumer.

***

More on the not-so-full disclosure distraction from CJ Ciaramella at the Free Beacon:

The Senate is expected to vote Monday on the DISCLOSE Act, a Democrat-sponsored bill requiring more disclosure of political activity. The bill faces fierce opposition from Senate Republicans who say it’s an attempt to target and harass donors.

Senate Democrats introduced a new version of the bill last Tuesday evening, but a provision requiring political ads to reveal their funders was pulled from the latest version at the behest of unions, senior GOP aides say.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012, first introduced in March, had two major provisions: requiring politically active super PACs, unions, and corporations to disclose the identity of donors who contribute $10,000 or more; and requiring electioneering ads to disclose who is funding them.

But the latter so-called “stand by your ad” provision is absent from the version of the bill on which the Senate will vote. A spokesman for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), who introduced the bill, said the provision was nixed in response to GOP complaints.

“The ‘stand by your ad’ provision was dropped in response to objections we’ve heard from folks on the other side of the aisle,” the spokesman said. “It’s now targeted specifically at requiring disclosure.”

However, a senior Republican aide told the Free Beacon the provision was dropped due to union pressure.

***

Update: The Orwellian DISCLOSE Act fails…again:

Senate Democrats on Monday lost another attempt to pass legislation forcing donors of groups that bankroll most election ads to be revealed. But Democrats, led by New York Sen. Charles Schumer, pledged to hold the Senate floor hostage and continue the debate well into the night.

The DISLCOSE Act, which was dealt the same fate in the Senate in 2010, failed to overcome a key procedural vote on entirely partisan lines, 51-44. Democrats will push for another vote as early as Tuesday after holding a “midnight vigil” to protest the GOP filibuster of the measure…

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It will never be over with these people ...2012 is coming and lets hope they are going

Dems hold 'midnight vigil' to protest defeat of DISCLOSE bill
By Pete Kasperowicz - 07/16/12 08:17 PM ET

Senate Democrats launched a rare, all-night debate on Monday that was scheduled to last past midnight, to protest Senate Republicans' opposition to legislation that would require companies, unions and other groups to report their campaign spending.

Democrats warned that they would hold a "midnight vigil" if Republicans blocked the vote on their bill, and they began shortly before 7 p.m., just minutes after GOP did in fact unanimously oppose the bill. Democrats were hoping to end debate on the bill, which needed 60 votes, but the vote failed 51-44.

Democrats immediately lined up more than a dozen speakers, and planned to debate the bill until 1 a.m., and then take up the issue again Tuesday morning.

The bill, S. 3369, is the Democrats' answer to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling, which said the government cannot limit campaign spending by companies and other entities. Democrats begged to differ, and throughout the day said that ruling has allowed "murky" and "shadowy" groups to form around money donated anonymously, which can have a significant impact on campaigns.

"For the last two years, our Democracy has been hijacked by powerful special interests, and tonight we had the opportunity to begin repairing the fabric of our nation's democracy before permanent damage is done," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said as the debate began. "Unfortunately, Republicans decided not to put our democracy back on the right track."

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and several others proceeded to the floor to cite examples of how groups are trying to influence elections, without giving voters any way to find out who is behind the message.

"I rise… because the corporations involved and the investors are flooding our elections with campaign money," Brown said. "We don't really know who the money's from. We can guess. In my state, we think it's from oil companies, we think it's Wall Street banks, we think it could be money from Chinese interests."

Democrats were hoping to keep the issue alive and push for another vote to end debate on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) voted against ending debate, which gives him the option of calling it up again, and he indicated afterwards that he would call another vote.

But debate appeared unlikely to sway any Republicans into changing their vote, and the GOP cast the move as an effort to politicize an issue that should be much further down the list of priorities, given ongoing unemployment in the United States. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said just before the vote that Democrats are wasting their time on a bill that he said would give the government a tool to "intimidate" groups, since it would require them to report how they spend money on campaigns.

"Not only should we not be doing this in good times, but to waste the Senate's time on a proposal totally without merit at a time when our economy is in the tank is the ultimate waste of the Senate's time," McConnell said. "I strongly urge a 'no' vote.


Dems hold 'midnight vigil' to protest defeat of DISCLOSE bill - The Hill's Floor Action