[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6622-6623]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              DISCLOSE ACT

  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise to support the Democracy Is 
Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act, or the 
DISCLOSE Act, Senator Schumer's bill to fight the effects of the 
Citizens United decision.
  I want to tell Minnesotans listening at home why I support this bill. 
I want to talk about the problem this bill addresses and how this bill 
fixes that problem. I also want to talk about a part of this 
legislation that came from a bill I introduced earlier this year.
  A lot of people don't follow the Supreme Court very closely, so I 
would like to summarize what the Citizens United decision does. In a 
nutshell, it allows corporations to spend as much money as they want, 
whenever they want, in any election in this country. It lets 
corporations spend their shareholder money to do this. What is worse, 
it will allow foreign subsidiaries, wholly owned by foreign 
governments, to spend just as much money as their American competitors.
  This decision changed our election laws in a radical way. In a single 
decision, the Supreme Court reversed a century-old legal standard, 2 
Federal laws, 24 State laws, including a 20-year-old Minnesota law, and 
2 of its own decisions, one of which it handed down just 6 years ago. I 
am not a lawyer and I don't speak Latin, but unless the term ``stare 
decisis'' means ``overrule stuff,'' I think we have an activist court 
on our hands.
  But I don't want to talk about legal precedent; I want to talk about 
how this decision will affect people's everyday lives. I want to talk 
about the crisis Citizens United has created for communities: for the 
safety of our communities and for our ability to run them without a 
permission slip from big business.
  Let me give a couple of examples of policies that might never have 
been enacted if Citizens United had been the law of the land.
  As of 1965, when America's population was about half as large as it 
is today, 50,000 people died every year from car accidents. Believe it 
or not, the auto industry knew full well it could prevent a large 
portion of highway deaths just by installing seatbelts in every car 
they sold. But as late as the early 1960s, they refused to do that. 
They said: ``Safety doesn't sell.'' They lobbied against legislation to 
require seatbelts.
  Fortunately for all of us, in 1966 Congress passed a law requiring 
all passenger cars to have seatbelts. By the year 2000, the fatality 
rate from car accidents had dropped by 71 percent.
  Here is another story. In the 1920s, oil companies started adding 
lead to gasoline. They did this even though they knew that lead was a 
poison. In fact, 80 percent of the workers at Standard Oil's very first 
lead gas plant died of or got lead poisoning. This didn't stop oil 
company representatives from testifying before this very body 
repeatedly that leaded gasoline and lead pollution in the air were 
totally safe. That is what they said.
  But Congress didn't take the bait. In 1970, Congress passed the Clean 
Air Act and phased out leaded gasoline over the next two decades. By 
1995, the percentage of children with elevated levels of lead in their 
blood had dropped by 84 percent. By 2000, the level of ambient lead in 
the air had dropped 98 percent.
  A lot of people know that the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle 
Safety Act and the Clean Air Act of 1970 are two of the pillars of 
modern consumer and environmental safety laws. Here is another thing 
they have in common: They were both passed about 60 days before midterm 
elections.
  Do you think the seatbelt bill would have been as strong if GM could 
have run $1 million in attack ads against vulnerable Congressmen, by 
name, in the last months before those elections?
  Do you think the Clean Air Act would have been so aggressive on lead 
if Standard Oil could have spent $10 million against lawmakers in 
Texas? These kinds of corporate expenditures would have been made 
possible by Citizens United, and this is what the DISCLOSE bill will 
fight.
  Here is my point. At the end of the day, this bill is not about 
election law. It's not about campaign finance. It's about seatbelts. 
It's about clean air. It's about protecting our right to improve our 
lives without some corporation saying: No, you can't do that.
  I want to talk a little about how the DISCLOSE Act is going to temper 
the effects of Citizens United.
  First, the bill will make sure voters know who is really behind any 
advocacy group's election ad. Both the head of the advocacy group and 
its top contributors will have to appear in and approve every ad. These 
groups will also have to disclose their top donors to the Federal 
Election Commission.
  Secondly, the DISCLOSE Act will enhance accountability to 
shareholders. Corporations will have to disclose their political 
expenditures in periodic reports. They will have to post this 
information on their Web sites. I have worked with Senator Schumer on 
getting strong disclosure provisions, so I am particularly pleased to 
see these provisions in place.
  Thirdly, under the DISCLOSE Act, government contractors receiving 
more than $50,000 will be banned from spending money on our elections. 
The same goes for recipients of TARP funds who have yet to pay 
taxpayers back. This makes sense. If companies are getting taxpayers' 
money, they should not be able to turn around and spend that same money 
to tell taxpayers how to vote.
  I want to talk about a fourth part of the bill which I think is 
crucial. As President Obama said in his State of the Union Address in 
January, the Citizens United decision won't just open the floodgates 
for special interests; it is going to open the floodgates for foreign 
interests. Under Citizens United, foreign companies with subsidiaries 
in the United States will be able to use those companies to spend 
without limit in American elections. As President Obama said, American 
elections should not be bankrolled by foreign entities. Can't we all 
agree on that?
  That is why that day, a few hours before President Obama stood before 
the combined Houses of Congress, I introduced the American Elections 
Act, a bill that would close loopholes in our current laws that allow 
foreign companies to spend freely in our elections.
  I am thrilled to say that the DISCLOSE Act contains three of the core 
provisions of my legislation. I am so thankful to Senator Schumer for 
reaching out to work together to include them and for his remarks this 
morning. He has been a true champion on this issue.
  Let me summarize these provisions. First, the DISCLOSE Act bars 
election spending by companies in which a foreign national controls 
political decisionmaking or the company's operations. This effectively 
codifies an existing regulation. Secondly, it bars election spending by 
companies in which foreign nationals make up a majority of the board of 
directors. Finally, it bars election spending by companies in which a 
foreign entity owns a controlling share of stock, defined by the 
leading Delaware standard for a controlling share, which is 20 percent 
stock ownership. This may seem low, but, in fact, 31 out of the 32 
States that define a controlling share with a number define it as 20 
percent or less. Actually, almost all of them define it as 10 percent, 
including Minnesota.
  They all boil down to this: If a foreign individual, foreign company, 
or foreign government controls your company, your company should not be 
spending freely in American elections. American elections should be 
controlled by Americans.
  My Republican colleagues are saying that we are fighting a paper 
tiger here, that we should not be concerned about foreign influence in 
our elections because the law already prohibits it. The day after 
President Obama delivered his State of the Union, Minority Leader 
McConnell came to the floor to talk about this, and said that President 
Obama was wrong and that the law was actually ``crystal clear'' on 
foreign spending. He said:

       [C]ontrary to what the President and some of his surrogates 
     in Congress say, foreign persons, corporations, partnerships, 
     associations, organizations or other combination of persons 
     are strictly prohibited from any participation in U.S. 
     elections, just as they were

[[Page 6623]]

     prohibited before the Supreme Court's Citizens United 
     decision.

  ``Strictly prohibited from any participation''? Yet, in fact, because 
our current laws are vague and out of date, even CITGO, a wholly owned 
subsidiary of the Government of Venezuela, could easily spend freely in 
our elections before Citizens United.
  Current Federal law has three main provisions against Federal 
influence:
  First, companies must be incorporated and have their principal place 
of business in the United States.
  CITGO's parent company is located in Venezuela, but CITGO itself is 
organized under the laws of Delaware, with its principal place of 
business in Texas. CITGO passes that test.
  Second, the Federal Elections Commission requires that any political 
spending by foreign subsidiaries be drawn from profits made in America.
  No problem for CITGO. The latest SEC 10-K filing we could obtain 
showed $625 million in annual profits here in the United States. CITGO 
passes that test. But it can only spend $625 million on American 
elections.
  Finally, current regulations require that all political 
decisionmaking for a company be made by Americans, not foreign 
nationals.
  You would think that because CITGO's board of directors has no 
Americans--it is just four Venezuelan citizens--it couldn't pass this 
test. But believe it or not, a July 2000 decision from the Federal 
Elections Commission said that even this would not disqualify a 
company. As long as a board of directors formed an elections committee 
with only American members, that company can still spend on elections, 
even with 100 percent foreign board membership.
  So there you have it. If our current laws can't stop Hugo Chavez, 
whom can they stop?
  Far from expanding the rights of American companies and leaving 
foreign ones behind a legal firewall, Citizens United has expanded the 
existing rights of American companies and foreign subsidiaries equally. 
Both American companies and foreign subsidiaries can now spend as much 
money as they want whenever they want in our elections.
  We need to act now to protect our elections against foreign 
governments. We need to act now to protect our consumer safety and our 
environmental laws against a corporate veto. We need to act now to pass 
the DISCLOSE Act, which I am proud to join as an original cosponsor.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant editor of the Daily Digest proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 
minutes in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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