[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 20, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3503-S3504]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              DISCLOSE Act

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, today, with our country facing an 
inflation crisis, a violent crime crisis, and a functionally open 
southern border, our Democratic colleagues are choosing to focus on 
chilling Americans' First Amendment rights and enabling more harassment 
of citizens for their private views.
  Way back in 1958, the NAACP fought Alabama's attorney general, a 
segregationist Democrat, all the way to the Supreme Court to defend the 
bedrock American liberty of associational privacy--associational 
privacy. Here is what Justice Harlan said for the majority back then:

       Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many 
     circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of 
     association, particularly where a group espouses dissident 
     beliefs.

  As the majority opinion put it, this was ``hardly a novel 
exception,'' even back in 1958. And yet, for most of my career, I have 
had to push back against Democrats' repeated attempts to unlearn this 
fundamental constitutional lesson. I have repeatedly defended 
Americans' right to join together and to voice their opinions.
  Prior to McCain-Feingold, almost all money in politics ran through 
candidates and party committees. I warned that placing unconstitutional 
restrictions on speech in that bill was like putting a rock on Jell-O--
it wouldn't quash political speech; it would just displace it. And the 
Supreme Court has consistently reaffirmed that point in case after 
case, upholding free speech.
  Our Democratic colleagues' obsession with regulating political speech 
is what created the environment they now disprove of. It is what drove 
support for McCain-Feingold, and it is what spawned this perennial bill 
in 2010.
  Democrats want to pass a law that puts discourse in the hands of the 
mob. But needless to say, they haven't always been very concerned with 
compelling disclosure using laws on the books.
  Existing law already requires disclosure of donations to PACs and 
other outside groups with the intention of influencing Federal 
elections. But even as our colleagues have introduced successive 
versions of the DISCLOSE Act, enterprising activist liberals have taken 
it upon themselves to name and shame conservatives by ``outing'' their

[[Page S3504]]

private contributions illegally. It was practically administration 
policy during the Obama-Biden IRS.
  And for those keeping score, Washington Democrats never seemed as 
eager to publicize the donor rolls of groups whose political views they 
happen to share. Somehow, donor privacy for organizations pursuing 
liberal causes is sacrosanct, but donor privacy for groups with 
conservative beliefs is a threat to democracy.
  Somehow working for outside groups is practically a prerequisite for 
a West Wing job under a Democratic President, but association with 
groups Democrats don't like is a one-way ticket to picketing and 
harassment. Sixty-four years ago, the Supreme Court said the link 
between freedom of association and the freedom of speech was ``beyond 
debate.'' But today's Democratic Party wants to make sure the threat to 
associational privacy is every bit as real--as real--as it was in 1958.
  The stakes are so clear; even liberal groups like the ACLU have 
joined the NAACP and Senate Republicans in continuing to sound the 
alarm--ACLU, NAACP, and Senate Republicans aligned, sounding the alarm. 
They have been working together to fight State-level public disclosure 
laws all the way to the Supreme Court.
  Last year, the Court sided with those advocates to strike down 
predatory disclosure practices out in California. Earlier this month, 
the Ninth Circuit did the same to an unconstitutionally vague 
disclosure law out in Montana.

  Meanwhile, the Federal judiciary itself is contending with 
particularly outrageous threats from the radical left to the privacy 
and security of the judges themselves and their families.
  The same liberal groups stoking mob intimidation outside the homes of 
Supreme Court Justices are the ones most eager to put out private 
citizens' political speech records.
  The same Democrats who refused to condemn naked threats against 
public officials earlier this summer once again want to expand the 
Federal Government's power to threaten private citizens. That is not a 
trade the American people or their Constitution can afford to make.