Congressional Record, Volume 158 Issue 106 (Monday, July 16, 2012)

[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 106 (Monday, July 16, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4985-S5003]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

DISCLOSE ACT OF 2012--MOTION TO PROCEED

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 446,
S. 3369, the DISCLOSE Act.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the bill by
title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 446, S. 3369, a bill to
amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to provide
for additional disclosure requirements of corporations, labor
organizations, super PACs, and other entities, and for other
purposes.

Schedule

Mr. REID. Mr. President, at 5 p.m., the Senate will proceed to
executive session to consider the nomination of Kevin McNulty to be
United States District Judge for the District of New Jersey.
At 5:30 p.m., there will be two rollcall votes. The first vote will
be on confirmation of the McNulty nomination. There will then be 10
minutes of debate prior to a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to
the DISCLOSE Act.

Measure Placed on the Calendar--H.R. 6079

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am told H.R. 6079 is at the desk and due
for a second reading.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will read the bill by
title for the second time.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (H.R. 6079) to repeal the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the
Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

Mr. REID. I now object to any further proceedings on this matter.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard. The bill will
be placed on the calendar under rule XIV.

The DISCLOSE Act

Mr. REID. Mr. President, Thomas Jefferson, one of our greatest
Presidents, once said,

[[Page S4986]]

The end of democracy . . . will occur when government falls
into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed
corporations.

Campaign finance reform protections we have in place--and have had
for many years--have solved the problem Jefferson talked about by
limiting political spending by corporations. Then out of nowhere came
the Supreme Court to issue its Citizens United opinion, rolling back a
century of work to make elections transparent and credible.
The result of Citizens United has been a flood of corporate, special-
interest campaign spending by shadowy front groups with questionable
motives. Not since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican who put a
stop to unlimited corporate donations, has America seen this kind of
out-of-control spending to influence elections.
Democrats and the majority of Americans believe the Supreme Court got
it very wrong with Citizens United. Anonymous spending by so-called
nonprofits, often backed by huge corporate donors or a few wealthy
individuals, used to make up 1 percent of election spending. This year
it will make up well over half of the spending. There is no question
Citizens United opened the door for big corporations and foreign
entities to secretly spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence
elections and undermine the fairness and integrity of the process. Let
us look at Nevada. Through the first part of this year, more money has
been spent per capita on TV ads in Nevada than in any other State in
the country. Most of the ads have been funded by anonymous groups flush
with cash from these huge oil interests, Wall Street, moneyed
interests, foreign gambling interests, and other interests seeking
greater influence in Washington.
Voters in Nevada and across the country deserve to know who paid for
these ads. We have proven it is possible to remove the veil of secrecy
from outside money and make the process more transparent. We have done
that before and we need to do it again. We can require large political
donors to disclose their identities so voters can at least judge their
motivations for themselves.
Requiring large donors to disclose their entities is not a new
concept. In fact, my counterpart, Senator McConnell, and many of his
Republican colleagues, have supported this in the past. The legislation
today before the Senate--the DISCLOSE Act--would require disclosure of
donations in excess of $10,000 if they are used for campaign purposes.
The bill treats all political entities equally--whether unions,
corporations, business associations, or super PACs. And contrary to
Republican claims, this legislation would not require organizations to
turn over membership rosters or lists of grassroots donors. Rather, it
would prevent corporations and wealthy individuals from using front
groups to shield their donations from disclosure.
Yet my Republican colleagues, with rare exception, have lined up
against this commonsense legislation. Their newfound opposition to
transparency makes one wonder who they are trying to protect. Perhaps
Republicans want to shield a handful of billionaires willing to
contribute nine figures to sway a close Presidential election.
If this flood of outside money continues, the day after the election
17 angry old White men will wake up and realize they have just bought
the country. That is a sad commentary. About 60 percent or more of
these outside dollars are coming from these 17 people.
These donors have something in common with their nominee. Like Mitt
Romney, they believe they play by their own set of rules. Mitt Romney
has refused to release his tax returns. I think everybody in America
now knows that. From the one and only return we have seen, we know Mitt
Romney pays a lower tax rate than most middle-class families. We know
he has a Swiss bank account. We know he takes advantage of tax shelters
in the Cayman Islands and tax shelters in Bermuda. But we can only
guess what new secrets would be revealed if we could examine a dozen
years of his tax returns. His father, George Romney, set the standard
for Presidential elections. He released 12 years of tax returns so
Americans could evaluate his record for themselves. His son should also
let his records out so we can evaluate his record for ourselves.
Even nominees for Cabinet posts are required to release 3 years of
tax returns and declare financial holdings worth more than $1,000.
Romney's refusal to be open and honest would disqualify him from even
being a Cabinet secretary. And his penchant for secrecy makes Americans
wonder: What is he hiding?
Thomas Jefferson famously argued: Democracy depends on an informed
electorate. If that is true--and I believe it is--it stands to reason
disclosure can only strengthen our democracy. But don't take my word
for it. As my friend Senator McConnell has said, ``Disclosure is the
best disinfectant.''
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is
recognized.

The DISCLOSE Act

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, later today Senate Democrats will show
where their legislative priorities truly lie.
At a moment when the American people are reeling from the slowest
economic recovery in modern times, and just 5\1/2\ months away from the
culmination of tax hikes and spending cuts already being referred to
around the world as America's fiscal cliff, Senate Democrats want us to
waste our time on the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that has only two
discernible purposes: to create the impression of mischief where there
is none, and to send a signal to unions that Democrats are just as
eager to do their legislative bidding as ever.
Think about it. We have had 41 straight months of unemployment above
8 percent. It has been more than 3 years since the Democratic Senate
passed a budget, but this is what they want to do.
For months Republicans have been urging Democrats to do something
about the approaching fiscal cliff now, before it is too late. The
American people don't expect us to see every crisis that comes around
the corner, but they should be able to expect us to do something about
the problems we do see and that we know are coming. Yet last week
President Obama signaled that he and his campaign advisers think it is
good politics to keep the threat of these looming tax hikes on everyone
right on the table as supposed leverage in an effort to raise taxes on
nearly 1 million business owners right now.
As the Washington Post reported this morning, not only do Democrats
in Congress agree with him, they are ready and willing to go right off
the fiscal cliff if they don't get their way. In their near fanatical
crusade to inflict even more pain on American businesses, Democrats are
now openly admitting that they plan to wait until this debate reaches
full throttle and Americans are panicked about the outcome to do
anything because they think it will make it more likely they will get
their way. And if they don't, then so be it. They are ready to accept
the economic and fiscal consequences. They see a crisis coming, and
they don't want to waste it.
The Congressional Budget Office has said that not doing anything and
walking off this fiscal cliff would lead to a recession. The IMF chief
says it would threaten the global economy. Yet Senate Democrats today
are announcing they are perfectly ready and willing to accept all that
if Republicans don't allow them to raise taxes on the very businesses
we are counting on to create the jobs we need.
This is what passes for governance among Democrats these days: Put
the American people up against a wall, pick their pockets, and then
hope that in the midst of the scuffle they will blame it--and the
recession that would follow--on the Republicans.
Now, let's make no mistake. What the Democrats are proposing today is
an entirely avoidable high-stakes game of chicken with the single-
minded goal of taking more money from those who earn it for government
to waste. The President made it very clear over the

[[Page S4987]]

weekend that he doesn't think entrepreneurs are responsible for their
own success. They owe it to the government. Successful entrepreneurs
owe their success to the government. That is the attitude driving
everything this President and his Democratic allies in Washington are
doing right now. Their one-point plan for getting America back on track
is clear: You earn, we take. And if they don't get to impose it, then
they will welcome a recession.
They are so single-mindedly focused on taking the earnings of others
for themselves and spreading it around--in the President's famous
phrase--that they are recklessly ignoring any proposal to prevent the
coming crisis in order to achieve it.
Last week Senate Republicans proposed a legislative solution which
ensures that no one sees their income tax go up--no one--at the end of
the year, legislation that creates a path for the kind of fair, broad-
based comprehensive tax reform members of both parties claim they want
and which would give individuals and businesses the certainty they have
been asking us to give them since the very beginning of the
administration.
We could have passed this completely reasonable proposal last week
and put the anxiety of millions of Americans at ease with a single
vote, but Democrats, of course, refused. They would rather keep the
crisis unresolved, keep it looming out there on the horizon. They think
it gives them a political edge. They think it is good politics. And
they should be ashamed. They should be ashamed.
Consider this: It has been nearly 1 year since the President demanded
$500 billion in automatic cuts to defense at the end of this year. Yet
with the date now fast approaching, we still don't know how he intends
to handle it. The President's campaign wants people asking whether his
opponent is hiding something on a 10-year-old tax return. How about
what this President is actually concealing about his plans to slash
defense? With just a few months to go before these cuts devastate
communities all across the country, the President has yet to outline
his plans.
Republicans in the House have already passed, and Senate Republicans
have proposed, concrete plans to avoid these devastating cuts to our
national defense. Our uniformed military deserves the certainty that
their operations, training, support, and weapons systems will be fully
funded. Meanwhile, the President hasn't demonstrated the least bit of
interest in this issue--no interest whatsoever. He hasn't said a thing.
He is apparently more interested in blowing smoke about his opponent's
tax returns than in talking about the tax hike he actually plans to
impose on the very businesses we are counting on to create the jobs
Americans need--not some other day but right now.
He would rather spend his time raising unfounded suspicions about a
guy whose entire professional career has been a dress rehearsal for
bringing order to a government that has become so bloated, so
inefficient, and so bureaucratic that it is crying out for the kind of
leadership and reform Democrats simply refuse to provide. He would
rather attack a guy who has succeeded at just about everything he has
ever done than propose a solution himself. And the reason, of course,
is perfectly clear: Washington Democrats are worried he might succeed
at reforming government too. They don't want to give him the chance.
Think about it. The economy is flat on its back, millions are
struggling to find work, and Democrats aren't outlining a solution.
They are plotting about how to take advantage of it to advance an
ideological agenda most Americans oppose and to cast doubt about
anybody who poses a serious threat to the crony-capitalist bureaucratic
favor factory right here in Washington.
Where the rest of us see the worst economic recovery in modern times,
Democrats see another opportunity to use a crisis to grow the
government, and that is what they are focused on--not on providing hope
and relief for already struggling Americans but providing more tax
dollars for the government to waste and misdirect. In the meantime they
will waste our time with bills like this one which they know will not
pass but will give them a chance to make a fuss about a problem that
doesn't exist--and blow a kiss to the unions for good measure.
But if we are going to have to vote on proceeding to this bill, I
would like to take a moment to explain why it is not only exhibit A in
how completely irresponsible Democrats are being right now, but why it
is such a terrible idea in itself.
First, a point on process. When the history books are written, the
112th Congress may well be known as the Congress of irrelevant
committees--the Congress of irrelevant committees. There once was a day
when committees held hearings on bills, debated them, offered
amendments, and reported them out for full Senate consideration. Now it
is find a bill, put it on the calendar, move to proceed, file cloture,
lose, and repeat. That is today's Senate. Committees are not being used
to generate good legislation. In other words, they are viewed as an
obstacle to overcome in the effort to make a point in front of the
cameras on the Senate floor. The latest such effort is the DISCLOSE
Act, a bill aimed at doing something about people exercising their
first amendment rights to participate in the process.
My question is, do something about what? Do something about races
which previously would not have been competitive but now are? Do
something about individuals and organizations criticizing unpopular
positions and policies? Do something about groups advocating on behalf
of their members to promote or oppose the very positions for which
their members joined? As George Will has pointed out, the political
process is not a private club with the parties and the candidates
controlling membership. Under the Citizens United decision of 2010,
independent groups are now able to speak, again, under the first
amendment regardless of who, when, and about what they are speaking.
This is something Democrats should be celebrating, not excoriating.
The Founders envisioned a nation in which speech would be promoted as
widely as possible. That is what the first amendment is all about,
particularly when it comes to the political process. The purpose of
this legislation is totally clear. After Citizens United, Democrats
realized they could not shut up their critics so they decided to go
after the microphone instead by trying to scare off the funders. As
Senator Schumer put it during debate on an earlier version of this
bill, `` . . . the deterrent effect should not be underestimated.''
That was Senator Schumer on the real purpose of this bill: ``The
deterrent effect should not be underestimated.''
Just as with the DISCLOSE Act of 2010, this amounts to nothing more
than member and donor harassment and intimidation and is all part of a
broader government-led intimidation effort by this administration.
There are parallel efforts going on at the FCC, the SEC, the IRS, the
DOJ, and the White House itself to silence its critics.
The creation of a modern day Nixonian ``enemy's list'' is currently
in full swing and, frankly, the American people should not stand for
it. As I have said before, no individual or group in this country
should have to face harassment or intimidation or incur crippling
expenses defending themselves against their own government simply
because the Government does not like the message they are advocating.
But that is what we are seeing.
My own view has always been, if you cannot convince people of the
wisdom of your policies, then you need to come up with some better
arguments. Instead, the left has resorted to tactics such as the
pending legislation. This legislation is an unprecedented requirement
for groups to publicly disclose their donors, stripping a protection
recognized and solidified by the courts. As a result of this
legislation, advocacy groups ranging from the NAACP to the Sierra Club,
to the Chamber of Commerce, all of which already disclose their donors
to the IRS, would now be forced to subject their members to public
intimidation and harassment. Why? For supporting organizations and
groups whose goals they agree with.
Predictably, unions are exempted from the kind of disclosure
Democrats now want to impose on everybody else. The so-called stand by
your ad provision in an earlier version has done a

[[Page S4988]]

David Copperfield and entirely vanished.
I am not advocating for the provision but simply to note its absence,
which proves the primary goal of this bill is not good government or
transparency but targeted speech suppression. That is what this is
about--targeted speech suppression.
I have to give the authors credit, whoever they are. They actually
list labor unions as a covered organization in the bill. However,
through an elaborate scheme of thresholds and triggers, they might as
well have saved the ink, since unions are largely given a free pass by
this bill, despite the fact they are, by far, the biggest players in
political campaigns in our entire country. No one else comes close--
almost all of it, of course, on the Democratic side.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, labor unions spent a
total of $4.4 billion on campaigns from 2005 to 2011, a staggering
amount of money and perfectly within their rights, I would add, under
the first amendment.
Let's be clear. The other side may be able to whip the media up into
a lather over the increased participation of individuals and groups
that do not like the direction this President has taken our country,
but the big money is coming from the left in the form of mandatory dues
to labor unions. To the left, big money from individuals and
corporations is a problem. But the nearly $800 million spent by unions
in 2008, oh, that is just fine and dandy--as long as nearly 100 percent
of it goes to their own campaigns.
As supporters of this legislation have readily admitted, the real
target of this bill is to protect themselves from criticism over their
wildly unpopular policies and positions. This is precisely why this
legislation has been opposed by business groups from coast to coast and
opposed by everyone from the NRA--which is key voting this vote--to the
ACLU, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. I greatly appreciate all the
effort these folks have put into educating and advocating on this
issue.
I will certainly do everything in my power to protect the first
amendment rights from DISCLOSE, the sequel, and I ask my colleagues on
both sides of the aisle to join with me in voting no. We have many
serious problems in this country. Too much free speech is not one of
them.
Democrats can call this bill whatever they want, but they cannot
conceal its true intent, which is to encourage their allies and
discourage their critics from exercising their first amendment right to
speak their mind. If Democrats do not like the level playing field
ensured by the first amendment and reaffirmed by Citizens United, they
should do a better job convincing the American people of the wisdom of
their policies and focus on real problems instead of inventing ones
that do not exist. To this point, I once again urge our friends to put
the political games aside and do something now about the fiscal cliff
that is approaching before it is too late. Our Nation has been mired in
an economic coma for years. More people signed up for disability last
month than found a job. The number of Americans on food stamps
continues to climb. It is all about to get worse, and we have a
President who is on a single-minded crusade to punish business owners
even more.
Republicans have proposed serious, concrete ideas for addressing the
problems we face, but we cannot do any of it if the President and his
Democratic allies in Congress refuse to join us. Unfortunately, that is
where we are. Democrats have made their priorities perfectly clear and,
sadly, the American people they were elected to serve appear to be very
much at the bottom of the list.
I yield the floor.

Reservation of Leader Time

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
leadership time is reserved.
The Senator from Rhode Island.

Order of Procedure

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
Senator from Arkansas now be recognized to deliver remarks regarding a
casualty from his home State--for which I will take this opportunity to
send my condolences and the condolences of the people of Rhode Island--
and at the conclusion of his remarks that I be recognized.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding me a few
minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arkansas is
recognized.

HONORING OUR ARMED FORCES

SERGEANT MICHAEL STRACHOTA

Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, we are aware that our freedoms are not
truly free and our soldiers give the greatest sacrifice in freedom's
defense. The sacrifices of Americans in uniform and their families
embody the courage, honor, and patriotism that we must always remember.
Today I am here to pay my respects to Army SGT Michael Strachota, an
Arkansas soldier who sacrificed his life for the love of this country
in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Sergeant Strachota graduated from Pine Bluff High School in Pine
Bluff, AR in 2002. In 2007 he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to
the 96th Transportation Company, 180th Transportation Battalion, 13th
Sustainment Command at Fort Hood, TX.
Sergeant Strachota was aware of the dangers he faced having served a
previous deployment to Iraq in 2009. His family says that Michael was
proud of his job and recalled to Arkansas newspapers how excited he was
about his position and how he wanted to pursue a new direction in the
military as an Army Ranger or pilot.
Sergeant Strachota's family said he was known for his friendly, out-
going, and generous nature and his love of the outdoors and riding
motorcycles. Most of all he was devoted to his family. He delayed his
R&R to be home for his son's birthday on July 5th.
Sergeant Michael Strachota answered the highest call for this
country. He is a true American hero. I ask my colleagues to keep his
wife Lauren, son William and the rest of this family and friends in
their thoughts and prayers during these difficult times. I humbly offer
my sincerest gratitude for his selfless service and patriotism for this
Nation.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the DISCLOSE Act
of 2012, legislation that will shine some much needed light into the
flood of secret money that is now polluting our elections. I would like
to open with thanks to Senators Chuck Schumer, Mike Bennet, Al Franken,
Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tom Udall for their hard work in our
task force that developed this legislation. I look forward to
continuing to work with them through this debate.
On Thursday, Majority Leader Reid moved to proceed to this vital
piece of legislation, and we will vote on it this evening. I thank the
leader. I and many of my colleagues are looking forward to the
opportunity to make the case for this important measure. But in a
sense, for the American public, the case has already been made. As
anyone who watches television knows, our airwaves are filled with
political attack ads. The organizations paying for many of these ads
have patriotic and benign-sounding names with words such as
``prosperity'' and ``freedom'' and ``future'' frequently to be found.
These names sound harmless, but all too often the ads are actually paid
for by secret special interests, such as billionaires and wealthy
corporations seeking secret special influence in our democracy. In the
process, they drown out the voices of regular American families who
wish to participate in elections.
The Republican leader indicated we were going after the impression of
mischief where there is none. Many Americans certainly have the
impression of mischief.
As U.S.A. Today put it last week in an editorial supporting this
DISCLOSE Act:

Everybody's watching what's expected to be by far the most
expensive presidential campaign in history, and not without a
dose of horror. Freed by the Supreme Court from spending
limits, all manner of special interests are opening the
spigots to buy influence.

Here is how my home State paper, the Providence Journal, explained
the Citizens United decision that unleashed this torrent of special
interest money.

The [Citizens United] ruling will mean that more than ever,
big-spending economic interests will determine who gets
elected. More money will especially pour into relentless
attack campaigns. Free speech for most

[[Page S4989]]

individuals will suffer because their voices will count for
even less than they do now. They will simply be drowned out
by the big money.

I think the Providence Journal hit the nail right on the head. What
has happened since the Citizens United decision has, in fact, proved
them right. Senator John McCain said earlier this year:

The United States Supreme Court--in what I think is one of
the worst decisions in history--struck down the restrictions
in the so-called McCain-Feingold law, and a lot of people
don't agree with that, but I predicted when the United States
Supreme Court, with their absolute ignorance of what happens
in politics, struck down that law, that there would be a
flood of money into campaigns, not transparent, unaccounted
for, and this is exactly what is happening.

Senator McCain is right. This is exactly what is happening. It is not
an impression of mischief, it is mischief on the loose.
Richard Posner, a leading conservative legal scholar and a Federal
judge, recently said:

Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our
Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions
on the basis of the First Amendment.

Our political system is pervasively corrupt. This is from a
conservative Federal judge.
The impact of Citizens United has been very clear. In the 2010
midterm elections, the first after Citizens United, there was a more
than a fourfold increase in expenditures from super PACs and other
outside groups compared to 2006--$69 million up to $305 million--with
nearly three-quarters of political advertising coming from sources that
were prohibited from spending money back in 2006. Also, in 2010, those
501(c)(4)s and (c)(6) not-for-profit organizations spent more than $135
million in unlimited and secret political contributions. Anonymous
spending rose from 1 percent of outside spending in 2006 to 44 percent
in 2010.
We are already seeing the influence of money on the 2012 elections.
Super PACs and other outside groups have spent over $150 million in
this election cycle, about twice of what was spent in the same period
of 2008 during the last Presidential election.
Nondisclosing groups, said the New York Times, ``have accounted for
two-thirds of the political advertising bought by the biggest outside
spenders so far in the 2012 election cycle . . . with close to $100
million in issue ads.''
Campaigns are no longer waged by candidates and parties fighting over
ideas, they are now waged by shadowy political attack groups posing as
social welfare organizations run by the likes of Karl Rove and other
political operatives and fueled by millions of undisclosed dollars from
secret special interests. When these secret special interests take over
our elections this way, it drowns out the voices of regular individual
Americans. It also puts in jeopardy some of the key pillars of a strong
middle class, pillars such as Medicare, Social Security, and Pell
grants that have paved the way for generations to achieve the American
dream but have always been the targets of special interests.
These special interests have motives. They have motives to spend this
kind of money. If those motives were good for America and were welcomed
by the average American, they wouldn't need and wouldn't want to keep
them secret. We need to ask ourselves a very important question: What
are they hiding? Why do they demand secrecy? Whatever the answer, one
thing is clear: Americans who worry that Washington is too beholden to
special interests now need to be concerned more than ever. Hang onto
your wallets, here come the special interests, and you won't even know
who they are.
As recently reported in the New York Times, secret spending groups
have accounted for two-thirds of this advertising. Two-thirds of ad
spending from groups, other than candidates or parties, has come from
secretive corporations and billionaires whose names and agendas the
voters may never know and who will have no accountability for how that
money is spent. Impression of mischief, indeed.
Of course, when we don't have accountability, there is no limit to
what people will say. One of the restraints on the vitriol and the
filth that is so often part of the American political debate is that
candidates have to stand by their ads. If someone says something that
is awful, if they engage in relentless negative attacks, voters may
charge them a price for that. They may find that unwelcome. That, of
course, disappears when the name behind the ad is attached to no living
person or corporation. It is just an entity, a sham, a phony, a shell.
How has this worked out? Not well for the American public. An April
study found that about 70 percent of ads in this election cycle have
been negative. That is up from only 9 percent through the same period
in 2008. In 2008, 9 percent of ads in that time period had been
negative. In this cycle, 70 percent have been negative. Over the last 6
months, if we look at the four top-spending political 501(c)(4)
organizations, the ones that don't have to disclose their donors, they
spent an estimated 85 percent of their election spending on ads
containing deceptions. So 70 percent of the stuff out there is
negative, up from only 9 percent, and 85 percent of the big spenders
are spending their money on ads that have been determined to be
deceptive.
The names of the organizations sound lovely: Americans for
Prosperity, American Future Fund, American Energy Alliance, and
Crossroads GPS. Without knowing who funds these shadowy groups, the
American voter has no idea what mischief they are up to.
This is all a result of the Supreme Court's disastrous and misguided
decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This is the
decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited and secret corporate
and special interest money pouring into our elections.
This chart shows how easy it is under our current system for wealthy
interests to skirt existing disclosure rules and spend secret millions
in election ads. This amounts to a form of legalized political money
laundering or, to use the phrase Senator McCain and I used in our brief
to the Supreme Court, ``identity laundering.''
Super PACs are supposed to disclose their donors under current law,
but that can sometimes be weeks or months after a deceptive ad runs. If
a donor wants to avoid even that disclosure, it can set up a shell
corporation, which may be nothing more than a P.O. box someplace, and
send the money through that super PAC through a shell corporation
without a real name showing up on a disclosure form. They just launder
it through the shell corporation, and the next thing they know the
money is doing their work.
They can also pass the money through a 501(c)(4) social welfare
organization. I put the words ``social welfare'' in quotes because that
is the IRS phrase that is used for these organizations. There is very
little social welfare being accomplished by the big political donor
groups known as social welfare associations. The IRS gives nonprofit
status to these groups whose primary purpose--and in many cases their
only purpose--is to shield big spenders from having their identities
disclosed. In many cases, these 501(c)(4) so-called social welfare
groups are so closely affiliated with the super PACs that they have all
the same staff and the same office space. It is a 501(c)(4) independent
social welfare organization for the IRS with the same staff and the
same office space as a super PAC. Please. Of course, the 501(c)(4)
groups still don't have to disclose their donors, even when they are
the same staff and the same office as the super PAC.
On this chart, we see the money raised by one of them, Citizens
United, by Republican political operatives, including Karl Rove. They
raised money through the Crossroads PAC. It is a super PAC, and it is
supposed to disclose its donor. It has attached to it Crossroads GPS, a
501(c)(4) group that is not the super PAC and it can maintain complete
secrecy for its donors. Guess which one has raised the most money. It
is an easy question. It is the 501(c)(4) group that doesn't have to
disclose its donors. The group raised $76.8 million through 2011 as
opposed to only $46.4 million raised by its sister super PAC. This is
by no means a unique situation.
As the New York Times wrote in an editorial last Sunday in support of
the DISCLOSE Act, ``Corporations love the secrecy provided by Mr.
Rove's group because it protects them from scrutiny

[[Page S4990]]

by nosy shareholders and consumers.'' They want a big influence on
elections but without leaving any tracks.
An unnamed corporate lobbyist told the newspaper Politico earlier
this year that nondisclosure is always preferred by corporate donors.
Why is it preferred? Because it makes it impossible for the public and
law enforcement to track down the corrupting influence of the money
that these corporations spend in elections. The DISCLOSE Act puts an
end to this nonsense. It puts an end to using 501(c)(4) groups and
shell corporations to shield the identities of big donors.
One thing that should not be lost in the discussion of anonymous
spending is the fact that there is one person to whom this spending is
never anonymous; that is, the candidate who is either benefited or
punished. Although the donors have managed to hide their identities
from the public, they can sure tell the candidate how much money they
are putting in the candidate's super PAC and, by the way, what position
they want that candidate to take on issues. What this creates is a
perfect recipe for corruption--wealthy corporations, individuals, and
special interests secretly spending millions of dollars to influence a
candidate in ways the public never sees.
A rich donor can secretly threaten massive spending against a
candidate without even putting up the money. If the candidate doesn't
take the right position on an issue, then they can pull the trigger,
but they can make the threat quietly.
Political scientist Norm Ornstein recently said:

I had this tale told to me by a number of lawmakers. You're
sitting in your office and a lobbyist comes in and says,
``I'm working for Americans for a Better America. And I can't
tell you who's funding them, but I can tell you they really,
really want this amendment in the bill.'' And who knows what
they'll do. They have more money than God.

If the candidate complies, of course, the expenditure is never made,
there is no paper trail, no trace of that threat. Yet the system has
been corrupted. Let's also dispense with the fiction that this spending
is independent. The whole rationale for unlimited spending was that it
was to be done independently of candidate campaigns. The reality is
that super PACs are anything but independent. Campaigns and super PACS
share fundraising lists, donors, former staff, and consultants.
Candidates appear at fundraisers for their super PACs. Super PACs
recycle ads that were originally run by the candidates. They share
film. They are free to act as the evil twins of candidate campaigns, as
one FEC Commissioner put it, raising unlimited, secret money, and then
spending it on massive amounts of advertising--most of it negative--to
benefit their preferred candidates.
Our campaign finance system is broken, and it lends itself to
corruption in new and unprecedented ways. Immediate action is required
to fix it. Today we are debating a bill that will at least bring some
transparency and accountability into this election spending. This
should not be a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, and in the
past, it has not been. It has always had bipartisan support because it
is about protecting our Democratic process. We need to pass the
DISCLOSE Act now.
The USA Today editorial said:

Citizens United left the public only one way to protect
itself from the rising threat: Disclosure. At the federal
level, this would be achieved by the DISCLOSE Act.

I thank USA Today for supporting this bill.
The Supreme Court also made it crystal clear in this very Citizens
United decision that disclosure was an appropriate and even a necessary
part of a healthy campaign finance system. Here is what Justice Anthony
Kennedy wrote, writing for the majority:

The new version of the DISCLOSE Act will do exactly this. It says
nothing more and nothing less than when corporations and other wealthy
interests spend money--more than $10,000--to influence our elections,
their identities must be disclosed.
There is no question where the American people stand on this issue.
Americans of all political stripes are disgusted by the influence of
unlimited, anonymous corporate cash in our elections and by campaigns
that succeed or fail depending on how many billionaires the candidate
has in his pocket--or advisers, perhaps. More and more, people feel
their government responds only to wealthy and corporate interests. They
see their jobs disappear. They see their wages stagnate. They see
bailouts and special deals for the big guys. And they lose faith that
their elected officials will listen to them.
Six in ten Americans say the middle class will not catch a break in
this economy until we reduce the influence of lobbyists, big banks, and
big donors. Seven in ten Americans, nearly, including a majority of
both Democrats and Republicans, agree that ``new rules that let
corporations, unions, and people give unlimited money to super PACs
will lead to corruption.'' Notwithstanding what the NRA and the chamber
and other big DC lobbying powerhouses want, they are at odds with the
regular American people. Indeed, one in four Americans says they are
actually less likely to vote because big donors to super PACs have so
much more influence over elected officials than average Americans.
These numbers should be a call to arms for anyone who believes our
American democracy is one of our world's shining jewels and should be
scrupulously, carefully, ardently protected. Indeed, people are
answering this call to arms in numbers that are increasing every day.
I have with me today here on the Senate floor 213,000 Americans--
213,000 citizen cosponsors of this DISCLOSE Act, which were collected
by CREDO Action. My colleagues can leaf through them and see people
from Apple Valley, MN; from San Francisco, CA; from Ashland, OR; from
Austin, TX; from Long Beach, NY; from Imperial, NE; from Yorktown
Heights, NY; from Brick, NJ; from Schaumburg, IL; people from all
across the country--nearly a quarter of a million of them now--coming
from all 50 States, and more than 1,000 Rhode Islanders are in this
group. Unlike the corporations and the billionaires who are spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to buy our elections and who insist on
doing it in secret, these regular people are unashamed to stand up for
what they believe in. Their pride in civic engagement reflects the best
values of America, and their numbers show that this is an issue where a
broad cross-section of Americans demand a change to what is happening
in our elections.
Justice Antonin Scalia has written:

Requiring people to stand up in public for their political
acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is
doomed.

Our friends who have signed on as citizen cosponsors have that
courage, and the biggest campaign spenders in the world should as well.
Frankly, even those big campaign spenders should be patriotic enough to
understand, as Justice Scalia did, that democracy is doomed without
civic courage, and they should step up on their own. But, instead, they
are hiding behind the rules and hiding their identities and trying to
buy influence.
I will conclude by saying that prior to Citizens United, there was a
long bipartisan tradition supporting laws that require disclosure of
spending in elections. This bipartisan consensus may be reemerging.
Senator John McCain of Arizona and I recently filed with the Supreme
Court a brief that urged the Court to reconsider the flawed premise of
its decision in Citizens United--the false premise that independent
expenditures can't lead to corruption or the appearance of corruption.
As the statistics about anonymous spending and public perception I have
cited make clear, this premise has been fully discredited.
Although the Supreme Court declined this opportunity to put our
elections back on a saner path, I am proud to have worked in a
bipartisan fashion on that brief with Senator McCain, who has long been
a leader in this Congress and in this country on campaign finance
issues. I hope our partnership will mark the beginning of greater
cooperation across party lines on this issue of vital importance to our
democracy.

[[Page S4991]]

There are some misconceptions about the act that have colored the
public debate. We plan to explain during the course of the debate why
the critics of this bill have gotten so many things just plain wrong.
This act contains only the most basic provisions requiring outside
groups to disclose campaign-related fundraising and spending. The
legislation has been streamlined from the DISCLOSE Act that nearly
passed the Senate in 2010. It places fewer burdens on covert
administrations. It contains no prohibitions on spending, no special
exemptions for any group or type of group. Contrary to what the
Republican leader said, it does not require grassroots organizations to
disclose their donors, and it treats every organization exactly the
same right across the board.
Some have complained, such as a Republican witness in the Rules
Committee hearing on this bill, that the so-called stand-by-your-ad
requirements originally in the bill were too burdensome. He described
them, actually, as radical. So we removed them. We have tried to
accommodate. I know that many of my colleagues, including Senator Ron
Wyden, who authored this stand-by-your-ad legislation and who has
heroically fought for it for many years, remained very supportive of
these provisions, and I hope we will be able to reintroduce them at
another time. But we didn't, so that complaint should be closed off.
Some complain that this was just an attempt to influence this election.
Well, its effective date is January 1, 2013, so it will not, to the
regret of many, influence this election.
According to Republican former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter, the
DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is ``appropriately targeted, narrowly tailored,
clearly constitutional and desperately needed.''
I stand ready to work with any of my colleagues, Democrats or
Republicans, who want to make this bill better, but we can't use
complaints--particularly unjustified complaints--as an excuse to do
nothing.
While the status quo of unlimited secret money may work to benefit
some politicians for the moment, in the long run it will hurt us all,
regardless of party. Unlimited money is not a force that anyone can
ultimately hope to control, and unlimited secret money is even more
dangerous. More important, the American people, who are already
beginning to lose faith in our electoral system, can reasonably fear
that their elected officials will only care about the anonymous donors
writing eight-figure checks in deals and gifts that they will never
see.
Many of my Republican colleagues in the Senate know this, and they
have supported disclosure in the past. Senator Mitch McConnell, the
Republican leader, for instance, was once a great advocate for
disclosure. As he said in 2000, ``Republicans are in favor of
disclosure,'' adding, ``Why would a little disclosure be better than a
lot of disclosure?'' That question is as timely today as it was then.
I hope my Republican colleagues will join us in passing this
important piece of legislation. Help us restore the fundamental
principle of a government of the people, by the people, and for the
people.
The Washington Post wrote yesterday in an editorial supporting this
DISCLOSE Act:

We'd like to see a few courageous Republicans rise in the
Senate on Monday and declare: Enough is enough.

If our friends across the aisle decide to block this legislation
which clearly reflects the will of the American people, I am prepared
to force this issue by debating this bill long into the night. If they
are unwilling to join us in our mission to shine a light on secret
money elections, we will keep the lights on here.
I urge my colleagues to support the DISCLOSE Act of 2012.
I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning
business for 15 minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Fiscal Policy

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, today I wish to speak about two related
subjects. Both are very much in the news, and both relate to the fiscal
condition in the United States and what happens on January 1 if the
U.S. Congress and the President allow a tax increase to be imposed upon
the American people that will amount to the largest tax increase in the
history of our country--about $4.5 trillion over 10 years. That tax
increase is slated to go into effect unless we stop it. The effect of
that tax increase on economic growth, on job creation, and on our small
businesses and families will be devastating unless we act. The other
subject, which is also pertinent to tax policy, is a subject that has
been raised by many in the Obama Presidential campaign relating to
outsourcing of jobs. Let me speak to that first because it has a direct
relationship to this question of taxation.
In today's Wall Street Journal, there is an op-ed piece by Arthur
Laffer and Ford Scudder called ``The Tax Cliff is a Growth Killer.''
Let me quote just two sentences from it:

The United States faces economic collapse thanks to massive
tax increases on Jan. 1, and continued deficit spending for
years on end.

They go on to say:

The blunt reality is that we cannot have a prosperous
economy when government is overspending, raising tax rates,
printing too much money, overregulating and restricting the
free flow of goods and services across national boundaries.

Now, what does this have to do with outsourcing? There has been
criticism of companies that send jobs to another country or that hire
people in other countries to do work for them. The same thing can be
said when a business no longer expands in the State in which it is
headquartered or operating and moves part of its business to another
State. We have seen our States actually compete for business. The
reason they do this, in many cases, is because the business conditions
under which they operate in the first State are no longer conducive to
competition, for them to be able to make products or provide services
that are competitive with those who are working to compete against
them. So they have to go where labor is cheaper, where the costs are
less, where the regulation is not as onerous, and where taxes are
lower, perhaps--in other words, where the conditions for doing business
are more favorable so they can continue to compete.
The same thing is true when jobs are sent overseas. The reality is
American businessmen are not sitting around wondering how they can be
evil, how they can fire American workers, how they can go overseas to
do business. It is much easier to stay right here in the good old USA.
For a whole lot of reasons, they make a lot of sacrifices to keep their
businesses here. But there comes a point in time when American tax
policy, regulatory policy, and the uncertainty of doing business here
finally gets to the point where--in order to stay in business, in order
to remain competitive--they have to find places elsewhere where they
can do their work that enables them to remain competitive.
When we go to the store, and we are looking at the goods on the
shelf, and we see the very same thing, where in one case it costs $5
and in the next case it costs $10, chances are we are going to buy the
$5 product. If a company has to make that product overseas in order to
stay competitive, that is exactly what they are going to do. It ends up
helping the American consumer. It is not good for American workers who
cannot work in that particular industry.
But what is the cause for it? Is it because there are entrepreneurs
out there, business folks--your neighbors and mine--who want to somehow
hurt American workers, who are not patriotic or who are evil people?
Think about it. The answers, of course, are no. The only reason they
are hiring work to be done in foreign countries is because that is how
they can stay competitive, how they can offer that same product for $5,
as their competitor does.
What causes them to have to do that? Well, the first thing is
American tax policy. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the
world. Of all industrialized countries, we are No. 1. In this case, No.
1 makes it more difficult to do business. We have the most progressive
tax system; that is, the people at the highest end pay the highest
amount of taxes of anyone in any country in the industrialized world.
When

[[Page S4992]]

you take the corporate tax rate and add to it the capital gains and
dividends, we have the highest tax rate--the integrated tax rate is
what they call it--in the industrialized world for dividends and the
second highest for capital gains.
What about regulations? We impose far more in the way of regulatory
burdens on our businesses--ranging from environmental regulations to
labor regulations, you name it--than most of the other industrialized
countries do.
What about uncertainty? Well, we have this new law called ObamaCare
that has put a tremendous amount of burden on American businesses. They
are either going to have to continue to provide insurance for their
employees or pay a fine. They have to pay new taxes. There are some
$800 billion in taxes under ObamaCare--some 21 different taxes.
The problem here is not that there are evil businessmen who hate
American workers. They bend over backwards to keep their business here;
it is a lot easier. But the reason sometimes they have to go abroad is
because their government treats them unfairly compared to their
competitors overseas. We tax them too much. We regulate them too much.
And there is too much uncertainty.
So when we are debating this subject about outsourcing, about people
abroad making products that are then sold in the United States, ask
yourself the question: Why would an American company do that? The
answer is, they do it when they have to, when their own government's
policies make it impossible for them to compete effectively here in the
United States.
That leads to the second. Why would the President be proposing to add
more taxes, both on American businesses and American families, at a
time when we are in the middle of a very severe economic downturn, and
when the President himself a year and a half ago said: To raise taxes
under these circumstances would be a blow to the economy? Again, he
said: You don't raise taxes in a recession.
When he said those things, our gross domestic product growth was
about 3 percent. We were growing at a rate of about 3 percent. Today,
it is under 2 percent, and we still have 8.2 percent unemployment. So
the circumstances today are, if anything, worse than they were a year
and a half ago when the President said: We should not raise taxes
because it will be a blow to the economy. You don't raise taxes in a
recession.
So why would the President be proposing it now? And what is he
proposing? He says we should raise taxes on any individual who makes
over $200,000 a year and a family who makes over $250,000. We should
raise capital gains taxes to the rate of 23.8 percent; dividends the
same; the death tax to 45 percent. So your dad created a business,
built it up; he passed away, you and your sister are the heirs, and the
day he dies, Uncle Sam says: That will be 45 percent of the value of
the business, please, minus whatever the exemption is. It is
unconscionable we would do that in this country.
When the President was asked by Charlie Gibson in one of the
Presidential debates, when he was campaigning the first time: Senator
Obama, would you raise taxes on capital gains even if it did not bring
in any more revenue--because economists all agree that frequently
raising the rate actually results in less tax collection because people
do not sell the property that would be subject to the tax under those
circumstances--what did he answer? He said, yes, he would still raise
it, even if it did not bring in more revenue. And the reason is because
he wanted to redistribute the wealth from people who made money to
other people to whom it would be given, presumably.
So this is not about deficit reduction as much as it is about a
theology that we need to raise taxes, and we need to raise it on people
who are the productive, successful people in our society who make
money.
If you take the top quintile of taxpayers--the top 20 percent, high
income earners--they already pay 90 percent of the taxes in the
country. Is it fair that top 20 percent should pay 90 percent of the
taxes? Well, you can argue whether it is fair, but I think for the
President to say that is unfair, they should pay even more, raises the
question: Well, how much more? Should they pay all of it? Should 20
percent of our citizens pay all of the taxes for everybody else? Nobody
else has to pay anything? As it is, the rest of us only pay 10 percent.
So what is fair? Why is it fair to take away from people what they
have earned and what they want to save in order to give it to somebody
else or to have the government spend the money as if the government was
wiser in spending money than the citizens are?
The reality is the people who are successful, who make money, create
capital, which is then invested in businesses, and that investment
promotes job creation and economic growth, raising the gross domestic
product for all of us. That is the economics of success and it is the
opportunistic society this country has held sacred for over two
centuries. Give people an opportunity to succeed, and when they do, do
they put their money--the money they earn--do they put it in a
mattress? Well, not anymore. You either put it in a bank or you invest
it with a mutual fund or in some other kind of investment.
What happens when that money is put in the bank or in the mutual
fund? It creates capital for somebody else to use, to create a job, to
invent a new product, whatever it might be. It helps business expand.
So why would you change your mind, a year and a half after you said
it would be a blow to the economy, to now suggest raising taxes? And
who are these people who make $200,000? Well, it turns out about a
million of these people--940,000, to be exact--are business owners.
These are the small business folks who create the jobs--most of the
jobs coming out of the recession. In fact, they account for 25 percent
of all jobs in America. A quarter of all of the jobs are by these very
folks on whom you are going to raise the taxes.
I know some people said: Well, that is only a small percentage of the
business owners, it is only 3 percent. Yes, and that 3 percent accounts
for 53 percent of the income taxes paid. In other words, these are the
businesses that are creating the jobs. They employ a quarter of all of
the people in country. They are paying 53 percent of the taxes in this
tax bracket. The reality is, when raising taxes on that group, you are
going to make it more difficult for them to grow their businesses, to
add more people.
Here is an example. A woman by the name of Karen Madonia, who is the
CFO of a family business in Aurora, IL--it is called Illco, and it
supplies ventilation and heating and air conditioning and refrigeration
equipment--testified before the House Small Business Committee in May.
Among the things she said was--and I am quoting her now:

We don't have money sitting in the bank to pay more taxes--
all our profit is invested in the business. If we have to pay
more taxes, that means we can't hire workers or buy trucks
and inventory.

That is typical of small businesses. The money is plowed back into
the business. And when the owner passes away, it goes to his heirs--and
then subject to the kind of tax we are talking about here? That would
be devastating to this kind of business.
One of the objections from those who support the President's idea of
raising taxes is that: Well, the Bush tax cuts benefited the wealthy
more than anybody else. Bear in mind that the Bush tax cuts applied to
everybody. That is the tax rate that has been in existence now for a
decade, and everybody's taxes were reduced to some extent.
They say: Well, that contributed to the deficit. How much did it
contribute to the deficit? The Congressional Budget Office,
nonpartisan, recently issued a report, and in that report they
calculated the difference between the projections of a surplus and then
the resulting deficit and what was the reason for that. Do you know
what they found? That the amount of tax relief to this top 20 percent
of taxpayers--the high income earners--accounted for all of 4 percent
of the deficit. And how much did the new spending and the interest cost
on that spending account? Over 12 times as much. So the reality is the
Bush tax cuts, which helped everyone, did not help the wealthy more
than everybody else, did not contribute to the deficit, and, in fact,
those taxpayers are now paying 94 percent of income taxes, up from 81
percent before

[[Page S4993]]

the Bush tax cuts went into effect. So that high income group is paying
more now in taxes than it did before the Bush tax cuts went into
effect.
My point here is, when the President demagogs this issue, suggesting
that somehow it was only the rich who got the benefit of the Bush tax
cuts and we have to take that money away from them, they are paying
more than they did before, and it only accounted for 4 percent of the
deficit. And these are the very people who are creating the jobs in
America today. So why would we want to raise taxes at this point on
anybody, including on this group of people?
My final point: Again, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
has issued a report in which they say that this fiscal cliff--the
combination of across-the-board sequestration and the expiration of the
existing Tax Code on January 1--will result in a new recession; that we
will have growth next year of only one-half of 1 percent if we allow
that to happen. Why would the President be willing to raise taxes on
America and take a chance that we are going to drive ourselves even
deeper into economic trouble than we already are?
I urge my colleagues to work together to forestall these new tax
increases on all Americans and to forestall the sequestration--a
combination of which will drive us back into recession.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico.

Order of Procedure

Mr. BINGAMAN. First, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
following my remarks, the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, be recognized.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I came to speak on the DISCLOSE Act. I
would say parenthetically that I congratulate my colleague from Arizona
for his statement earlier--a spirited defense of those U.S. business
leaders who choose to shift jobs overseas. That is a subject for
another day. I will not engage in that debate today, but I think it
admirable that he feels compelled to make that case here on the Senate
floor today.
I want to speak in support of the DISCLOSE Act. If there is one thing
that Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on, it is that
our campaign finance system is broken. My colleague from Rhode Island
made that point earlier, and I certainly agree with that.
With the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, corporations,
unions, and other groups are able to raise millions of dollars through
secret contributions and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence
Federal elections, as long as they do not directly coordinate with a
candidate.
According to the Federal Election Commission, it is expected that
something over $11 billion will be spent over the course of the 2012
elections. That is about twice the 2008 level of spending. This is a
staggering amount of money, and the source of much of that money will
be completely in the dark. As a result, extraordinarily well-financed
special interest groups dominate the airwaves, and it is nearly
impossible for the average citizen to know who is behind campaign ads.
In fact, it is nearly impossible for experts to know who is behind
particular campaign ads.
This is not good for public discourse, and it is not good for our
democracy. In a healthy democracy, voters need to be able to make
informed decisions about the information that is presented to them. The
lack of transparency that currently exists in our political system
makes that incredibly difficult.
I strongly disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens
United case, but the reality is that short of a constitutional
amendment or a decision by the Court to reverse its opinion--both
occurrences are unlikely anytime in the near future--the ability of
Congress to restrict independent expenditures is very limited.
There is something we can do now that would make a difference. We can
enhance transparency with respect to the high-volume spending that is
influencing our elections. We may not be able to stop the flood of
unlimited spending, but we can shed some light on the process and
enable the public to at least see where the money is coming from.
The enactment of legislation requiring greater transparency about who
is spending on campaigns was specifically called for by the Supreme
Court in the Citizens United decision. The Republican leader in the
Senate has argued against the DISCLOSE Act on the theory that it would
squelch political speech.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my
remarks an opinion piece in Politico this morning entitled, ``Mitch
McConnell dead wrong on DISCLOSE Act.'' It was written by Adam Skaggs,
the senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for
Justice at the New York University School of Law.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. BINGAMAN. In that opinion piece Mr. Skaggs points out that there
is no legal or logical basis to support the Republican leader's
argument. The DISCLOSE Act is an important step in the direction of
requiring transparency. The legislation would require certain
organizations that make more than $10,000 in campaign-related
expenditures to file a disclosure report with the Federal Election
Commission and to report the names of any donors who contributed over
$10,000.
About 93 percent of the money raised by super PACs in 2010 through
2011 came from donors giving over $10,000, and this legislation would
shed some light on where this money is coming from. The disclosure
requirements apply to corporations, to labor unions, to 501(C)(3)
nonprofit organizations, and to 527 election advocacy organizations,
but they would not apply to 503(c)(3) charitable organizations.
The legislation also includes mechanisms to protect legitimate
nonpolitical donations from disclosure and prevents funding sources
from being hidden by laundering funds through third-party groups. It is
clear our campaign laws are outdated. They are in desperate need of
revision. Frankly, I wish there was a consensus in Congress to make
more fundamental reforms to our campaign finance system than we are
considering today. Unfortunately, this is not presently the case, but I
hope that we could build bipartisan support for some basic disclosure
provisions and for this narrowly tailored bill that is pending in the
Senate.
A much more comprehensive version of the DISCLOSE law was
filibustered by Republicans in 2010. The revised version we are
currently debating has been narrowed significantly. The provisions
banning campaign spending by foreign entities and government
contractors were removed. Corporate campaign spending is no longer
required to be reported to shareholders, and lobbyists will not have to
report their campaign spending in their annual disclosure reports under
the bill being considered in the Senate.
The new bill also raises the disclosure trigger from $600 to $10,000
to focus only on large donations and to reduce the burden on
organizations. The newest version dropped the ``stand-by-your ad''
provision that required the listing of donors in TV and radio ads.
I am not unsympathetic to first amendment concerns regarding the
rights of politically active groups that want to be engaged in the
discussions regarding the future of our country, but enabling
corporations and special interest groups to use what are essential
shell organizations for the simple purpose of spending vast sums of
money to influence elections, and to do so in secret, is incredibly
harmful to our democracy.
Requiring the disclosure of large donors is a reasonable mechanism to
maintain the integrity of our electoral system without infringing on
the ability of organizations to actively participate. I urge my
colleagues on both sides of the political aisle to take this
opportunity to support the modest but important reforms that are
included in the DISCLOSE Act.
I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

[From Politico, July 15, 2012]

Mitch McConnell Dead Wrong on DISCLOSE Act

(By Adam Skaggs)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has launched
a full-throated attack

[[Page S4994]]

on the DISCLOSE Act, which Democrats are set to bring to the
Senate floor on Monday. DISCLOSE supporters say it ensures
transparency and accountability in U.S. elections. McConnell,
however, contends it's a vehicle for intimidation that will
squelch political speech and let the Obama administration
compile an ``old-school enemies list'' to punish critics.
Central to McConnell's strongest indictment is that the
bill is a lawless end run to get around the Supreme Court's
Citizens United decision. McConnell seems to suggest the
Democrats' actions are not only wrong--they're un-American.
But McConnell's critique fundamentally mischaracterizes the
relationship between the Supreme Court and other branches of
our government. By intimating that it is illegitimate for the
legislative and executive branches to develop policy in
response to Supreme Court decisions, the Senate leader
displays ignorance of the basic hydraulics in the founders'
system of separated powers.
Indeed, suggesting that enhanced disclosure undermines
Citizens United takes what Justice Antonin Scalia might call
``a particularly high degree of chutzpah.'' The decision
endorsed robust disclosure--by a near-unanimous, 8-1 vote.
``The First Amendment protects political speech,'' Justice
Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority, ``and disclosure
permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of
corporate entities in a proper way.''
McConnell, by arguing that disclosure undermines the First
Amendment, is in fact turning Citizens United on its head.
He also misrepresents the relationship between branches of
government. To be sure, the role of the elected branches is
distinct from that of the judiciary. It is emphatically the
job of the courts to say what the law and Constitution mean,
and the President and Congress may not trump the Supreme
Court's interpretation. But once the high court announces its
interpretation, it is appropriate, sometimes even expected,
that elected officials develop new statutes and policies that
fit the new parameters.
That is exactly what Congress is seeking to do with
DISCLOSE. Citizens United posited the benefits of a
``campaign-finance system that pairs corporate independent
expenditures with effective disclosure,'' explaining that
``disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and
citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and
elected officials accountable for their positions and
supporters.''
But, because of numerous loopholes in current law,
effective disclosure exists today only in theory--not
reality.
The proposed law would remedy that deficiency by requiring
groups that run campaign ads to disclose their major
contributors--while letting donors who earmark contributions
for nonpolitical purposes remain anonymous. The bill
represents a clear constitutional exercise of congressional
power--consistent with the guidelines laid out by the court
in Citizens United.
This back-and-forth dialogue among the branches of
government, driving the creation and development of law and
public policy, is healthy, even essential, for democracy.
This policymaking in response to Supreme Court decisions is
also routine--contrary to McConnell's specious argument.
After the court read the Civil Rights Act to limit certain
gender discrimination claims, for example, Congress responded
by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to extend the
statute of limitations for such claims. In another case, soon
after the court struck down the military commissions the Bush
administration had set up to try Guantanamo detainees,
Congress passed the Military Commissions Act to create new
panels it hoped would pass muster before the high court.
Policymaking in the states follows the same dynamic. After
the Citizens United decision, more than 10 states responded
by amending their laws--many to require disclosure of the new
corporate political spending that the ruling enabled.
There is nothing out of the ordinary--and certainly nothing
untoward--about these or countless other examples of
lawmakers responding to legal precedent. The only remarkable
thing is McConnell's contention that this legislative action
is somehow illicit.
In fact, legislative responses to Supreme Court rulings can
sometimes be necessary. When a court rests its decisions on a
policy assumption that turns out to be wrong, elected
officials have an obligation to address that discrepancy.
Citizens United conditioned corporations' right to unlimited
political speech on transparency--pairing corporate spending
with ``effective disclosure''--so voters could better
understand what groups are trying to influence their votes.
By passing DISCLOSE, Congress can ensure that reality
conforms to the idealized disclosure system that the Supreme
Court assumed existed.
While they're at it, Congress should address one more
Citizens United problem. The ruling allows corporations to
make independent expenditures because, it said, spending
wholly independent of candidate campaigns could not lead to
corruption.
Unfortunately, much of the outside spending now dominating
the 2012 election has come from candidate-specific super
PACs, functioning like de facto arms of the candidate
campaigns. About as far from ``wholly independent'' as can be
imagined.
Congress should adopt meaningful coordination rules to
police the ties between campaigns and super PACs--and ensure
that groups claiming to be ``independent'' really are.
It is not an ``end run'' around a Supreme Court ruling that
embraced transparency and independence for Congress to ensure
transparency and independence. Despite McConnell's `Chicken
Little' rhetoric, it's what democracy is about.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah.

FISCAL POLICY

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today the Senate is taking more time to
debate a bill that will have little consequence for the American
people--all people, that is, but those who work in the White House on
President Obama's reelection campaign.
We are in our 41st straight month with unemployment above 8 percent,
but the Senate is again taking up precious time--time that could be
devoted toward creating jobs--to address legislation that is instead
designed to create votes for the President's flagging reelection
efforts. I would be outraged at this partisan display if it were not so
pathetic, but in the end I think the American people will have enough
outrage to spare.
It is important for the American people to know what the Senate
Democratic leadership considers pressing business. Today the world's
greatest deliberative body, the Senate, takes up one of the most
deliberately political pieces of legislation you will ever see.
Meanwhile, my friends on the other side of the aisle are now saying
that when faced with the choice of addressing the fiscal cliff we are
facing at the end of this year by raising taxes on small businesses,
they will take their stand with tax hikes.
This is remarkable. Rather than stop the country from going over the
fiscal cliff and preventing the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax
relief, they are prepared to ``Thelma and Louise'' the American economy
right off the cliff.
This is an astonishing admission, but it is not surprising. We hear
from the other side about Republican orthodoxy on tax relief, but we
rarely hear them come clean about their own economic orthodoxy.
Occasionally it emerges for all to see.
On Friday in Virginia the President let his real views on economic
matters slip. Here are his views on business owners.

Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system
that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in
roads and bridges. If you've got a business--you didn't build
that. Somebody else made that happen.

Well, the President is right that somebody did make that happen. The
people who made it happen are called taxpayers. The President seems to
think the Department of Transportation just made those roads and
bridges happen, but that is not how it works. Nothing happens in this
country--no roads, no bridges, no firefighters, no military, no public
schools, no nothing--without taxpayers footing the bill.
Much of that financing comes from the very small businesses on which
President Obama was lecturing on Friday and on which he and his allies
are desperate to raise taxes. Their economic philosophy appears to be
that government is the engine of the economy when, in fact, the
government ceases to exist without economic growth and the tax revenues
that fund all of these investments the President wants to spend on.
With this bizarre world view, it is not surprising that President
Obama and Senate Democrats think it is more important to raise taxes on
over 1 million small businesses than it is to prevent a recession and
encourage job growth. If we do not address this fiscal cliff, taxes
will go up by over $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years. The
President's former Director of the Office of Management and Budget has
suggested this might throw us into a recession. The Federal Reserve has
suggested this dire outcome as well. But instead of dealing with it by
extending the existing tax rates, the President and Senate allies are
playing chicken with the economic recovery. They are playing games not
only with the economy, but they are playing games with peoples'
livelihoods. This is a disgrace.
The American people understand that tax increases in the name of
deficit reduction wind up being tax increases to fund larger
government.

[[Page S4995]]

That has been the history of my 36 years here, and the American people
have the last say on this matter. A recent poll found that a majority
of the American people want all the 2001 and 2003 tax policy extended--
all of it. Then we can undertake fundamental tax reform. Why can't we
do that? What is the other side's objection?
There is no real policy objection. The only real objection is that it
diverts the President and his Democratic allies from their real
pressing business, which is apparently getting the President reelected.
Here we are debating another bill that will do nothing to create a job
and nothing to get our economy moving again.
The politically motivated bill du jour is the DISCLOSE Act. I oppose
this legislation on policy grounds, but just as importantly, I oppose
the majority's ongoing effort to convert the U.S. Senate into a vessel
for President Obama's political campaign. The majority knows this
legislation will not pass in the Senate, or at least they should know,
given the fact this Chamber has already rejected this legislation. What
is worse is that it appears that the majority does not even want this
legislation to pass. What they want and what has become too common in
the Senate these days is another dog-and-pony show--another opportunity
to demonize the business community in service of the President's class
warfare campaign theme.
My friends on the other side of the aisle would have you believe the
Supreme Court's Citizen United decision has paved the way for a
corporate takeover of our election system, that corporations are
spending untold millions to influence elections with no accountability.
What they will not tell you is that increased spending by super PACs
in this campaign cycle has nothing to do with Citizens United. While
they are touting the benefits of increased disclosure, they
conveniently leave out the fact that super PACs are already required to
disclose their donors and that the Supreme Court in Citizens United no
less actually upheld those disclosure requirements.
Furthermore, and contrary to the majority's talking points, Citizens
United has not led to a dramatic increase in corporate campaign
spending. Yet the majority argues that the dangers of corporate
campaign spending are ever present and, as a result, we need to know
the names and addresses of individual donors to such campaigns.
So with the dangers to democracy of corporate giving and the negative
impact of Citizens United largely straw men, what is the purpose of our
debating this bill today? Clearly, this effort is more about
discouraging political speech than on transparency. It is just another
effort on the part of the Obama administration and their congressional
allies to intimidate those who disagree with the President's policies.
Not able to defend these policies, it is critical that the President
discourage those who would criticize them.
We saw this last year when the President issued an Executive order
that would, in effect, give the President the authority to deny
government contracts to certain companies based on their donations or
political engagement. Earlier this summer, the IRS requested
confidential donor information from organizations applying for tax
exempt status, information that is protected by Federal law--the
confidentiality of which is protected by Federal law.
This past June I was joined by a number of my colleagues in
expressing our concerns about these questionable IRS practices, and we
are still awaiting a response. Liberal advocacy organizations have
publicly stated that they plan to use campaign disclosures to
intimidate and embarrass those who have donated to opposing campaigns.
As we have seen in several recent news reports, many political
operatives have already done so.
The DISCLOSE Act would make this type of political intimidation
easier and more common. So given the other side's track record when it
comes to ``transparency,'' I hope they excuse me if I am a bit
skeptical when they claim this is about good government and not about
punishing political opponents.
If the majority wanted us to take them seriously in this effort, they
would have at least included provisions that would apply the same type
of standards to the labor unions who have, for decades now, bankrolled
Democratic election campaigns on the local, State, and Federal levels--
and to the tune of billions of dollars, and they are the best political
operatives in the business. It is no accident that the unions are far
more likely than corporations to engage in the type of advocacy and
political spending the majority is deriding in this debate.
Yet while the language of the DISCLOSE Act ostensibly applies to
union spending, the unions' bottom-up business model of funding their
political activities would continue unabashed under this legislation
without a single additional disclosure on the part of most unions.
This can hardly be a coincidence.
Mr. President, in Citizens United, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that
money spent in the political process is protected by the first
amendment. While this may be accompanied by spending and speech that
some find objectionable, such is the natural byproduct of living in a
country that has a first amendment.
While colleagues are free to lament the results, they should not use
this occasion as an opportunity to silence citizens who oppose their
agenda and discourage their critics from speaking out. Because the
DISCLOSE Act seems designed for that very purpose, I urge my colleagues
to vote no on cloture.
As much as I disagree with the decision of the Senate leadership to
play political small ball when there are pressing fiscal issues facing
this country, I appreciate their desire to shift the debate to
politically expedient legislation. The fact is, from a policy
perspective this administration has come up wanting again and again.
Last week the President, when asked to evaluate the failings of his
administration, claimed he had focused too much on policy. This is like
a recent college graduate saying at a job interview that one of his
biggest shortcomings is that he cares too much and sometimes works too
hard.
Give me a break. For all of the trillions in new spending and tax
hikes, there is apparently nothing in the President's policy record
worth defending. In fact, their modus operandi is to avoid any
discussion of any policy at all, pretend the last 4 years did not
happen, pretend the stimulus did not happen, pretend the efforts of cap
and tax and union card check did not happen, pretend ObamaCare did not
happen, and, instead, just smear the opponent.
When the President said his administration needed to focus less on
policy and more on storytelling, I guess this is what he had in mind:
Rather than defend his own policies, he and his campaign surrogates
would develop a storyline that smears their political opponent. That is
all fine and good. As they say, life is about choices, but let's not
sugarcoat this decision. It is an ugly one, and the President will have
to live with it.
Should the President be forced to defend his record, he would have a
lot of explaining to do. Just last week we learned another doozy from
his administration.
In essence, by the stroke of a pen--and against the clear intent of
bipartisan majorities of the American people, Congress, and the law
itself--President Obama's administration has attempted to undo welfare
reform, one of the signature bipartisan policy achievements of the last
20 years.
Nearly 16 years ago, on August 22, 1996, after two vetoes, then-
President Bill Clinton finally signed the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act--otherwise known as welfare reform.
This landmark legislation, the product of the Republican-controlled
Congress, ended the entitlement to welfare and replaced it with a block
grant to the States. This block grant, known as the temporary
assistance for needy families--or TANF--provided States with
unprecedented control over welfare programs in exchange for meeting
Federal work standards.
Since enactment of welfare reform, welfare caseloads have dropped
dramatically. Families receiving welfare have dropped by nearly 60
percent. People got jobs who were unemployed for years, and they gained
self esteem from working.
Welfare reform remains popular and is often cited as the most
significant

[[Page S4996]]

domestic policy accomplishment in decades. The core philosophy behind
welfare reform is the emphasis on work and moving from dependency to
self-sufficiency.
Despite the popularity of welfare reform, programs created under TANF
have languished. As more States were able to get credit toward the
Federal work requirement based on the declining caseloads, TANF
increasingly became less of a welfare-to-work program and more of a
funding stream to prop up other social programs.
In 2005, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported
that several States listed as part of their definition of a ``Federal
work activity'' under TANF some of the following: One, bed rest; two,
personal care activities; three, massage; four, exercise; five,
journaling; six, motivational reading; seven, smoking cessation; eight,
weight loss promotion; nine, participating in parent-teacher meetings;
ten, helping a friend or relative with household tasks and errands.
My gosh.
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which then-Senator Barack Obama
opposed, attempted to refocus State efforts on getting individuals
engaged in work and closing these work activity loopholes. The funding
authority for TANF expired at the end of fiscal year 2010.
The Obama administration has not proposed a comprehensive
reauthorization of TANF, and TANF has continued under a series of stop-
gap extensions. Late last week, the Obama administration quietly
released ``guidance'' to the States, informing them that the
administration had granted itself authority to waive work requirements
in TANF, ``including definitions of work activities and engagement,
specified limitations, verification procedures and the calculation of
participation rates.''
In the 16 years since the creation of the TANF, no administration has
concluded that they have the authority to waive TANF work requirements.
The provision in the Social Security Act, section 1115, which allows
certain waivers, does not cite the section of the law that includes the
TANF work requirements. In an attempt to justify the waiver scheme, the
Obama administration cites a reference in section 1115 to a provision
dealing with a TANF State plan. Because the State plan section refers
to the work requirements, according to the Obama administration, this
allows them to waive TANF work requirements.
Mr. President, if this sketchy logic is allowed to stand, a case
could be made that there is virtually no domestic social program whose
rules and protections cannot be waived. For example, since Medicaid is
referred to in section 1115, and since the foster care programs are
referred to in the Medicaid statute, a case could be made that under
the administration's sketchy logic the protections for children in
foster care could be waived.
This executive overreach is a very serious matter with major long-
range implications. The Obama administration, through this waiver
scheme, is attempting to unilaterally disarm the legislative branch of
the government and accomplish by executive fiat what they never even
attempted to do through the regular legislative process.
This administration has consistently demonstrated a flagrant
disregard for the constitutionally mandated coequal branch known as the
legislative branch. This is but the latest in a series of decisions
that demonstrates the administration's sheer arrogance in attempting to
bypass Congress without legal warrant.
To be clear, disregard of Congress's power to make the laws under
which we live is disregard for the American people. The essence of
Republican governance is that the American people have a say in what
the laws are. That say comes through their elected representatives, not
some unelected bureaucrat putting out guidance that is in flat
contradiction to the wishes of the people's representatives and the
clear text of the law that is supposedly being enforced.
Ours is a government of laws, not of men. With this action, the
administration has shown that it will not let the constitutional
prerogatives of Congress or the actual intent of the law stand in the
way of their policy goals.
We cannot let this stand. I, for one, have no intention of letting it
stand. Let me just say when we did the temporary assistance for needy
families bill, one of the most important provisions in that bill was
the work activity provision. Because people had to go to work after a
certain period of time--during which we gave them help, money,
subsidization, and did all the necessary things to help them go to
work--literally about 60 percent to two-thirds of those who had been on
welfare, some for generations, went to work and gained self esteem by
supporting themselves.
I, for one, have no intention of letting it stand. I will shortly
introduce legislation to halt this risky scheme and attempt to gut
welfare reform. I urge colleagues to stand with me. Nothing less than
the constitutional viability of the Congress is at stake.
I can imagine if Senator Byrd, who was the majority leader for many
years and became the principal rules person on the Senate floor for
most of my service--if he were here today he would be having a fit over
this type of arrogance by this administration or any other
administration, Republican or Democrat. He would be standing for the
rights of the Senate.
I caution my colleagues on the other side that it is time for them to
stand for the rights of the Senate and the House--this legislative body
called the Congress. We have to quit this and quit relying on an out-
of-control administration to do Executive orders that modify what is
really legislation passed by this branch of government, which is
supposedly coequal.
I hope we will all fight. Our country will be better off if we do.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts is
recognized.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate is considering the
motion to proceed to S. 3369, the DISCLOSE Act.
Mr. KERRY. Senators are permitted to speak on the previously agreed-
upon time?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is no time.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few
words about the DISCLOSE Act, which we are debating on the floor of the
Senate.
I have been involved in this issue of campaign finance reform since I
first entered politics, when I first became involved in the political
discourse of our country in the late 1960s and early 1970s--a long time
ago now.
With 27 years as a Member of the Senate, I have seen this debate over
money in American politics. I have seen it endure its highs and also
its lows.
Looking back in history, I can remember back in 1990 when we summoned
59 votes in the Senate--mostly Democrats, which will tell you a lot
about this issue, and 4 Republicans, including Senators Cohen of Maine;
Jeffords of Vermont; McCain of Arizona, who is still here and fighting
on this issue; and Senator Pressler from South Dakota. We passed a
restraint on spending in American politics, a balanced bill which would
have, in fact, required disclosure and limitations on spending, with a
certain ability of people to be able to be held harmless if people were
millionaires and spent extraordinary amounts of money. It made the
playing field in America fair, and it gave the best opportunity for the
American citizen--about whom this entire exercise is supposed to be
focused--an opportunity to know they were not going to be bombarded
with unbelievable amounts of money that distort the American political
debate. We thought we had a chance, but unfortunately that bill was
vetoed by the President.
It is not a coincidence that only four Republicans supported that
bill. It is not a coincidence today, as we come to the floor of the
Senate, that maybe no Republican or very few--very few, I think is a
fair way to say it--will be willing to vote to disclose where our money
comes from.
We are not even here seeking a limitation on the amount of spending.
We ought to be, but we are not. We are here simply trying to get the
American people the right to know who is giving the money, who is
paying these millions of dollars in order to affect the

[[Page S4997]]

debate in America and, in most cases, I will tell everyone, frankly, to
distort the debate. I believe the amount of money in American politics
today is stealing America's democracy. It is robbing Americans of the
right to have the kind of representation and the kind of discussion
Americans deserve.
When I was first here back in 1985, we were working with people such
as Bill Bradley from New Jersey and David Boren from Oklahoma and Joe
Biden, now the Vice President, obviously, and George Mitchell, the
former majority leader and Senator from Maine, all of whom were
dedicated to trying to take the big money out of politics and replace
it with a public match for Senate and House races. Fundamentally, the
status quo won. The status quo stopped us, and the status quo is
winning today.
In response to the soft money scandals--maybe people have forgotten
we had our scandals in the 1990s--we finally passed the McCain-Feingold
bill, modest as it was. All it did was put a ban on soft money, the
soft money, which is the big amounts of money that get poured into the
political system. That ban had the unintended consequence of pushing
everybody to look for the biggest loophole they could find, and they
found a loophole. The 527 groups, as we have come to know them, came
out and the debate was again taken away from the candidates and given
to outside groups that had huge amounts of money.
A lot of Americans are not aware of that. A candidate could be
running and have one thing he or she wants to actually say, but outside
groups can come in with enormous amounts of money and completely flood
the ability of a candidate to control the message of that particular
campaign and certainly have a profound impact on it. Never did we
imagine then, however, that with one decision, the Supreme Court would
tilt the voice of our democracy and our discourse so heavily in favor
of large unaccountable interests at the expense of the average
American. That, my friends, is what happened when the Supreme Court
made the Citizens United decision, which is certainly the worst
decision in 100 years, if not more.
What we are talking about today is a system that is simply broken. It
is as fundamentally broken as the campaign system in our country has
ever been. I worry personally, deeply, about what it has done to our
ability to govern in the public interest and what it does today to
threaten the ability of this institution to function.
In explaining why she is leaving the Senate, our Republican colleague
Senator Snowe wrote: This body is not living up to what the Founding
Fathers envisioned. She spoke of our Founding Fathers' vision for the
Senate, where we could reach consensus in an orderly manner. There is
nothing orderly and there is no consensus. Does anyone believe we can
make that kind of Senate occur today, given the kind of campaign
finance system we have, where all our time--or a huge amount of our
time is a fairer way to say it--is spent raising money? I have heard
the majority leader and the minority leader complain they can't have
Senators here Mondays, Fridays, and other periods of time because
everybody is governed by the campaign schedule. We now have secret
donors who blow candidates out of the water with on-air distortions
that are simply mind-boggling. I lived through many of those
distortions in 2004, when I ran for President, so I know what I am
talking about when I talk about the power of the lie with a lot of
money put behind it. I don't think anybody here believes the amount of
money in the system today doesn't have the ability to drown out the
voices of people who get into public service in order to get things
done but who don't have that kind of money and don't have access to
that kind of money.
Frankly, the fundamental reason why there is such a disparity between
the numbers of Democrats who want to have a fair playing field and the
number of Republicans who vote against campaign finance reform is,
obviously, they have a lot more money. Corporations have a lot more
money, big billionaires who don't want to be taxed in a fair way in
America have a lot more money to throw at the system. So we have one
guy out in Las Vegas who can put millions of dollars behind a candidate
for President and keep a candidacy alive when normally it would have
died long ago. The only life it had was the money. That is what happens
today.
That is not what the Founding Fathers intended for this institution.
Ours is a system where billions of dollars can be spent by any
millionaire or billionaire or the largest corporations in the world to
distort our democracy, diminish the voices of candidates, pollute our
airwaves with spending whatever and wherever, and the average American
doesn't even get to know where the money is coming from. They have the
ability in the United States of America to do it secretly--secretly. It
is secret money. The sources are unspecified and the American people
don't know who is behind it.
I think it is an insult to the freedom every Senator extols the
virtues of all the time in this Senate. It is an insult to the notion
regarding our liberty and our equality and our fairness. It violates
the rules of honorable discourse and debate, and it is a threat to
every single public servant running for office in this Nation because
it means their ideas can be drowned by the dollars.
I got an e-mail the other day from somebody in another country who e-
mailed me and said: You guys are beginning to look like the oligarchies
of the world, where the amounts of money buy anything they want.
The increased influence of special interest money, big money in our
politics is robbing the average citizen of their ability to be able to
set the agenda. The agenda is set by the money because the money is
what runs the campaigns. As a result of the Supreme Court ruling in
Citizens United, all any CEO or billionaire has to do is turn over
billions of dollars to somebody who goes out and runs a media campaign.
Senator McCain, as we all know, feels passionately about this issue.
He recently said: ``I think there will be scandals associated with the
worst decision of the United States Supreme Court in the 21st
century.''
I agree with Senator McCain. There already are scandals, but not
everybody sees them. But I will tell you this, a lot of Senators know
exactly what they are.
This imbalance we have will result in escalating media wars, where
candidates are reduced to mere proxies in the process. Somewhere, at
some time, those winning candidates are going to be asked to pay up on
some special interest need or to tow the line on an agenda that is set
by a kind of new terror that enters into our politics.
All one has to do is think about the trajectory we are on today. Will
Rogers once said that ``politics has gotten so expensive that it takes
a lot of money to even get beat with.'' That has never been more true.
Will Rogers would be stunned by the amount of money in politics today.
In 2008, a record total of $5.2 billion was spent in Presidential,
Senate, and House races. That broke the 2004 record the year I ran of
$4.1 billion, and that broke the 2000 record of $3.1 billion. In other
words, every single year more and more money. But now, in 2010, in the
first campaign after Citizens United, there was a fourfold increase in
the expenditures from super PACs and other outside groups compared to
2006--fourfold increase--in a 2-year period of time. Anonymous
spending--anonymous spending--rose from 1 percent of the outside
spending to 44 percent in a 2-year period of time.
That is what we get when the Supreme Court of the United States rules
in a 5-to-4 decision--one vote--that corporations and big interests
have the same rights to speech as individuals. I mean it is stupefying
to think about it. I remember from law school that a corporation was a
fictitious entity--a fictitious entity--created to provide a veil of
protection for the people who form it in order to permit commerce in
America. Nobody ever created a corporation with the notion it would
have the same rights as a person. Corporations don't get married. They
don't have kids. They don't cry. Sometimes, I suppose, when Wall Street
falls apart, a few people may. But the notion that somehow corporations
can have the same rights of people is an insult to the drafters of the
Constitution of our country and the corollary that somehow they,
therefore, get to spend the same amount of money in an election cycle
as an individual.

[[Page S4998]]

As a result, we are now seeing a spending blitz by shadowy groups
that is projected to reach billions of dollars--money that is
impossible to trace to its source, money that is kept in shadows, away
from the average American's ability even to ask who is paying the bills
for those ads, who is behind those ads, whose interests do those ads
represent? The sums of money we are talking about will mean little to
the corporations compared to what they may get in return, and that is
what this is all about: blocking legislation, blocking a regulation,
preventing a change in the tax law that takes away a preference that
has no relationship to today's economy.
There are hundreds of examples, and I have seen them through the
years, where money drives the agenda of the Congress and of our
politics, way in excess of what it ought to be when we measure it
against the real concerns of the average family trying to make ends
meet or find a job in America.
Today, we will vote on a bill--a vote that ought to go unopposed by
any Member of this institution who swore to uphold the Constitution of
the United States--and this vote could go a long way toward making the
fight between the public interest and corporate interest, if not fair,
at least transparent. The American people are smart and, given that
opportunity, will begin to make some judgments about exactly what is at
stake.
The DISCLOSE Act is not an act to amend the Constitution. It doesn't
even overturn the decision of the Supreme Court that equated the right
of corporations to people, nor does it constitute campaign finance
reform. It is none of those things. Those would be structural
solutions. I, frankly, am for them. I think we ought to do them. I
think we need a constitutional amendment at this point in order to
rectify what the Supreme Court has had difficulty discerning. But all
the DISCLOSE Act would do is shed light on who is giving money--
transparency.
This bill ought to receive unanimous support. It is an effort to
shine the disinfectant of sunlight on corporations and faceless
organizations trying to buy and bully their way into influence in
Washington through campaigns that are run against the Members who
disagree with them. All we need to do is look at the amount of money
that has been spent against some of our colleagues who are running this
year--millions of dollars dumped in anonymously in these States to try
to affect those races.
In short, the DISCLOSE Act requires corporations, organizations, and
special interest groups to disclose their political advertising just
like a candidate for office does. That is all it requires. What could
be more normal in America, what could be more American than allowing
the American people to know who is trying to speak to them? I don't
think it is radical, and I don't think it is prohibitive. It simply
removes the fallacy that Americans are voluntarily somehow organizing
to pursue some public interest. That is a farce. That is not what is
happening in these instances. The truth is that Americans aren't
organizing or mobilizing to bring you the vast percentage of the
advertisements that are seen on TV. The truth is that corporate special
interest money is being compiled and targeted to pursue a special
interest and send a loud televised message to those who disagree with
them that they are going to be punished and tempered. And not only is
it going to tip elections, it is going to cripple the legislative
process.
When the Citizens United decision was handed down, the voices that
were seeking corporate largess said at that time that it is not going
to have any impact. They said we need not worry about funneling new
funds to candidates. But the truth is that Karl Rove has admitted that
based on the Citizens United decision, he formed two new groups to
influence the 2010 elections with $52 million worth of ads bankrolled
anonymously by special interests. And now that the Supreme Court has
opened that door to these anonymous ads, similar groups are already
planning to spend approximately $300 million on the election this fall.
So whether or not you agree with the message those ads and
organizations are sending, at a minimum you ought to support the idea
that these messages should be sent openly and that those who send them
ought to be held accountable. As I have said before, this ought to be
something every U.S. Senator supports.
As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I have the privilege
of trying to press our interests in many different parts of the world,
and I meet with people in various parts of the world who look back at
us and ask a lot of questions of us about our democracy. Increasingly,
people are asking whether the United States of America can deliver.
Increasingly, people are looking at us incredulously and questioning
our political system because we go to the brink over a default on the
debt ceiling or because we can't get a budget passed because we don't
do the fundamental business. And one of the most profound reasons we
don't do that--and I have seen it change here--is that the power of the
money, the power to influence the election has a profound impact on
what colleagues are prepared to take up, what they are prepared to vote
on, and how they are prepared to vote.
It is a dollarocracy that is beginning to call the shots, and the
American people know it. That is why they are so disappointed in what
is happening--or not happening--in Washington, DC. That is why the
ratings for the U.S. Congress are so low--because it doesn't produce,
it can't produce, it won't produce. And the money almost guarantees
that.
This is not a new fight in our country. Teddy Roosevelt, a
Republican, fought this fight in the early 1900s, and he took on the
great malefactors of wealth, he took on the concentration of power, and
he was the great trust buster. It was an extraordinary period of time
in America confronting power.
Back in 1910, in Osawatomie, KS, Teddy Roosevelt said:

The Constitution guarantees protections to property, and we
must make that promise good. But it does not give the right
of suffrage to any corporation.

He urged his listeners again and again to demand an especially
national restraint upon unfair money-getting, as he called it, and the
absence of that restraint, he noted, has tended to create a small class
of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object
is to hold and increase their power.
What Teddy Roosevelt said in 1910 is perhaps even more true today.
The reason is that during the 1990s and subsequently, we have created
greater wealth in America than during the period when we did not have
an income tax. People today are wealthier, comparatively, than the
Pierponts, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Mellons,
and all of those famous names of the 1900s who helped build this
country. Today, the wealth far exceeds that wealth, and the disparity
between the average American and the wealthy has grown wider and wider
than at any other time in American history. While the average American
family sees their income getting squeezed and going down, the upper 1
percent has seen 10, 20, 30 times increases in their income. And that
is what is playing out in the American political system today in this
Citizens United decision.
All we ask today--although we ought to be asking for more. We know we
can't get it now, but at least we ought to be able to get the ability
of the American people to know who is putting the money into the
system, who is trying to affect these votes, who is trying to set the
agenda, whose interests are really at stake. That is what is at stake
in this vote today, and I hope all our colleagues will vote for the
right to disclose those funds to the American people, who have an
inalienable right to know exactly from where they are coming.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The Senator from Texas.

Tax Policy

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier today our colleague from
Washington State indicated that President Obama and the Democratic
leadership in Congress are willing to accept the largest tax increase
in American history and a series of crippling defense cuts unless
Republicans will agree to raise taxes significantly falling on the very
people we are counting on to get our economy going again and to create
jobs. I wish to say just a few words in response.
First of all, Senators on both sides of the aisle understand that a
massive tax

[[Page S4999]]

increase could well push our economy back into a recession. Senators on
both sides of the aisle understand that it would suffocate our
investments that are so important to business creation and job growth.
Senators on both sides of the aisle understand that middle-class
families are already struggling with high unemployment and wage
stagnation. And Senators on both sides of the aisle understand that we
are living through the weakest economic recovery since the Great
Depression. Yet President Obama and his party seem obsessed with
raising taxes on the very people who are responsible for most of that
new job creation.
Led by the President, these same people are demonizing business
owners and demanding that they be punished, while simultaneously
demanding that these same people create jobs. It is no wonder that so
many Americans are concerned about the future of the U.S. economy. In
the meantime, Democratic leaders such as our colleague from Washington
State are apparently ready to stand by and allow truly Draconian
across-the-board defense cuts even though the President's own Secretary
of Defense has said these cuts would hollow out our military and be
catastrophic to our national security. It simply amazes and discourages
me that some people are willing to play chicken with our economy and
our national security in such a cavalier, calculated sort of way.
Given that our country has endured 41 straight months of unemployment
above 8 percent and given how devastating these defense cuts would be
to our military, I would like to ask our President and my Democratic
colleagues a few simple questions. Are you really willing to allow the
largest tax increase in American history? Are you really willing to
risk the U.S. economy heading backwards into a recession by the
combination of these huge tax increases and the $1.2 trillion budget
sequestration scheduled for January 2? Are you really willing to tell
middle-class families that their needs are less important than the
political needs of your party? When it comes to the defense cuts that
are part of the sequestration scheduled to go into effect in January of
2013, are you really willing to do what Secretary Panetta said would
happen, which is hollowing out the U.S. military? Are you really
willing to let Washington gamesmanship compromise our Nation's
security? Are you really willing to tell the heroes of Iraq and
Afghanistan and our veterans that their needs are less important than
the political needs of your party? In short, are you really willing to
put election-year politics ahead of the Nation's interests?
I can only hope that this is a temporary aberration and that the
answer is really no and that cooler heads will ultimately prevail when
the price of inaction becomes even more apparent, but I can't say I am
at all confident.
When I hear President Obama tell the American people that the private
sector is doing just fine or tell business owners that the government
is responsible for their success, I realize the President simply
doesn't understand the challenges facing America's entrepreneurs and
job creators or the risks they take every day to create jobs. In short,
I wonder whether the President really understands and appreciates the
free enterprise system. It is clear he doesn't understand the damaging
economic effects of misguided government policies, such as ObamaCare. A
small businessman named Grady Payne recently told Congress that his 31-
year-old lumber company, Conner Industries, based in Fort Worth, TX,
could be ``legislated out of existence'' if the President's health care
law is allowed to stand.
Whenever I head home to Texas and speak to business owners such as
Mr. Payne, I hear the same complaints. People are worried that the
primary engine of American job creation is being held back by
regulatory overreach, a woefully inefficient and unfair Tax Code, and
widespread uncertainty about the future of government policies. These
are not Republican concerns or Democratic concerns, these are concerns
that affect every man, woman, and child in this country but especially
those who own a business, those who want to start a business, and those
who are looking for a job. We all know these problems are going to have
to be addressed sooner or later. My preference is that we address them
sooner and not later if America is going to remain competitive in the
global economy and reduce the painfully high unemployment rate. After
all, these were the problems we were sent here to solve.
I hear time and time again: Well, an election is coming up. This is
an election year. We can't do it in an election year.
But we have had an election every 2 years since 1788. It would be a
gross dereliction of our duty if Congress and the President were to
give up on making important decisions in the last 6 months before the
next election. Just imagine what the American people must think. I take
that back; I know what they think because they are constantly telling
me how frustrated they are with Congress and Washington, how
dysfunctional it is, how they do not believe their political leaders
are listening to them or hearing them when they say they need help to
allow this great engine of job creation off the mat and to allow it to
get back to work and to allow them to get back to work as well. But it
is not going to happen when the President and his party are willing to
play chicken with a recession.
My constituents, similar to all our constituents, all 320 million or
so Americans, have to make important decisions about their families
every day, every week, and every month of the year. Why would it be
that Congress and the President could have an extended vacation from
making those same kinds of hard choices? It does not make any sense.
Beyond that, it is an abdication of our responsibility.
Nobody has said leadership is easy. But right now, on issues of
extraordinary importance to our economy and our national security,
leadership is what the American people need and leadership is what they
deserve, but so far that leadership is AWOL. But hope remains that
cooler heads will prevail and that Congress and the President, working
together, will do our job to help put America back to work, to remove
the uncertainties in the political process.
When my colleague from Washington makes rash statements, threatening
our country with a recession unless this side of the aisle agrees to
tax increases that would fall disproportionately on the job creators in
this country, that is not the kind of cool deliberation or common sense
coming together we need when it comes to solving our Nation's biggest
economic problems.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. President Senator from Maryland.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the DISCLOSE Act. I
rise in very strong support of this bill. I thank the Senator from
Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, for his leadership on this bill. He
brings such great background, with his legal training, as attorney
general and U.S. attorney, well versed on issues of the Constitution
and also his very strong commitment that elections should be free and
fair and not rigged by big special interests.
Today, we have a vote to protect the voice of ordinary Americans who
now more than ever need to be able to trust their political system. But
you know what. We have a big problem and it is something called a super
PAC. Nobody knows what that means, but I am going to spell it out in
plain English.
First of all, a super PAC means we can have unlimited secret money
being pumped into our elections. That is not the American way. That is
why we are calling our bill the DISCLOSE Act. It is balanced, it is
common sense, and it protects the rights of the individual, looking out
for the little guy or gal, and also protects the integrity of our
political system.
I am a reformer, and I absolutely believe in the Constitution of the
United States and that wonderful first amendment. In our country, we
can speak our mind and we can organize. I stand before you today
because of the first amendment. I fought a highway that would have
ripped through Baltimore. I challenged political machines and political
bosses. I challenged powerful special interests that were going to make
money. But because of the Constitution I had the right to speak my
mind, the right to organize--and I did.
In other countries, they take people like me and throw them in jail.
With me, because of the first amendment, I

[[Page S5000]]

could run in an election, do a sweat-equity campaign door to door, and
come to the city council, the Congress, and the Senate. I love that
first amendment.
Right now, under the guise of free speech, there are those who say we
cannot in any way impede big-buck donors or big special interests from
giving what they want and not even saying who they are. I think when
Tom Jefferson and John Adams and Charles Carroll sat around
Philadelphia writing the Constitution, they did not think the first
amendment was about protecting the right of secret donors to rig
elections. I do not believe that unfettered influence of super donors
and big business with no limits or requirements for disclosure was what
the Founders wanted when they wrote that Bill of Rights.
When the Supreme Court decided a case called Citizens United, it
opened the floodgates to unlimited secret money. We knew there would be
risk and it took no time for it to take root. In the 2010 midterm
elections, we saw a fourfold increase in this type of so-called super
PAC spending. Three-quarters of that spending came from groups that
were previously prohibited. The worst of it, it is all being kept from
the American people--who are these organizations and what do they stand
for.
At a time when the American public needs a government on their side,
they need to know who is working behind the scenes to get people
elected. The DISCLOSE Act is simple. It requires a covered organization
to file disclosure with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours
after they spend $10,000 or more on a campaign. What is a covered
organization? Corporations, labor unions, PACs, and super PACs. This is
not a new concept in Congress. We have regulations. If you are a
candidate like candidate Mikulski, you face limits on donors. During a
campaign, I have to say who is giving me money, I have to disclose who
is giving me money, and the donor has limits. Whether it comes from a
political action committee such as the National Association of Social
Workers, which has always supported me, whether it is the American
Nurses Association, which has always supported me, they disclose it. So
we know it is the nurses; we know it is the social workers.
Also, there are donors whose names appear. Why can that not be true
for all campaigns? What is wrong about saying who you are when you are
giving more than $10,000 a year? The American public has a right to
know. They have a right to be heard, and they need to be represented.
I am a Shirley Chisholm Democrat. She said she wanted a government
that was unbought and unbossed. Put me in that Shirley Chisholm
Democratic column. Our Democratic process is currently clouded by a
cloak of secrecy. The integrity of our political system is important to
me. We are not sent to do the business of secrecy or high-dollar
bidding on our seat. We are sent to do the work of the people and make
their lives better. We owe it to the public to shed light on who gives
us money--who they are, how much they give, and what is it that they
do. Let's vote in favor of democracy. Let's support the DISCLOSE Act
and let's have a Congress that is unbought and unbossed.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, at this moment in time, corruption of
America is taking place, but it is not in front of our eyes. The
American people have a right to know who is responsible. It is being
corrupted by secret money from secret donors. Every day they spend more
and more money to buy our elections, but we do not even know exactly
who they are. We are talking about a small number of people who are
among the richest in America, and they are determined to manipulate the
election in order to elect those to high office, including a President,
who will pursue their special interests.
When we turn on the TV, we see their handiwork right in front of our
eyes. Attack ads that are filled with deceptions about what is
happening are undermining our democracy one distortion at a time.
Who is responsible for the fabrications in these ads? We can't know.
Unlike the election rules of the past, the names of those funding these
operations are hidden from the American people. We see organizations
with innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads
GPS fill the airwaves with wild claims. These front organizations
provide the curtain that hides billionaires and corporations from
sight. We need to pull back the curtain on the sources of secret money.
Why shouldn't American citizens know who wants to override our people
power with their purchasing power?
Democrats have offered a way to shine the sunlight on who is trying
to buy our country. The DISCLOSE Act would reveal the identities of
those who pour millions of dollars into efforts to deceive the American
people. These groups claim their mission is social welfare, but their
sinister intention is to protect their own corporate welfare.
It is clear the Republicans are doing everything in their power to
prevent the American people from knowing who is behind this disgraceful
mission of deception and dishonesty. So today on the Senate floor I am
going to disclose the identities of a couple of people who are among
the biggest sources of secret money. I am going to disclose where their
money comes from. Here on this placard we see the Koch brothers, David
and Charles Koch. They are the powerhouses in this movement to take
away the ability of the American people to decide how they vote and who
gets into office.
These brothers are worth billions of dollars, and they are unabashed
in their zeal to use their fortunes to further their political agenda.
It has been reported that these two brothers are putting together a
secret group of donors, and they are going to put $400 million in the
pot to subvert the upcoming election--$400 million. The Koch brothers
and their secret group will use those millions of dollars to flood the
airwaves, but when we see the ads, we will not see the names of the
Koch brothers or members of their secret group of millionaires. We will
see a name, a nice name: Americans For Prosperity. Yes, the Koch
brothers' prosperity.
When we look at what it stands for, truly, it stands for siphoning
off the votes of the American people, trading them in for cash and
picking up their agenda. Registered as a social welfare organization--
it is an insult. That is why they are allowed to keep their donors
secret. They have told the IRS they are not a political committee.
Who, aside from the Koch brothers, are the donors to Americans for
Prosperity? We cannot tell you. They are kept secret. They are allowed
to hide behind the curtain.
If these wealthy individuals want to pick our next President, they
should have the muscle and the courage to stand and say so; tell
everybody what it is they want to accomplish, what they want to do to
our democracy. They don't have the courage. They would rather stand
behind the curtain and control our election $1 million at a time.
Where do these brothers get all this money? It is interesting. These
brothers run a giant international conglomerate, one of the largest
privately held companies in the world. This secretive corporation has a
huge impact on our lives. Koch Industries controls oil, gas, and
chemical companies that do business across the globe.
Now, while we may not notice, their products are everywhere. In fact,
their products are in many American homes today. For instance, all of
these everyday products are sold by Koch Industries. These Dixie cups
are cups that kids drink out of, and they are sold by the Koch
brothers. Paper plates that often serve birthday cakes are sold by the
Koch brothers. Brawny paper towels that we use to clean the floor when
our kids spill things are also sold by the Koch brothers.
You probably haven't heard of INVISTA--it is another company owned by
the Koch brothers' global conglomerate--but they do make things you
have heard of, such as STAINMASTER carpet and LYCRA fabric for clothes.
We think these goods come in handy, we all buy them, but they are also
a source of revenue for the Koch brothers, who fund attack ads that
pollute our airwaves.
The bottom line is that allows the billionaires who sit on top of
global business empires to subvert our democracy. They want to change
it. They want to change the character of our

[[Page S5001]]

country. They want a few to be able to name the governance of the
millions.
Although Brawny paper towels may be able to clean up some spills,
they will not be able to clean up what is going on with our electoral
process.
The bottom line is this: When the wealthy decide they are going to
control our elections, the American people have every right to know it.
When these wealthy people decide they want to become kingmakers as
well, the public should know what they are up to. Kings went out of
America centuries ago, and they are trying to bring it back in some
form.
Common sense says our democracy and our country's core are at stake,
and we don't want it to happen. I hope the American people see what is
going on here and understand that they are not being told what is going
on in our society. That is not what America is about.
America's openness has been the bulwark for our society since its
founding. Secret societies have largely disappeared from our country,
but when they do inevitably appear, it has been to bring instability.
Transparency has enabled our Nation to flourish with openness. Our
country has become richer as a result of that openness and
transparency.
Now, at a critical moment in the history of America, it is shocking
to see this abject use of secrecy and power. We should not let them
take it. We should not let the few with all kinds of wealth--
billionaires, if you will, made on the backs of the American people--
take our democracy from the millions. If it weren't for people who
manned the jobs, such as cops, doctors, teachers, and the other people
in our society, I don't care how smart these people were, they could
not have amassed these fortunes. And I don't begrudge them the ability
to spend it where they want, but when it comes to the election, we have
to tell the truth. We have to have it happen that way. The American
people have to know who is going to put the President in the White
House in the next administration. We don't want it to change because
someone else is hiding behind the curtain and manipulating hundreds of
millions of Americans who are going to have to abide by them when these
elections are over.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Lautenberg.
I was listening to Senator Mikulski and Senator Bingaman on their
comments to try to bring some common sense to our election laws by
basically disclosing who contributes to the political process. That is
something Republicans and Democrats have been together on for a long
time. I don't know what happened. This seems to be an issue that
doesn't get bipartisan support.
I particularly wish to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership on
this issue. He has been talking about this matter of DISCLOSE, along
with Senator Schumer, since the Supreme Court decision in 2010 with the
Citizens United decision.
I must say that I think the Citizens United decision will go down as
one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court of the
United States. I say that for many reasons. First and foremost, those
who are students of our judicial system and our constitutional
separation of powers will understand that the case that went up to the
Supreme Court was a pretty narrow case based upon a 30-minute
documentary. In that decision of Citizens United, the Court ruled in a
very broad way that a corporation has all the rights of an individual
in our political system. It is the first time that has happened. It
reversed the legislation that had been passed by Congress.
The Framers of our Constitution envisioned that it was the
legislative branch of government that would make our laws and policies.
The legislature, after a great deal of debate and after many different
attempts, passed laws that restricted how much money corporations could
put in our political system and how they had to do it in a very open
and transparent manner. Then we had a reform bill known as the McCain-
Feingold bill that spelled out certain restrictions. All of these cases
and laws have been upheld over a long period of time by court
decisions.
In Citizens United, the Court not only substituted itself for the
legislature but reversed its own precedent in ruling that corporations
could literally put an unlimited amount of money into our political
system. As I said, I think it was one of the worst decisions in the
history of the Supreme Court. It has now unleashed unlimited money in
our political system. What corporations and undisclosed sources can now
put into our elections will dwarf what individual contributors will
make available in the political season.
The Center for Responsive Politics has now said that super PACs and
their related organizations have already spent over twice what similar
groups spent 4 years ago. We not only have this unleashing of
undisclosed corporate funds, we are now seeing the super PACs taking
over as the major source of funding of campaigns.
As Senator Mikulski just said on the Senate floor, if we run for
office and solicit contributions, every one of those contributors is
listed on our reports. We make quarterly reports so that the people of
the Nation know who is financing our campaigns. They will not know who
is financing these ads that are going to appear on television from
these Citizens United-type political activities where we don't know
where the money is coming from. It could come from a single source who
wishes to influence our political system but does not want to be
identified in the cause. I really think this compromises our democratic
system. I think an individual could literally distort our political
system through the use of money, and that is something I hope all of us
would be concerned about.
I am now a believer. I think the only thing we can do to overturn the
Citizens United case is to support Senator Tom Udall's constitutional
amendment. That amendment gives the Congress the power we thought we
had to legislate.
I think the people of Maryland, West Virginia, and our Nation would
be surprised to learn that we cannot legislate the limits of what
people can contribute in campaigns. They think that is our
responsibility, not the Court's. Well, Senator Tom Udall's amendment
would give us the power to do that and overturn the Citizens United
case. I hope we could come together to let us have the power we should
have. It seems to me that is something both Democrats and Republicans
in this body should agree on, that those decisions should be made in
the Congress of the United States and not in the Supreme Court or the
courts of our land.
The bill we have before us--and I urge my colleagues to let us move
forward to the DISCLOSE Act--brings transparency into the campaign
finance system. Many of us frequently talk about transparency.
Transparency is the most important part of integrity in our system. We
talk about a lot of other countries adding transparency to the way they
do business. Well, we should have transparency in one of the most
fundamental parts of our system, and that is how we conduct our
elections. It is key to our democracy.
It is Justice Brandeis who said that ``sunlight is said to be the
best of disinfectants.'' I don't understand why we would resist the
public knowing who is contributing money to influence our political
system.
The DISCLOSE Act has the bipartisan support of the League of Women
Voters, Democracy 21, and People for the American Way.
Let me quote from a letter recently sent to Congress by the
nonprofit, nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. It says:

Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent to influence
the outcome of the elections over the next four months.
Neither the candidates being attacked with these millions of
dollars nor the public will have complete, accurate,
meaningful information about the sources of such money. Only
the contributors and the beneficiaries will be in the know.
Passage of S. 3369 will mean that in future election cycles
those funding these shadow campaigns will be disclosed to the
public so that voters can make informed decisions at the
polls.

The letter goes on to say:

As we get closer to the 2012 elections, the amount of
federal campaign-related spending using funds from
undisclosed sources continues to rise. Especially troubling
is the lack of transparency regarding the expenditures of so-
called ``Section 501(c) groups'' this election cycle, such as
Priorities USA and Crossroads GPS.

I have heard some of my colleagues say: Well, can we constitutionally
do

[[Page S5002]]

this? Is this allowed for us? After all, Citizens United sort of says
anything goes. Well, let me quote from the Citizens United decision--
and this is very interesting--where the Court wrote:

[P]rompt disclosure of expenditures can provide
shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold
corporations and elected officials accountable for their
positions and supporters. 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.
The First Amendment protects political speech; and
disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the
speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This
transparency enables the electorate to make informed
decisions and gives proper weight to the different speakers
and messages.

That is the Supreme Court speaking in Citizens United.
We clearly have the authority to move at least this modest step
forward to allow the American people to see who is making these
contributions so they can make an informed judgment on election day. We
owe it to the citizens of this country to take up and pass the DISCLOSE
Act.
Once again, I wish to thank my colleague, who is now on the Senate
floor, Senator Whitehouse, for his leadership on this issue. As I said
earlier, from day one when the Supreme Court issued its decision, it
was Senator Whitehouse who immediately observed that we have to do
something to make sure that those who use this process to influence our
system--that information is disclosed so the public has the information
they need in order to properly judge our elections.
Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota. Mr. President, I rise today as a proud
cosponsor of the DISCLOSE Act.
The Citizens United case opened the floodgates to unprecedented
spending from super PACs and outside interests. I am concerned this
ruling has effectively given those with the deepest pockets the loudest
voice. This is a situation that works to the detriment of our democracy
because the flood of secret money is drowning out the voices of working
families.
In the elections following the Citizens United case, corporate and
special-interest money has poured into our political system. In the
2010 midterm election, there was a fourfold increase in spending from
these entities in comparison to 2006. During that same timeframe,
anonymous spending by organizations rose from 1 percent in 2006 to 44
percent in 2010.
In response to the surge in secret election spending by special
interests, the DISCLOSE Act seeks to restore accountability and
transparency in our country's elections. The bill represents an
important first step in addressing the many problems created by the
Citizens United ruling.
Even the Supreme Court reckoned that greater transparency would
likely be needed to mitigate the risk of corruption as a result of its
ruling. Therefore, I am baffled by my colleagues who are dragging their
heels on such a commonsense measure. Voters deserve to know who is
making large donations to influence an election. The DISCLOSE Act would
give Americans the information they need to take back control and hold
elected officials and large corporations accountable. To those who
remain opposed to this bill, I urge you to reconsider your position and
support this critically important legislation.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, today I wish to express my strong
support for the DISCLOSE Act of 2012.
This bill is a first step toward restoring some transparency and
accountability to our electoral system, an action sorely needed in the
wake of the Supreme Court's misguided Citizens United decision.
If the DISCLOSE Act is passed by Congress and signed into law it
would put in place the following two new campaign disclosure measures:
One, it requires third-party groups to disclose their top funding
sources those over $10,000 to the Federal Election Commission; and,
two, it requires these independent groups to certify that their
activities are not coordinated with candidates or political parties.
Why are these new disclosure requirements necessary?
The DISCLOSE Act is necessary because Citizens United, a narrow 5-4
decision by the Roberts Court, struck down critical parts of the
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
Let me be clear: Citizens United upended nearly a century of
congressional law and overturned two Supreme Court rulings. It is the
reason super PAC is now a household phrase, and the decision troubled
me greatly.
The Court held that the first amendment affords corporations and
interest groups the right to spend freely millions, even billions of
dollars on election ads to support or defeat a particular candidate.
The practical effect of the decision didn't take long to appear. We
have already seen how unlimited and opaque special interest money can
decide a Presidential primary, and we continue to see the impact during
the current general election.
The Citizens United decision has opened the door to unlimited,
undisclosed corporate and special interest spending in Federal
elections.
In other words, an individual or a corporation can give tens of
millions of dollars to an independent campaign effort to slander,
impugn, or oppose a candidate or an issue or to support the same
anonymously.
Under current law there is no requirement to disclose to the voters
or any government agency the names of the individuals who contributed
to these campaign efforts.
This is total unlimited and anonymous spending.
Let me repeat: unlimited spending.
It is impossible to exaggerate how far reaching this decision is: it
weakens the very essence of our democracy and the integrity of our
system of elections.
What does this mean in the real world?
This means an oil company like ExxonMobil, which earned $41 billion
in profits last year, can spend unlimited money to defeat candidates
who oppose offshore drilling. It means Academi (the company formerly
known as Blackwater) and other defense contractors can spend unlimited
sums to elect candidates who view their defense positions favorably.
And large banks will be free to use their corporate treasury to attack
candidates in favor of financial regulation and consumer protection.
During testimony in 2010, Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 said it
well:

It would not take many examples of elections where
multimillion corporate expenditures defeat a member of
Congress before all members quickly learn the lesson, vote
against the corporate interest at stake in a piece of
legislation and you run the risk of being hit with a
multimillion-dollar corporate ad campaign to defeat you.

Since Citizens United, we have seen explosive growth in outside
corporate and special-interest expenditures:
The fall 2010 midterm elections ushered in the independent third-
party groups, which spent a record $300 million during that election
cycle. This amount is quadruple the $69 million spent by outside groups
in 2006. Nearly three-quarters of political advertising in 2010 came
from sources prohibited from spending money in 2006.
By the summer of 2008, about $70 million had been spent by third-
party groups during the Presidential race. According to the Center for
Responsive Politics, outside groups are currently on pace to at least
triple that 2008 total. An astonishing $167 million has already been
spent as of July 11, 2012.
Almost $140 million of this comes from super PACs established in the
wake of the Citizens United decision. As of July 11, there are 667
registered super PACs that have already raised more than $244 million.
More money is being spent than ever before, and it is clear that
these unlimited sums could be a major factor in the 2012 elections.
Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that many independent
ads for the general election campaign originate from nonprofit interest
groups that do not disclose their donors. The analysis found that
politically active nonprofit groups with undisclosed donors have spent
more than $24 million in the 2012 cycle on political ads.
The public deserves to know who these donors are. The value of
transparency was demonstrated vividly in 2010, when Texas-based oil
companies funded a ballot measure to repeal California's landmark
climate change law, the ``California Climate Change Solutions Act.''

[[Page S5003]]

Although the campaign for this measure spent more than $10 million,
they were unable to conceal that their funding came from out-of-State
sources, led by multimillion-dollar contributions from Texas-based oil
companies. This transparency allowed California voters to know the real
source of advertisements during the campaign and make a more informed
decision. That proposition failed, and, I believe it failed because
voters knew who was paying for the ads.
Transparency works. It makes a difference. With public confidence in
government at a record low, now is the time for more transparency, not
less. We must restore confidence in our government. The Supreme Court
made its decision in Citizens United, so there isn't much that Congress
can do. But the DISCLOSE Act is an attempt to make clear the effects of
Citizens United and ensure that our election process remains
transparent.
The public deserves to know who is funding the super PACs and other
groups that are airing political ads. When voters know who paid for an
ad, they make more educated decisions. The DISCLOSE Act is a step
toward making that reality.
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of S.
3369, the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in
Elections, or DISCLOSE, Act.
I joined Senator Whitehouse and some 25 of my colleagues in
cosponsoring this bill because it is the right thing to do. I do not
believe, as some claim, that the DISCLOSE Act will chill or limit the
right to free speech in something as fundamental as advocating for a
candidate for elected office. The bill will simply require more
openness by those advocating, an important point in our world of radio,
television, and the internet. The DISCLOSE Act will help restore
transparency and accountability to our electoral process by requiring
outside groups to disclose who funds their political activities. It may
be worth noting that the bill is not focusing on the average American
contributing small amounts of money to her candidate, but rather on
those groups who are making donations of at least $10,000. I do not
think it is so onerous to ask those contributing such large sums to
identify themselves.
But, I must be honest. I was disappointed to learn that the so-called
``stand by your ad'' provision was not included in S. 3369. This
provision, which required that the biggest donors of a campaign, or
sponsors of a radio or TV spot, be identified during the ad, was what
initially caught my attention. In an age where communications are
largely anonymous whether it is on Twitter, Facebook, or to a lesser
extent, radio and even television, I believe it is only fair that
Americans learn who is speaking to them as they are listening. We have
moved past those times when a candidate or his supporters would use a
soapbox to explain their positions to a crowd, and who is doing the
talking is no longer clear.
However, I believe the overarching principle of the DISCLOSE Act
sharing the identities of those advocating in an election campaign,
whether it be for or against a candidate, or simply an opinion is a
necessary part of democracy. I hope my colleagues will agree and vote
to support passage of the DISCLOSE Act.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________