[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 128 (Wednesday, September 22, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Page S7305]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DISCLOSE ACT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, here we go again, back to the DISCLOSE 
Act. Americans are speaking out. They want us to focus on the economy, 
on preventing tax hikes, on creating jobs. What do Democrats do? They 
turn to the so-called DISCLOSE Act, a bill they say is about 
transparency in elections but which was drafted behind closed doors, 
without hearings, without testimony, and without any markups; a bill 
which is supposed to be about free speech but which picks and chooses 
who gets the right to engage in political speech and who does not; a 
bill that is back on the floor for no other reason than the fact that 
our friends on the other side have decided this week is politics-only 
week in the Senate. Let's be clear from the outset. That is all this 
is--pure politics.
  Over the past couple of elections, our friends on the other side have 
gotten a lot of help from their union allies and other outside groups--
so much so, in fact, that they were able to outspend their opponents 2 
to 1 in 2006 and 3 to 1 in 2008. That is our friends on the other side 
of the aisle. But now, after spending the last year and a half enacting 
policies Americans don't like, they want to prevent their opponents 
from being able to criticize what they have done. They hear Americans 
speaking out, they see some energy on the other side, and they don't 
want to take the kind of criticism they have leveled at Republicans for 
the past 4 years, so they are trying to rig the system to their 
advantage. That is it. It is quite simple--just to rig the system to 
their advantage.
  The only question here is why our friends on the other side would 
want to propose something like this when Americans are screaming at 
them to focus on the economy instead. Just look at the surveys. What 
are Americans most concerned about? It is no secret that Americans want 
Congress to focus on jobs and the economy. Yet, over the last 2 months, 
in the midst of what Democrats are remarkably calling ``recovery 
summer,'' the President has devoted two of his weekly radio addresses 
to the Nation to making a personal pitch for this bill.
  Today in the Senate, in the middle of the worst recession in memory, 
the Democratic leadership has decided to spend the next 2 days on the 
same failed partisan campaign spending bill aimed at giving Democrats a 
political edge. It is truly astonishing. It seems as if the more 
Americans say they want Democrats to focus on jobs, the more determined 
they are to press ahead with some piece of legislation aimed either at 
killing private sector jobs or, in the case of this bill, preserving 
their own jobs.
  Here we are, in the middle of a recession, with 27 States yesterday 
reporting increases in unemployment, 14 million Americans looking for 
work, and a national debt that is putting the very future of the 
American dream in jeopardy, here we are voting on a bill that amounts 
to little more than an incumbency protection act for Democrats in 
Congress. If Americans are looking for one final piece of evidence in 
this Congress that Democrats have lost perspective and lost touch with 
Americans, then this is it.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Georgia.

                          ____________________