[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11342-11380]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           DISCLOSE ACT OF 2012--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 10 
minutes of debate equally divided and controlled between the two 
leaders or their designees.
  The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we are going to divide this 
among five Senators so I will just take a few seconds to say 
corporations are having a field day because they can put all this money 
in to influence the political system while at the same time being 
anonymous. They do not have to disclose what every other donor has to 
disclose when they make a political contribution.
  Are they interested in my State, in the quality of the representation 
of my State? I think they are interested in their own agenda and buying 
elections.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, it is not a shareholder democracy 
when a $10 million corporate buy effectively drowns out the $5 to $10 
to $20 donation that represents real people with real concerns. The 
DISCLOSE Act would make CEOs do what political candidates do--what we 
all do--when we pay for political advertising: face the camera and tell 
the voters we sponsored a commercial. Whether we are Democrat or 
Republican, surely, we wouldn't want to see our political system, our 
democratic system, become the puppet of a few large corporations with 
whatever interest they have--oil or big insurance or drug companies or 
companies that outsource jobs as their specialty.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the most astounding fact that has 
emerged since the Citizens United decision is that just 17 people have 
given over half the money to the Republican super PAC. There is very 
little disclosure, and there are huge amounts of money cascading in 
from a small few.
  My colleagues, whether one is a Democrat or a Republican, we have to 
admit this is corrosive to our democracy. This gets further away from 
the idea that each of us has an equal say than anything that has been 
done in the last 100 years.
  I hope my colleagues will join us in this modest measure, which 
doesn't even limit how much people can give but simply says they have 
to disclose; they have to tell they are giving. When ads are disclosed, 
they are less vicious and there is some semblance of truth that has to 
float around them.
  I urge my colleagues, for the good of this country, the sake of our 
future, to support this modest, truly modest, piece of legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, perhaps the most important three words 
in our constitution are ``We the people.'' But the whole notion of ``We 
the people'' is threatened by oceans of dark secret cash, oceans of 
cash used as a threat on the front end and as an election hammer on the 
back end. It is simply destructive to our democracy.
  Tonight is the night for some profiles in courage to stand for the 
American system, for democracy, and for the people.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, in 1822, the Founding Father James 
Madison wrote:

       A popular government without popular information or the 
     means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a 
     tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern 
     ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors 
     must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.

  A vote for DISCLOSE is a vote to arm the people with the power that 
knowledge gives, to arm them with the popular information about 
elections--information necessary to prevent this great popular 
government of ours from becoming a special interest farce, information 
necessary to protect this democracy from the tragedy, as John McCain 
predicted, of scandal that will result.
  Give the American people the information they need to be their own 
governors. Vote for DISCLOSE.
  I yield back the remainder of our time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, for 40 straight months we have had 
unemployment above 8 percent and a debt the size of our economy. Yet 
our friends in the majority want to get us to pass a bill that 
everybody from the ACLU to the NRA is opposed to, a bill designed to 
give the government the information to intimidate people who have the 
courage to stand up to the government and argue against what it is 
doing.
  Not only should we not be doing this in good times but to waste the 
Senate's time on a proposal totally without merit at a time when our 
economy is in the tank is the ultimate waste of the Senate's time. I 
strongly urge a ``no'' vote.
  I yield back the remaining time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I wish to use leader time to say we know 
the Republicans don't like disclosure. We can tell that from the person 
they are going to nominate for the President of the United States.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the clerk will report 
the motion to invoke cloture.
  The assistant bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the 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 for corporations, labor 
     organizations, Super PACs and other entities, and for other 
     purposes.
          Harry Reid, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jack Reed, Joseph I. 
           Lieberman, Jon Tester, Mark L. Pryor, Benjamin L. 
           Cardin, Christopher A. Coons, Jeanne Shaheen, Daniel K. 
           Akaka, Herb Kohl, Charles E. Schumer, Mark Begich, Tim 
           Johnson, Robert Menendez, Frank R. Lautenberg, Mark 
           Udall, Sherrod Brown.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to 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, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Louisiana (Ms. Landrieu) 
is necessarily absent.
  Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the 
Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), and the Senator from Mississippi 
(Mr. Wicker).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 51, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 179 Leg.]

                                YEAS--51

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Bingaman
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown (OH)
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Conrad
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Johnson (SD)
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Nelson (FL)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--44

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown (MA)
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coats

[[Page 11343]]


     Coburn
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Enzi
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Hoeven
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kyl
     Lee
     Lugar
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Reid
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Snowe
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Heller
     Kirk
     Landrieu
     Murkowski
     Wicker
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 51, the nays are 44. 
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote by 
which cloture was not invoked.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is entered.
  The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Inhofe be recognized for 15 minutes for his remarks regarding the Law 
of the Sea, that Senator Shaheen and Senator Klobuchar then be 
recognized, and then for the duration of today's session Senators be 
able to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Oklahoma.


                         Law of the Sea Treaty

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I am about to make a major announcement 
that I think is very significant and, hopefully, would give us more 
time to attend to some of the problem areas we are trying to attend to, 
such as the Defense authorization bill, sequestration, expiring tax 
cuts, and all the spending bills. The announcement I would make is that 
we now have a letter containing 34 signatures of those who say: If you 
bring up the ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty this year, we 
would oppose it. So we actually have 35 such signatures.
  I want to make a couple of comments. I was going to talk for a little 
longer, but I know there are a lot of Senators wanting to get the 
floor. So I will try to do this in a shorter period of time.
  First of all, I have been involved in this treaty for a long period 
of time. Way back during the Reagan administration this treaty that was 
actually first negotiated back in the 1970s was defeated for a variety 
of reasons. A lot of people are saying the reasons Reagan opposed it at 
that time have been answered. That is just flat not true. Ambassador 
James Malone, who renegotiated the lost treaty during the Reagan 
administration, stated:

       All the provisions from the past that make such a [new 
     world order] outcome possible, indeed likely, still stand. It 
     is not true, as argued by some, and frequently mentioned, 
     that the U.S. rejected the Convention in 1982 solely because 
     of technical difficulties with part XI.

  That is the seabed mining portion of it.

       The Collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the 
     treaty were at the core. . . .

  They are still in there today.
  I think it is important to recall what happened in 2004. In 2004, 
when Republicans were the majority, I chaired the Committee on 
Environment and Public Works and was also one of the senior members of 
the Senate Armed Services Committee. At that time the Law of the Sea 
Treaty passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee without--I believe 
it was without a dissenting vote. I think it was 16 to 0. So we started 
having hearings before the two committees that were my committees, the 
Environment and Public Works Committee, talking about how this would 
subject us to other countries imposing their will on us, as well as 
ramifications that would affect the Senate Armed Services Committee. As 
a result, of course, we recall it was defeated.
  We have this happening again. I do appreciate Senator Kerry and his 
efforts to get this through. We have had several hearings. They have 
been pretty lopsided. I believe the count today is there have been 16 
witnesses supporting it and some 4 witnesses opposing it. That is not 
really important because I think it is worth mentioning a couple of 
things about it but then actually going into the detail as to why, if 
it is brought up, it could not be ratified during this year or during a 
lameduck session.
  First of all, when I talk to someone about the problems with this I 
tell them this would cede authority to the United Nations over 70 
percent of the surface of the Earth, along with the air above it. I 
remember one time a witness came--this was back during the Bush 
administration which was supporting the treaty, but I asked the 
question, I said: If you have 70 percent of the surface area, does that 
mean you also have 70 percent of the air above it? They could not 
answer that question. Now I think it is pretty well understood that 
would be the case.
  I tell people three things: First of all, we would be submitting our 
sovereignty, surrendering it to the United Nations, over 70 percent. 
That really is enough. But when we talk about the fact that for the 
first time in the history of this country it authorized the United 
Nations to have taxing authority over the United States of America, 
people go ballistic. That is something that is not conceivable we would 
even be considering.
  Then when we are talking about the lawsuits, how we have lawsuits we 
could be facing--let me be a little more specific.
  The area that is in controversy in terms of its ability to tax or 
otherwise get royalties from the United States, would otherwise go to 
the United States and put those into the United Nations, is an area 
called the Extended Continental Shelf. That would be in excess of 200 
nautical miles offshore. Nothing within this treaty is going to affect 
this within the 200 miles, but outside it would be.
  As it is right now, it is important to understand how the royalties 
are paid at the present time. The royalties the United States usually 
collects from the Extended Continental Shelf is an amount between 12.5 
percent and 18.75 percent. The reason there is a disparity between 
those is because the royalties go along with how much money can be made 
out there if things go well and how deep it is, how far out it is, how 
expensive it is to drill, and all of that. So the range the United 
States currently collects is between 12.5 percent and 18.75 percent 
from the Extended Continental Shelf.
  Under article 82, if we pass the Law of the Sea Treaty, at the end of 
the 12th year, 7 percent of the royalties would be taken away from the 
United States--that is roughly half the royalties we would have--and 
given to the International Seabed Authority to redistribute those in 
accordance with whatever they want to do. It is not specific. This all 
would take place in Kingston, Jamaica, of all places, where they would 
make this redistribution of wealth. I have often said that is something 
the United Nations has always desired; that is, to have the ability to 
redistribute the wealth.
  It is hard to say what amount would fall into the royalties within 
the Extended Continental Shelf. There is a group that was appointed to 
try to approximate these things, and they have said it would be in the 
hundreds of billions or maybe even in the trillions.
  For each trillion that would be in production, that would equal about 
$70 billion that would be taken out of the U.S. Treasury and put into 
the United Nations, sent to the Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica, 
to be redistributed around the world in accordance with whatever 
criteria they would have. That is a huge amount, and it is very 
significant, and it is specific that the figure would be up to 7 
percent after the 12th year. That is a very significant amount.
  When we stop and think about it, we have been talking about how we 
can come up with $1 trillion in the next 10 years. Now all of a sudden 
we have an amount that could come close to equaling that just from 
losing our royalties that would otherwise come to the United States of 
America. Of course, there is the lawsuits. I think this is significant. 
Under the Law of the Sea Treaty, any country could sue the United 
States in an international tribunal and not in the U.S. courts.
  In other words, we could be subjected to lawsuits from other 
countries. There

[[Page 11344]]

are already a number of Pacific Island nations that intend to sue the 
United States for environmental damage to their seas and air if the 
United States joins the Law of the Sea Treaty. In other words, we would 
be voluntarily allowing people to sue the United States on what they 
would allege to be environmental damages.
  The members of the convention and regulations to prevent pollution in 
maritime is very specific. Article 212 of the Law of the Sea Treaty 
states to ``adopt laws and regulations to prevent, reduce, and control 
pollution of the marine environment from or through the atmosphere, 
applicable to the air space under their sovereignty''--we are talking 
about the United Nations--``and to vessels flying their flag or vessels 
or aircraft of their registry, taking into account internationally 
agreed rules, standards and recommended practices.''
  If the EPA--as we found out in their endangerment finding--is able to 
declare an endangerment, just imagine what they could do under this 
case. In fact, article 235 states that countries ``are responsible for 
the fulfillment of their international obligations concerning the 
protection and preservation of the marine environment. They shall be 
liable in accordance with international law.''
  That is why we have so many of the far-left environmental groups, 
such as Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the 
Environmental Defense Fund, and all of them fervently supporting this 
treaty because they want to use it admittedly to bring the United 
States and all other countries into conformity with their environmental 
agenda.
  I am going to submit this for the Record. It is interesting because 
we have, for example, Andrew Strauss, who is a law professor and is 
very well known, who states that the U.S. rejection of the Kyoto 
Protocol ``makes the United States the most logical first country 
target of a global warming lawsuit in international forum.''
  I commend to the attention of my colleagues the various legal 
entities that are rejoicing about the fact that they might be able to 
sue this country.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter signed 
by 31 Members of the Senate stating that they will object to and vote 
against any ratification effort that would take place this year. It 
doesn't restrict it to this year. There are 31 Members.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Leader, We understand that Chairman Kerry has 
     renewed his efforts to pursue Senate ratification of the 
     United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. We are 
     writing to let you know that we believe this Convention 
     reflects political, economic, and ideological assumptions 
     which are inconsistent with American values and sovereignty.
       By its current terms, the Law of the Sea Convention 
     encompasses economic and technology interests in the deep 
     sea, redistribution of wealth from developed to undeveloped 
     nations, freedom of navigation in the deep sea and exclusive 
     economic zones which may impact maritime security, and 
     environmental regulation over virtually all sources of 
     pollution.
       To effect the treaty's broad regime of governance, we are 
     particularly concerned that United States sovereignty could 
     be subjugated in many areas to a supranational government 
     that is chartered by the United Nations under the 1982 
     Convention. Further, we are troubled that compulsory dispute 
     resolution could pertain to public and private activities 
     including law enforcement, maritime security, business 
     operations, and nonmilitary activities performed aboard 
     military vessels.
       If this treaty comes to the floor, we will oppose its 
     ratification.
           Sincerely yours,
         Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Jim Inhofe, Roy Blunt, Pat 
           Roberts, David Vitter, Ron Johnson, John Cornyn, Jim 
           DeMint, Tom Coburn, Mike Johanns, John Boozman.
         Rand Paul, Jim Risch, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions, Mike 
           Crapo, Orrin Hatch, John Barrasso, Richard Shelby, Pat 
           Toomey, John Thune, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss.
         Dan Coats, John Hoeven, Roger Wicker, Jerry Moran, Marco 
           Rubio, Dean Heller, Chuck Grassley.

  Mr. INHOFE. I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record a separate letter that is signed by Senators Portman and Ayotte 
stating essentially the same thing.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                    Washington, DC, July 16, 2012.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Leader: Recently, there has been renewed interest 
     in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a 
     treaty completed in 1982 and modified in 1994. After careful 
     consideration, we have concluded that on balance this treaty 
     is not in the national interest of the United States. As a 
     result, we would oppose the treaty if it were called up for a 
     vote.
       Proponents of the Law of the Sea treaty aspire to admirable 
     goals, including codifying the U.S. Navy's navigational 
     rights and defining American economic interests in valuable 
     offshore resources. But the treaty's terms reach well beyond 
     those good intentions. This agreement is striking in both the 
     breadth of activities it regulates and the ambiguity of 
     obligations it creates. Its 320 articles and over 200 pages 
     establish a complex regulatory regime that applies to 
     virtually any commercial or governmental activity related to 
     the oceans--from seaborne shipping, to drug and weapon 
     interdiction, to operating a manufacturing plant near a 
     coastal waterway.
       The terms of the treaty are not only expansive, but often 
     ill-defined. Article 194, for example, broadly requires 
     nations to ``take . . . all measures consistent with this 
     Convention that are necessary to prevent, reduce and control 
     pollution of the marine environment from any source, using 
     for this purpose the best practicable means at their disposal 
     and in accordance with their capabilities.'' Article 207 
     decrees that ``[s]tates shall adopt laws and regulations to 
     prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine 
     environment from land-based sources . . . taking into account 
     internationally agreed rules.'' Article 293 empowers 
     tribunals to enforce not only the treaty provisions but also 
     ``other rules of international law not incompatible with [the 
     treaty].'' Because the treaty authorizes international 
     legislative and judicial bodies to give shape and substance 
     to these and other open-ended commitments, the United States 
     would be binding itself to yet-unknown requirements and 
     liabilities. That uncertainty alone is reason for caution.
       The treaty's breadth and ambiguity might be less troubling 
     if there were adequate assurance that it will be enforced 
     impartially and in a manner consistent with U.S. interests. 
     But that is not so. The United States could block some but 
     not all actions of the International Seabed Authority, a 
     legislative body vested with significant power over more than 
     half of the earth's surface. Further, the treaty's judicial 
     bodies are empowered to issue binding judgments even over 
     U.S. objections. In some cases, the United States could elect 
     to resolve disputes before a five-member arbitration 
     tribunal, in which we would choose two arbitrators. But the 
     United States would have no hand in selecting the decisive, 
     fifth arbitrator, unless it could agree with the opposing 
     party. Other cases would be decided by the powerful 
     International Tribunal, which is even less accountable to the 
     United States. Comprised of 21 foreign judges with no 
     guaranteed U.S. seat, the tribunal can resolve any dispute 
     concerning interpretation of the treaty. It has compulsory 
     jurisdiction over disputes concerning the seabed beyond 
     national borders and power to grant preliminary injunctive 
     relief whenever it deems necessary ``to preserve the 
     respective rights of the parties to the dispute or to prevent 
     serious harm to the marine environment.''
       The method of executing tribunal judgments further concerns 
     us. Unlike many international agreements, key provisions of 
     the Law of the Sea treaty are drafted to be ``self-
     executing,'' meaning that certain tribunal judgments would 
     automatically constitute enforceable federal law, without 
     congressional legislation or meaningful review by our 
     nation's judiciary. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted in a 
     concurring opinion in Medellin v. Texas, the Law of the Sea 
     treaty appears to ``incorporate international judgments into 
     domestic law'' because it expressly provides that decisions 
     of the tribunal ```shall be enforceable in the territories of 
     the States Parties in the same manner as judgments or orders 
     of the highest court of the State Party in whose territory 
     the enforcement is sought.''' In other words, the treaty 
     equates tribunal decisions with decisions of the U.S. Supreme 
     Court. This means that private litigants will likely be able 
     to invoke tribunal judgments as enforceable in U.S. courts--
     against the government and possibly against U.S. businesses. 
     The United States will have no lawful choice but to acquiesce 
     to tribunal judgments, however burdensome or unfair.
       The treaty could also spawn international environmental 
     tort claims directly against U.S. businesses and citizens. A 
     federal law called the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) gives

[[Page 11345]]

     courts the power to hear ``any civil action by an alien for a 
     tort . . . committed in violation of the law of nations or a 
     treaty of the United States.'' Remarkably, even though the 
     U.S. has not yet ratified the Law of the Sea treaty, the 
     treaty has already been invoked as a basis for ATS litigation 
     targeting industrial activities. In a 2002 lawsuit brought by 
     residents of Papua New Guinea against a mining corporation, a 
     federal district court in California held that the plaintiffs 
     had stated a valid ATS claim under the environmental 
     provisions of the Law of the Sea treaty. A panel of the Ninth 
     Circuit agreed. Accession to the treaty would only strengthen 
     ATS claims like this 2002 lawsuit by transforming 
     international environmental norms into a binding treaty 
     obligation.
       In short, we are deeply concerned about the treaty's 
     breadth and ambiguity, the inadequate U.S. input in the 
     treaty's adjudicative bodies, and the automatic enforcement 
     of tribunal judgments in the United States. Against these 
     risks to U.S. sovereignty, however, we have also carefully 
     weighed the potential benefits of the treaty.
       As members of the Armed Services Committee, we are mindful 
     that the Defense Department believes this treaty would help 
     secure the navigational freedom of our fleet. We take this 
     recommendation seriously and recognize that the treaty would 
     provide an additional tool to our diplomatic and military 
     leaders in resolving maritime disputes. We also understand 
     the commercial interests associated with treaty accession. 
     Several U.S. businesses have explained that the treaty would 
     enhance investment in energy development and mineral 
     extraction by increasing certainty about ownership claims. 
     Specifically, the treaty would codify rights to resources in 
     the U.S. exclusive economic zone, the extended continental 
     shelf, and the deep seabed. It would also give the United 
     States a formal role in the Commission on the Limits of the 
     Continental Shelf, which is now reviewing claims by treaty 
     members in the Arctic.
       At the same time, even treaty proponents recognize that 
     these provisions primarily clarify rights that the United 
     States already possesses under customary international law 
     and has other means of asserting. For example, the treaty's 
     200-nautical-mile rule defining coastal states' exclusive 
     economic zones is consistent with longstanding U.S. claims. 
     Moreover, the United States has successfully used bilateral 
     negotiations with Russia and Mexico to define claims to the 
     extended continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico and the 
     Arctic. Similarly, the treaty's navigational regimes reflect 
     the current practices of the U.S. Navy, and we believe that 
     our maritime interests are best secured by maintaining U.S. 
     naval power beyond challenge.
       The real issue is not whether the United States will defend 
     its maritime rights, but rather who will have the final say 
     on the scope of those rights. We simply are not persuaded 
     that decisions by the International Seabed Authority and 
     international tribunals empowered by this treaty will be more 
     favorable to U.S. interests than bilateral negotiations, 
     voluntary arbitration, and other traditional means of 
     resolving maritime issues. No international organization owns 
     the seas, and we are confident that our nation will continue 
     to protect its navigational freedom, valid territorial 
     claims, and other maritime rights.
       On balance, we believe the treaty's litigation exposure and 
     impositions on U.S. sovereignty outweigh its potential 
     benefits. For that reason, we cannot support the Law of the 
     Sea treaty and would oppose its ratification.
           Sincerely,
     Rob Portman,
       Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and 
     Capabilities, Committee on Armed Services.
     Kelly Ayotte,
       Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Readiness and Management 
     Support, Committee on Armed Services.

  Mr. INHOFE. I also have a statement from the Web site of Senator 
Isakson, and I was given permission to speak on behalf of Lamar 
Alexander, that while he hasn't taken a position on the Law of the Sea 
Treaty, he does object to having it brought up this year. So we have 35 
Members of the Senate who have stated they would object if it is 
brought up before the Senate this year.
  So with these items I referenced included as a part of the Record, I 
would like to say that something isn't going to happen this year. It 
could be they want to bring it up, and that is up to the leader. If he 
desires to do so, of course, he could do it. If it does come up, it 
will take a lot of time from other business that this body should 
address.
  With that, I would only say there are some 35 Members--and many more 
I might suggest--who would vote against it should it come up.
  I have used my time, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. I am here to be on the Senate floor to join my 
colleagues in support of the DISCLOSE Act. We need to bring some 
transparency to the secret money that is being spent on campaigns 
across this country.
  I ask unanimous consent for the following speakers to speak in the 
order that I am listing them: Senator Klobuchar, followed by Senator 
Menendez, Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator Levin, and then myself.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I first want to thank the Senator 
from New Hampshire for his great leadership on this issue and all the 
Senators who have been involved. I am a cosponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, 
and I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will strongly 
reconsider that vote today so we can actually go to a vote and actually 
debate this bill. This filibuster is basically putting a stop to the 
debate on an issue that is so important.
  We get calls from people all across Minnesota. Yesterday people asked 
me in two parades: What is going on? What are these ads that we are 
seeing on TV?
  They have a right to know what these groups are called, no matter 
what their names are, who is paying for those groups, who is paying for 
these ads, and that isn't happening today.
  I am here to focus on the public's distrust of our political process 
and our need to ensure that the American people have a government that 
is responsive to their concerns. Free and fair elections in which every 
American has a right to make their voice heard at the voting booth are 
the cornerstone of our democracy. Yet in the wake of the Citizens 
United decision, a flood of special interest spending has undermined 
the faith of the people in our elections. By loosening the rules on 
campaign spending, Citizens United has led to a torrent of negative ads 
funded not by concerned citizens participating in democracy but by 
unlimited special interest money.
  I don't think we thought we would see the day with all of the reforms 
that had been made where one billionaire can write a $10 million check 
or $20 million check. Under the system, candidates have to report every 
contribution that is $200 and over, and we have to painstakingly do our 
reports so the world, our constituents, and reporters can see them 
online. We have literally hundreds of millions of dollars that are 
being spent where we cannot tell where that money came from. That is 
not right.
  This type of campaign spending moves the focus of our elections away 
from the real issues facing American families but, worse, this 
unprecedented involvement of special interests in our political process 
has convinced the American people there is something wrong with how we 
conduct elections--and there is. Americans can see the increased role 
that special interests and even individual billionaires are playing in 
politics, heightening their suspicions that Washington works only for 
the powerful.
  I constantly hear from the people of my State who justifiably believe 
the more money outside groups spend--secret money they are spending on 
these campaigns--the less their voices are heard. We cannot continue to 
allow faith in our democratic process to be eroded by the secretive 
influence of outside money. That is why I am a cosponsor of the 
DISCLOSE Act.
  The DISCLOSE Act heeds the wisdom of Justice Louis Brandeis that 
sunlight is the best disinfectant and will bring accountability and 
transparency to the special interest money that is inundating our 
elections and inundating the airwaves. The act requires that certain 
organizations, including corporations, unions, section 527 political 
groups, and so-called super PACs declare their campaign spending above 
a certain dollar amount. The act will ensure that Americans can find 
out the sources of funding for advertising they

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seek. Most importantly, they will prevent special interests from hiding 
behind the curtain as they attempt to influence our elections.
  By setting the reporting threshold at $10,000, this carefully crafted 
act we just voted to go ahead with--and, unfortunately, is blocked by a 
filibuster--ensures that small businesses and other organizations will 
not be unduly burdened and that only significant political players will 
have to report their spending.
  I know some people oppose the DISCLOSE Act on what they call first 
amendment grounds, but this bill doesn't limit free speech in any way. 
I don't agree with the notion that contribution limits and other 
restrictions on campaign spending are a threat to free speech. But even 
if we were to accept that argument, this bill does nothing to impact 
free speech. It does not contain any limits on contributions or 
spending or make any changes to our campaign finance system, as much as 
I think we need to do that.
  In fact, I think the best way to do that is a constitutional 
amendment. But that is not what we are talking about today. We are 
talking about a simple bill called the DISCLOSE Act, which will ensure 
more transparency so we know what billionaire is spending how much 
money in each State on the ads we are seeing on TV.
  In reality it is a modest bill in comparison to the size of the 
problem, but it is a first step toward bringing some sensibleness back 
to the elections. This bill simply ensures the public has access to 
information about the funding behind television ads and other election 
materials. In fact, even the majority opinion in Citizens United 
discussed the constitutionality and important benefits of disclosure. 
The opinion itself in Citizens United said this:

       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 give proper weight to different speakers and 
     messages.

  The Supreme Court actually anticipated that Congress--in this 
decision that I don't agree with--might put some disclosure rules in 
place, but today we were blocked from doing that. Our campaign finance 
laws already require that many individual contributions, as I noted, be 
made public. I see no harm in holding outside groups and outside 
individuals to the same level of accountability.
  Finally, this should not be a partisan issue. Senators in both 
parties have been leaders on campaign finance reform. As everyone 
knows, Senators McCain and Feingold championed the most significant 
reforms in many years, and this bill is much less dramatic than those 
reforms.
  I ask my colleagues to reconsider their vote. Our democracy literally 
depends on this. We have to know who is spending money so we can figure 
out why they are spending the money so people will understand the true 
intent behind these ads. They can't do it if they don't have the 
information, if someone is just pulling a curtain over their heads so 
they cannot see anything except the noise on the screen. They need to 
know what is behind it.
  Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I am pleased to join my colleagues in 
speaking about the DISCLOSE Act and why this is so critically important 
for our democracy. I appreciate the leadership of several of our 
colleagues in this respect.
  For the last 2 years our democracy has been hijacked by powerful 
special interests. Tonight we had the opportunity to begin repairing 
the fabric of our Nation's democracy before permanent damage is done. 
Unfortunately, Republicans decided not to put our democracy back on the 
right track.
  Out there, in this Presidential election season, murky special 
interests are spending unlimited amounts of corporate money. It is even 
possible that foreign governments can determine it is in their 
interests to funnel vast amounts of money to influence American 
political elections. Think about a country that does currency 
manipulation, that violates trade agreements, that steals intellectual 
property rights. Those of us who oppose those types of actions taken by 
other countries that are against the national economic interests of the 
United States could easily see that money flow through U.S. 
subsidiaries. That money could ultimately end up in campaigns to say: 
We do not want this Member of Congress, who is standing up for the 
interests of the American middle class and American businesses against 
our interests. We want to be able to continue to manipulate our 
currency, to be able to continue to steal intellectual property rights, 
to be able to continue with impunity to violate trade agreements.
  That is possible as the law exists now. I believe we have a patriotic 
obligation to protect our electoral system from that kind of influence. 
These anonymous secretive interests--mostly corporate--aren't spending 
money because they want to feel like a part of the process, they are 
spending money for a purpose. They have a reason and, no doubt, a self-
interest. One doesn't spend tens of millions of dollars without having 
a self-interest. Is this what our Founding Fathers had in mind? We 
should know who they are and what is their agenda.
  Since the Supreme Court made its ruling in Citizens United allowing 
corporate interests to spend money unlimitedly, the money has been more 
than trickling in, the money has been a torrent, a tsunami of unlimited 
cash. According to the New York Times, independent groups have spent at 
least $118 million since the start of the Presidential campaign. One 
super PAC alone has spent over $57 million.
  If my colleagues do not believe me, listen to Michael Toner, the 
former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, who said: ``I can 
tell you from personal experience the money's flowing.'' The money is 
flowing. This begs the question, Where is this money flowing from and 
where is it going? Who is behind the cash and what is to prevent 
foreign government interests from influencing our elections? What is to 
stop foreign influence in American elections other than complete 
disclosure?
  If corporations are spending money to influence elections, it is for 
the sole purpose of improving their own bottom lines. And this 
undermines the very essence of our democracy, where individual citizens 
are the ones who should determine the outcome of elections, not murky, 
shadowy, multibillion-dollar corporate interests or, worse, a foreign 
government. Disclosure, full disclosure, is what we need, and that is 
what we should demand before the people lose control of our electoral 
process.
  That is why I introduced another bill, the Shareholder Protection 
Act--a commonsense proposal that gives real people a say in the 
process. If the Supreme Court's position, which, obviously, is the law 
of the land, is that a corporation is a person and therefore can go 
ahead and spend in Federal elections, then since the corporation's 
money belongs to the shareholders, it is only right that they have a 
voice on how their money is going to influence elections.
  My bill would require shareholder approval of corporate political 
spending. This basic step would ensure that corporations' political 
activities actually reflect the will of their shareholders. If, as the 
Supreme Court ruled, corporations have free speech rights, then their 
shareholders should have control of that speech. The Shareholder 
Protection Act does that by giving shareholders the opportunity to 
exercise their free speech rights. But until we can reach consensus on 
my proposal, the least we can give the American people is the right to 
know who is trying to influence them.
  I think these are basic principles of a democracy. There are basic 
principles in our democracy on which both parties should be able to 
agree.
  Imagine the influence of the big five oil companies on American 
elections. In March, 47 U.S. Senators voted against repealing $24 
billion in oil subsidies over the next 10 years. We know from their 
publicly disclosed donations that these 47 Senators received over $23 
million in donations from oil companies over the course of their 
careers. So

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after the oil companies fought tooth and nail to protect the taxpayer 
subsidies--the $24 billion they get, which costs us as taxpayers $76 
dollars every second--do we think they wouldn't spend millions more in 
support of what they want? Now they can give unlimited amounts of money 
to super PACs without ever disclosing the contributions.
  In another example, Alliance Resource Group, a coal company, gave 
over $2.4 million to Karl Rove's super PAC, American Crossroads, which 
then turned around and funded advertisements targeting important 
environmental protection regulations. They are using unlimited 
corporate funds to influence our elections and our Nation's energy 
policy to protect their bottom line, regardless of the consequences to 
the air we breathe and regardless that States such as mine suffer from 
too high of an incidence of respiratory illnesses and cancers. They 
basically spend whatever it takes to buy their right to continue to 
pollute the air we collectively breathe.
  I could go on and on with examples of why special interests would 
very well spend in Federal elections to dictate policies that 
ultimately would hurt everyone but the special interests. That is what 
we are fighting against. This legislation is the first step in undoing 
that.
  The American people deserve to know who is giving more than $10,000. 
I don't believe that is too much to ask. As a matter of fact, all of us 
who run in this body for the Senate and all who run in the House of 
Representatives--all of our contributors are subject to disclosure. So 
if the donation of an average citizen back at home is subject to 
disclosure, why can we not at least have that corporation disclose when 
they give over $10,000 to one of these shadowy super PACs? The average 
citizen has to disclose but the corporations don't. Isn't something 
wrong with that equation?
  I see why we can't get a vote on the other side of the aisle because, 
overwhelmingly, they are receiving the benefits of this undisclosed, 
shadowy money. But is that truly the American way? Is that why we came 
to this institution? I thought we came for the very essence of what our 
democracy is about, which is clear, open transparency at the end of the 
day. Is that what the average voter wants to see in terms of this 
democracy? I don't think so.
  I leave my colleagues with this simple message: Our democracy was 
founded on the principle of an open and honest debate, but without 
disclosure we get neither. All we get are commercials on television and 
we don't know who is paying for them; we don't know what their 
interests are; we only know the negativity that flows from it, but we 
get none of the people behind it, none of the corporations behind it.
  Again, they will not spend tens of millions of dollars to just simply 
participate in the process. If they want to participate in the process, 
they can disclose, as does every other citizen. There is no reason they 
shouldn't disclose. If there is a reason why any company is spending 
money to make a case for what they believe is good public policy, fine. 
Let them disclose. But to vote against disclosure as a simple element 
of preserving our democracy is beyond my comprehension.
  I hope, as the electorate sees these advertisements without 
disclosure, they will say to themselves: Who are the people behind 
these advertisements? Where are all of these millions of dollars coming 
from, and what is it that they want for their money? When we ask those 
questions, in the absence of simple disclosure, I think we will come to 
understand who these shadowy figures are and what they really want. 
That is why we should pass the DISCLOSE Act, and I hope we get another 
chance to get our colleagues to reconsider.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I think Senator Menendez asked the 
right question in the absence of this Chamber doing the right thing, 
and that is staying consistent with what the Republican leader, Senator 
McConnell, said some years ago. He said that sunlight is the best 
disinfectant and that we should disclose everything. He wanted 
unlimited--mostly, I believe, if I recall, unlimited contributions but 
full disclosure. He has changed his position. I assume it is to protect 
the oil industry and perhaps the Chinese money that is coming in in 
these elections or the big Wall Street banks that have opposed my 
election, as well as the Presiding Officer because of his work on 
banking issues, and will come in against him in Oregon.
  I stand behind this idea Senator Menendez suggested, which is that if 
the Senate won't move, voters will start asking the question, Who is 
giving this money, and why are they putting in this kind of money?
  I rise--and I thank Senator Shaheen for her leadership--because big 
corporations and wealthy investors are flooding our elections with 
campaign money. They are looking for gain. We don't really know whom 
the money is from. We can guess. In my State, we think it is oil 
companies. We think it is Wall Street banks. We think it could be money 
from Chinese interests, whether it is money laundered from China 
through American corporations or directly from American corporations 
that specialize in outsourcing jobs to China and making more money. 
Look what happened with the Olympics just recently, if that doesn't 
sort of beg the question.
  We know that these dollars in Ohio are drowning out the voices of 
working middle-class people in my State and across the country. 
Consider this: The television market in Cleveland, OH, is the 18th 
largest media market in the country.
  Lots of cities come to mind that are larger: Philadelphia, Houston, 
Detroit, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, Washington, DC, 
Boston. Many cities, many media markets are larger than Cleveland, the 
18th largest television market in the country, which includes about 1.5 
million viewers. Cleveland is now No. 2 ranked in the country in 
political spending--again, larger than New York and Chicago and 
Philadelphia and Houston and San Diego. Only Los Angeles has had more 
money spent in its TV market than has Cleveland.
  The Columbus market--still significant but smaller than Cleveland's--
is not far behind in political spending.
  Why is that? The Presidential race in Ohio; the Senate race in Ohio; 
a congressional race in Ohio with two incumbents, one a Democrat and 
one a Republican, facing off, with most of the money spent by special 
interest groups; undisclosed, secret money on Cleveland television and 
Columbus television, mostly against candidates, mostly against 
incumbents, mostly against people who have a history of standing for 
the middle class against oil company interests, who have a history of 
standing for jobs and against bad trade agreements where companies 
outsource to China--which they benefit from--standing for Wall Street 
banks that have done significant damage to our country and to our 
economy.
  We do not know for sure where this money comes from. They will not 
disclose it. The people paying for these ads are simply unwilling to 
step out of the shadows. It is not hard to guess, but we simply cannot 
prove it.
  At the same time, as to all these ads that have come into Cleveland 
and have come into Columbus and all over my State, nonpartisan fact-
check organizations have discovered that many of these ads in my State 
are false. They have a rating--they have a ``true,'' ``mostly true,'' 
``mostly false,'' ``false,'' and the worst rating is ``pants on fire.'' 
``Pants on fire'' suggests that people running these ads or groups 
making these statements willfully disregard the truth or, to put it 
more succinctly, simply lie. We are seeing, in many of these ads that 
are run by these special interest groups, they are simply lying. They 
get a ``false'' or they get a ``pants on fire'' rating from PolitiFact, 
a national organization which won the Pulitzer Prize, is nonpartisan, 
and has no partisan leanings, no ideological leanings.
  It is no surprise people paying for these ads do not want to be 
associated with them. If they are an oil company,

[[Page 11348]]

they do not want the public to know how they are lying. If they are an 
American corporation that outsources to China, they do not want the 
American people to know they are the ones paying for these ads and 
lying.
  That is why this legislation is so important. These wealthy, unnamed, 
out-of-State donors can get away with this--we know this by now--
because the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision sweeps aside 
decades' worth of established jurisprudence and allows corporations and 
very wealthy individuals to spend as much as they like to defeat 
politicians who do not do their bidding.
  Big businesses and billionaires should not be able to buy elections 
and citizens should know who is behind the ads aimed at winning their 
votes.
  In one of his fireside chats--in a very different political 
environment, with very different media available to them--President 
Franklin Roosevelt said the ``use of power by any group, however 
situated, to force its interest or to use its strategic position in 
order to receive more from the common fund than its contribution to the 
common fund justifies, is an attack against and not an aid to our 
national life.''
  In a nutshell, President Roosevelt said--he could have been speaking 
to this issue today--that he called them the ``malefactors of great 
wealth.'' He called them ``economic royals.'' He called them a lot of 
things--very wealthy people who had disproportionate influence on their 
national government, even with a President who was fighting for the 
middle class, who was fighting for the common man against these 
interest groups.
  That is why the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on 
Spending in Elections Act, the DISCLOSE Act, matters. We need to pass 
this bill.
  The DISCLOSE Act would ensure greater accountability and transparency 
in corporate political spending by requiring the disclosure of 
campaign-related fundraising and spending by outside groups.
  Over the course of the past 2 years, we have seen politics 
increasingly influenced by millionaires and billionaires who secretly 
give unlimited amounts of money to manipulate American politics. These 
multimillionaires are trying to secretly buy elections.
  The DISCLOSE Act would prevent these corporations and wealthy 
individuals from using shell front groups to hide their donations from 
disclosure.
  By giving millions of dollars in secret money, these megadonors are 
looking to cash in on policies that will benefit their business 
interests.
  I do not want to make this about my State. I mentioned the huge money 
in Cleveland, the huge money in Columbus. We are seeing it in the 
Toledo market. We are seeing it in the Dayton market, the Cincinnati 
market, the Youngstown market, even those TV markets on the periphery 
of the State that serve other States: Wheeling, WV, Parkersburg, WV, 
Charleston, Huntington, WV, Fort Wayne, IN--States where you might buy 
the television time that Ohioans will see.
  I do not want to make this about my campaign. In my campaign, we have 
seen already, in Ohio, $2.5 million in special interest money, 
laundered--and I use that term advisedly--laundered through groups such 
as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, laundered through groups such as 
Crossroads--that is the group associated with George Bush's political 
director, whatever his title was--money coming through 60 Plus, money 
laundered through Concerned Women for America--who decidedly are not, I 
might add--money laundered through all kinds of organizations; 
undisclosed, secret money that comes in and does attack ads against 
elected officials.
  I can stand on my own. I am not all that concerned about what it 
means to me. I am concerned that those groups, undisclosed, want to buy 
elections. Do you know why they want to buy elections? They want to buy 
elections so they can continue the subsidies they get and the tax break 
for the oil companies. They want to buy elections so they can continue 
to outsource jobs to China and write trade rules that make it easier 
and more profitable to do that. They want to buy elections because they 
want to stop our efforts to force the six largest banks in the 
country--the Wall Street banks--to divest some of their earnings. They 
are not just too big to fail, they are also too big to manage and too 
big to regulate.
  They want to buy elections, these outside groups, because they want 
to continue the preferential treatment they get in this Congress when 
they are drug companies and to stop generic drugs and to stop 
negotiation directly with the drug companies to save money for seniors 
for their pharmaceutical drugs.
  That is what they have at stake--always, frankly, against the public 
interest, always an attack on the middle class, always an assault on 
people who simply want an opportunity to get ahead in this country--
just an opportunity, not a gift, not a handout but an opportunity to go 
to college, an opportunity to go to the local--to go to Lorain County 
Community College, an opportunity to go to school and be able to pay 
back their loans, an opportunity to get a decent job and stay in the 
town they grew up in so they can raise children around their 
grandparents--all the kinds of things most Americans agree with.
  The DISCLOSE Act would prevent these corporations from continuing to 
deceive the public and simply not informing the public of what is 
happening. Their priorities erode protections and safeguards for 
middle-class workers and their families. They seek to extend tax 
shelters for the top 1 percent. This is not just an attack on the 
integrity of our democracy. That is fundamentally what it is, but that 
is not why they do it. They do it because it is a direct assault on 
middle-class families and working Americans.
  The 1 percent will do increasingly better because of Citizens United. 
The 1 percent is mostly behind these efforts and mostly behind the 
efforts to defeat the DISCLOSE Act.
  Democracy demands openness in the public square, in our public 
conversations, and in that most sacred democratic tool: our elections. 
Under Citizens United, what we have is a sale--not a democracy--it is 
an auction going to the highest bidder. It is not an election.
  Our Nation's highest Court took an issue that was not even presented 
to the Court and decided to overturn a century of legal precedent. Our 
largest companies straddle the globe. They wield enormous influence 
already. The top Fortune 500 companies reap billions in profits. The 
average Ohio household struggles to break even, as does the average 
household from Senator Whitehouse's Rhode Island and Senator Shaheen's 
New Hampshire.
  The largest corporations leverage their enormous economic power into 
seemingly unchecked political clout.
  In 2011, corporations spent $3.3 billion lobbying Congress to 
influence legislation--$3.3 billion to lobby Congress--exerting far 
more influence on our political process than they should.
  We know they spent this $3.3 billion because they were required by 
law to disclose what they spent. My guess is, if that law did not exist 
that they had to disclose what they were spending on lobbying, some of 
my colleagues would vote against disclosure for them, what they are 
spending to influence elections. So they spend $3.3 billion to lobby. 
They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections. They work to 
repeal and roll back voter rights.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I will wrap up. Thank you. I ask unanimous consent 
for 1 more minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. We have no idea, though, what these groups are 
spending as they try to undermine our electoral system. What we know is 
that corporations and roving--if I could use that word--front groups 
are already pouring hundreds of millions into campaigns.
  The DISCLOSE Act can help clear these murky waters. The question 
ultimately is, if we cannot pass this, then our citizens need to ask 
us: Why are

[[Page 11349]]

they spending all this money? Who are these people spending this money? 
Who is spending it? Why are they spending tens of millions in my State 
and other States around the country? What is it they want? When voters 
start asking that question, I think the answer will be pretty self-
evident.
  I thank Senator Whitehouse and Senator Shaheen for their work on this 
issue.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, first, let me commend Senator Whitehouse, 
Senator Shaheen, and all those who have worked so hard with them to 
bring this cause to the public forum.
  The genius of our Founding Fathers was to establish a system of 
government in which the governed determine who represents them. It is 
easy for us, more than two centuries removed from their achievement, to 
lose sight of just how remarkable that achievement was. They overturned 
untold centuries of human history during which those with wealth and 
power made the decisions and everyone else had little or no chance to 
influence how they were governed.
  The remarkable system the Founders created has endured through war, 
crisis, depression, and doubt. But we should not mistake that endurance 
for automatic permanence. Democracy requires that we maintain the vital 
connection between the people and their elected representatives. It 
must be the voters and not the influential few who choose our Nation's 
leaders. If the people begin to doubt their central role in our 
government, it will be corrosive to democracy.
  In recent months, there has been reason for just such doubt. A 
Supreme Court ruling has opened our system to a flood of unlimited and 
secret special interest money. Inexplicably, a one-Justice majority of 
the Court decided in the Citizens United case that such unlimited, 
anonymous donations ``do not give rise to corruption or the appearance 
of corruption.''
  Many of us believed from the moment that decision was handed down 
that the Court's majority was badly mistaken. But events since that day 
have left little doubt. We have, in recent months, seen the dangerous 
consequences of the Court's ruling: a deluge of unregulated funds that 
has threatened to upend the election campaign for our Nation's highest 
office, a flood whose organizers vow will upend congressional campaigns 
across the Nation this summer and fall.
  Through super PACs and through supposedly regulated but, in fact, 
actually unregulated nonprofit organizations, the conduits through 
which this flood of secret money flows, millionaires and billionaires 
already have made massive donations to fund a barrage of attack ads, 
drenching and smothering the voices of those who are to make the 
decisions in our democracy--the people.
  According to the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent 
watchdog group, as of mid-July, these super PACs have raised more than 
$244 million to influence elections. Individuals and corporations can 
make unlimited donations to these super PACs whose donations are 
supposed to be disclosed. But the Court's decision opened the door not 
just to individuals and corporations seeking to influence elections 
with unlimited contributions, this ruling, combined with the IRS's 
failure to strictly enforce our laws on the operation of nonprofit 
groups organized as social welfare organizations under section 
501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, allows them to seek this 
influence with spending that is not only unlimited but is also secret 
because there is no requirement that donations to those 501(c)(4) 
organizations be disclosed to the public.
  Donors can seek to influence an election with huge sums of money and 
can do so now without even having to disclose their involvement. They 
do so covered by the figleaf that the nonprofit groups to which they 
donate are dedicated to ``social welfare,'' rather than partisan 
politics. That fiction dissolves the moment one looks at these social 
welfare attack ads that the IRS is, so far, blind to.
  According to an analysis of TV ad spending data by the Campaign Media 
Analysis Group, two-thirds of all ad spending by outside groups so far 
during this election cycle has come from nonprofits subject to no 
Federal public disclosure rules. Much more is on the way as election 
day approaches this fall.
  The organizations now spending millions of dollars to influence 
elections were set up for that explicit purpose, to campaign for 
candidates they favored and against candidates they opposed. Yet they 
preserve their nonprofit status and their secrecy by relying on a 
contradictory regulation and guidance from the IRS.
  This is how it works. In order to keep their tax-exempt status and 
keep donor names and donation amounts secret, organizations are set up 
as ``social welfare'' organizations under 501(c) of the Internal 
Revenue Code.
  For example, 501(c)(4), which is a very popular section of the Code 
for these organizations to claim, requires that an organization be 
operated ``exclusively''--I repeat--``exclusively for the promotion of 
social welfare''. Yet in the regulation implementing this statute, the 
IRS says: ``An organization is operated exclusively for the promotion 
of social welfare if it is primarily engaged in promoting in some way 
the common good and general welfare.''
  Under this regulation, according to the IRS, to qualify as 
``exclusively'' dedicated to social welfare, you need only be 
``primarily'' interested in social welfare. That does not fit any 
reasonable definition of ``exclusively'' that I know of.
  I have expressed my concern to the IRS about this. I pointed out to 
the IRS that the IRS took a stand on this issue once before. In 1997, 
it denied nonprofit status to an organization called the National 
Policy Forum. The IRS position then was that ``partisan political 
activity does not promote social welfare.''
  Yet the IRS's determination of a group's tax-exempt status can take 1 
year. Therefore, even if the IRS determines that these organizations 
are not legitimately ``social welfare'' organizations, it will likely 
be too late. The secret money will have already been donated and spent. 
The elections will be over.
  The contradiction in the IRS regulation is reflected in IRS 
literature designed to guide the operation of nonprofits. IRS officials 
pointed me to information on the agency's Web site that states: ``The 
promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect 
participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in 
opposition to any candidate.''
  But in the very next sentence on that same Web site, the guidance 
says, ``A social welfare organization may engage in some political 
activities, so long as that is not its primary activity.'' So that 
contradicts the plain assertion in the previous sentence that ``social 
welfare advocacy does not include campaigning.''
  It also then leaves open the question of the definition of 
``primary'' activity. An IRS publication on nonprofit organizations 
contains the same contradiction. It says:

       Promoting social welfare does not include direct or 
     indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns 
     on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public 
     office. However--

  It goes on to say--

     if you submit proof that your organization is organized 
     exclusively to promote social welfare, it can obtain an 
     exemption [from taxes] even if it participates legally in 
     some political activity on behalf of or in opposition to 
     candidates for public office.

  That makes no sense. If partisan activity does not meet the IRS 
definition of ``promoting social welfare,'' how can an organization 
that participates in partisan activity possibly be ``organized 
exclusively to promote social welfare''? So rather than providing 
clarity, the IRS is perpetuating ambiguity. It should promptly end this 
ambiguity.
  We also have a responsibility to act. The Senate and the Congress 
should act to prevent these organizations from continuing to benefit 
from their tax-

[[Page 11350]]

exempt status and hide their donor information. They should be required 
to disclose the donor and contribution information and stop hiding 
behind their nonprofit status. The facade of these TV ads not being 
partisan politics needs to be swept away. It is that simple.
  We have seen repeatedly the corrosive effects of secret money on the 
political process. We need to look to history, including modern 
history--the Watergate scandal, a single incident in U.S. modern 
history that most damaged public confidence in honest government 
involved burglaries----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. LEVIN. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the Watergate scandal, which is the single 
incident in modern U.S. history that most damaged public confidence in 
honest government, involved burglaries and dirty tricks that were paid 
for using secret campaign donations. Even by the weak standards of the 
time, much of the secret money was illegal.
  More than 20 corporations and organizations were fined and some 
executives went to jail because their secret payments to the Nixon 
campaign violated the law. Now a donor can make such secret donation 
dedicated to who knows what nefarious purpose and spend unlimited 
amounts in secret with what has, to this point, been the acquiescence 
of the IRS.
  Post-Watergate history warns us as well. We are all familiar with the 
revelations about former Senator John Edwards. His personal failings 
got most of the media attention, but let's not forget the financial 
heart of his problem: While running for President, he sought and 
received secret amounts of cash from a major campaign donor in order to 
conceal embarrassing facts that might damage the campaign. Yet huge 
secret payments to campaigns at this moment in our history are rife.
  We need to look no further than this capital city in which we work to 
see the dangers of secret money. The residents of Washington, DC, have 
learned in recent weeks that the current mayor benefited from what 
Federal prosecutors have called a ``shadow campaign'' of huge secret 
donations from a major city contractor. The chief Federal prosecutor 
has said: ``The 2010 mayoral election was corrupted by a massive 
infusion of cash that was illegally concealed from the voters of the 
District.'' If true, these charges mean that a campaign donor with a 
major financial interest in city government decisions sought to 
influence the election of the city's mayor using huge secret payments 
that concealed his involvement.
  Do any of us doubt that individuals and corporations with a vested 
interest in Federal Government outcomes are spending huge sums of money 
to influence those outcomes without ever having to disclose their 
involvement to the public? People may go to jail for such spending in 
the Washington, DC, election. Yet secret spending is common practice in 
campaigns for the highest offices in our country.
  This is not the democracy that men and women have fought to protect 
throughout our history. It's not the democracy the Founders adopted in 
our Constitution. As Adlai Stevenson once put it: ``Every man has a 
right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with 
a single set of vocal chords.'' Yet this torrent of unregulated money 
threatens to strangle the voice of the people.
  Mistaken though it may have been, the Supreme Court's decision stands 
until it is reversed. We are committed to uphold the rule of law even 
when we disagree with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the law. 
But we must be equally committed to the fight for a vibrant, open, 
representative democracy, one in which elections are determined not by 
the secret spending of billionaires, but by the will of the people.
  The bill we seek to vote on would take an important step toward 
mitigating the damage of the Citizens United decision. The DISCLOSE Act 
of 2012 would help shine the light of day on what has been, since the 
Court's ruling, an underground sewer flow of hundreds of millions of 
dollars. It would require nonprofits engaged in partisan political 
activities to disclose their major donors and their expenditures. It 
would not stop the flow of unlimited money, because we cannot under the 
Citizens United ruling, but it would at least ensure that the people 
know who is trying to influence elections.
  The Supreme Court has consistently maintained that requiring 
disclosure is constitutional. Even in the Citizens United case, the 
Court's majority said, ``Disclosure permits citizens and shareholders 
to react to the speech of corporate entities in the proper way. This 
transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give 
proper weight to different speakers and messages.'' Indeed, the 
majority's reliance on disclosure is key to their argument that 
unlimited spending from corporations would not create corruption or its 
appearance. The same Supreme Court that has allowed this flood of money 
has said Congress can require it to be disclosed. We should do so, and 
so promptly.
  It is difficult to understand why Members of the Senate could oppose 
these simple, straightforward disclosure requirements. It is difficult 
to imagine that we would be comfortable telling our constituents that 
we voted to uphold the veil of secrecy that now shields this flood of 
money from public view. And it is even more remarkable that some of us 
would vote, not just to maintain that secrecy, but to prevent the 
Senate even from debating it. The filibuster of this legislation, if 
successful, will signal shocking acquiescence to a system in which the 
wealthy, fortunate few can seek to shape the outcome of elections in 
secret, without the Senate even voting on whether to continue that 
secret system.
  There are those in this body who defend the flood of secret cash in 
our politics. It is hard for this Senator to understand how those 
Senators explain to their constituents that they do not deserve to know 
who is spending millions to influence elections. But it is doubly 
difficult to accept the refusal of my colleagues to allow us to vote on 
this bill by filibustering the motion intended to let us proceed to 
that vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, since the Supreme Court's decision 2 
years ago in Citizens United, we have seen a new system of campaign 
finance emerge. Without limits on donations or limits on spending by 
outside groups such as super PACs, we have been inundated with mostly 
political advertisements while candidates from both sides of the aisle 
struggle to raise more and more money just to keep up.
  Nearly $170 million has been spent so far in this election cycle by 
outside groups, and that does not include much the candidates 
themselves have spent. Just think what good we could do with that $170 
million. The rising influence of donors and corporations is a problem. 
But the larger issue, and the one we are here to talk about--and I wish 
to recognize the leadership of Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island, 
who has done such a great job of raising the importance of this issue. 
The larger issue is the prevalence of secret money that is increasingly 
making its way into our campaigns. Millions of dollars of untraceable 
money have already been spent during this election. This spending is 
unacceptable because there is too much at stake in this election for 
Americans who are struggling. By that, I am not talking about the 
secret donors who can afford to spend millions of dollars on secret 
political ads. I am talking about middle-class families who are 
struggling with their mortgages, trying to pay for college, fighting to 
get their credit card payments mailed in on time. These are the 
Americans who need our attention.
  They deserve to know who paid for the most recent negative ad they 
see on their television. The truth is middle-class families will not be 
able to catch a break unless we start by reducing the influence of 
special interests, of big donors, and of corporate lobbyists, and that 
is what the DISCLOSE Act is about. That is why it deserves our support.

[[Page 11351]]

  We have heard Senator Levin speak very eloquently to the 501(c)(4) 
organizations, those organizations that are allowed to keep their 
donors secret. In many cases, they are actually allowed to deduct those 
contributions. Those secret donors can deduct those contributions from 
their taxes. It is hard to understand why they should be allowed to do 
that. It is not right. It is not fair. We need to change the system.
  Some have objected to requiring disclosure of donors because they say 
it undermines free speech. Let me address that. Because our democracy 
is based on the free exchange of ideas--and political speech should 
enjoy the highest level of protection--we should recognize that 
citizens always have the right to speak and be heard, especially on 
matters as important as who should represent them in Washington.
  That is not what the DISCLOSE Act is about. It is precisely because 
we need to make sure citizens stay involved in the political process 
that we need this reform, because freedom of speech does not mean 
freedom of secrecy. Anonymous political speech by these organizations 
has no place in our democracy. Accountability, transparency, and 
credibility must be preserved in our political system.
  When I talk to voters in New Hampshire these days, they are not 
optimistic about being heard in Washington. According to the Granite 
State Poll that is done by the University of New Hampshire, three-
quarters of our New Hampshire adults think Members of Congress are more 
interested in serving special interest groups. One-quarter of New 
Hampshire adults think they have no influence at all on what the 
Federal Government does.
  People throughout New Hampshire and throughout this country do not 
believe their interests are being represented. What they do support is 
the kind of legislation we are talking about in the DISCLOSE Act. 
Three-quarters of New Hampshire adults strongly support a law that 
would require corporations, unions, and nonprofit groups to disclose 
their sources of spending when they participate in elections, and this 
support is not limited to New Hampshire.
  According to a Greenberg-Quinlan poll recently, 77 percent of voters 
nationwide, regardless of party, say reforming our campaign finance 
system is very important.
  I get a lot of cards and letters from people. Most of the people who 
write to me and write to all of us sign their names. Because they sign 
their names, we know who they are and we can respond. We can correct 
misunderstandings. We can engage in a discussion with them about 
policies before the Congress. The same should be true for political 
speech.
  Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote--and we put this on poster board 
because I thought it was so apropos to what we have been talking about 
with the DISCLOSE Act. He said:

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

  It is important for donors to own their participation. That is what 
the DISCLOSE Act is about. That is why we should all vote to support 
it.
  I can't finish my remarks without talking about a New Hampshire woman 
who really represents what we are talking about when we talk about 
participation in the political process. Her name was Doris Haddock, or 
Granny D, as we in New Hampshire knew her. Some people may remember 
that when she was 89 years old, she started walking across America to 
call attention to the importance of campaign finance reform. In the 14 
months she took to walk across this country--and she turned 90 on the 
way--she traveled 3,200 miles, went through four pairs of sneakers, and 
everywhere she stopped, she talked about the importance of addressing 
campaign finance reform so that ordinary Americans could be heard.
  Well, Granny D died 2 years ago at the age of 100.
  She left behind 2 children, 8 grandchildren, and 16 great-
grandchildren. She also left behind an incredible legacy that embodies 
the importance of what the first amendment was designed to protect and 
what it need not protect.
  We need to make sure people like Granny D can continue to be heard 
regardless of how much money they have. That is why we need the 
DISCLOSE Act. The first amendment doesn't protect the rights of shell 
corporations and dummy organizations to flood our airwaves with 
negative ads using money from anonymous donors. Let's take a lesson 
from Granny D and take a stand and pull back the curtain to see who is 
behind all of this secret money. The DISCLOSE Act will allow us to do 
that. That is why we should support its passage. I hope our colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle will decide they should join us. It is 
critical to our democratic process.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I rise this evening in support of the 
DISCLOSE Act, legislation to shine some sunlight onto our elections, to 
restore transparency and accountability into this Nation's political 
campaigns.
  The DISCLOSE Act is a responsible step toward making sure that people 
decide the course of our future; that people make their own choices 
based on good information; that people always have the ability to hold 
this government accountable through transparency.
  Right now, that's not the case.
  On January 21 of 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that 
gave power to corporations to spend unlimited money on political 
campaigns--with no transparency whatsoever.
  That includes foreign corporations, by the way. So, for example, it 
would be pretty easy for a Chinese company to start spending a lot of 
money to influence American elections, again, with no transparency 
whatsoever.
  The Citizens United decision has already dealt a blow to our 
democracy. It is allowing a handful of billionaires, corporations and 
secretive groups that represent special interests to try and buy votes.
  That already happened in Montana once. And the people of Montana put 
a stop to it one hundred years ago.
  At the turn of last century, one of the world's wealthiest men 
literally bought himself a seat in the U.S. Senate. His name was 
William Clark. He was one of the mining barons of the Gilded Age. Mr. 
Clark left his mark across this Nation. In fact, Clark County, Nevada, 
is named for him.
  Back then, Montana's legislature got to choose who served in the U.S. 
Senate. So William Clark paid as many legislators as he could to send 
him to Washington.
  In fact, he spent a staggering $431,000 buying his Senate seat in 
1899. That's equivalent to about $11 million today.
  This bold bribery was a national scandal back then. And it shaped 
Montana forever. Because of what William Clark did, Montana passed a 
law in 1912 limiting the influence of wealthy corporations over our 
elections.
  And just as important, the scandal showed us that as Montanans, 
transparency prevents corruption. Transparency allows for 
accountability.
  Mr. President, transparency in government is a fundamental value in 
Montana.
  A few weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Montana's 
important 1912 law to guarantee transparency and accountability in our 
elections.
  Citing its own Citizens United decision--and the idea that 
corporations somehow have the same rights as individual people--the 
U.S. Supreme Court tossed out Montana's century-old law.
  Now the secretive special interests are taking full advantage of this 
uneven playing field. They are buying up millions of dollars of time on 
the airwaves, blanketing Montana with lies and distortions in order to 
influence voters. And Montanans are getting sick of it.
  Like 100 years ago, a few millionaires and billionaires are 
bankrolling secretive campaign spending.
  And they are steamrolling our democracy, because they are doing it in 
secret, with no accountability and transparency.
  I support undoing the Citizens United decision by amending the U.S. 
Constitution. That's a heavy lift. But it's

[[Page 11352]]

one I, along with many of my colleagues, support. And in the meantime, 
let's make our elections more transparent. I join most Montanans when I 
say that any money spent influencing voters ought to be transparent, no 
matter where it comes from.
  That is exactly what this DISCLOSE Act does.
  Mr. President, I don't think anyone here has heard complaints about 
too much transparency when it comes to political TV ads.
  The DISCLOSE Act requires any organization or individual who spends 
$10,000 or more on a political campaign to report that expenditure 
within 24 hours.
  No organization or type of organization is exempt. It applies to 
superpacs, unions, and so-called ``issue advocacy'' organizations.
  That is not stifling free speech. That is responsibility. It is 
accountability.
  The DISCLOSE Act strengthens our freedom to make' informed decisions 
about our democracy.
  And for folks in Montana, it's a chance for us to put our priorities 
back ahead of special interests, for Montanans to make their own 
choices free from the influence of unlimited spending by multinational 
corporations.
  It's what the people of this Nation deserve. I urge all of my 
colleagues to vote for that transparency.
  A vote against the DISCLOSE Act is a vote to allow secretive special 
interests to buy something that should never, ever be for sale--our 
democracy and the power to make our own decisions, with good 
information, full transparency, and full accountability.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, before the Senator from Montana 
leaves, I want to ask him a question. Did he hear, earlier this 
evening, a Senator come out here and say he thought the DISCLOSE Act 
would intimidate people from participating in the political process? Is 
the fact of disclosing where the money is coming from supposed to be an 
intimidation?
  Mr. TESTER. Well, anytime transparency and accountability is an 
intimidation, that means there is a different agenda behind that money. 
I say that I think the DISCLOSE Act is a well-crafted, smart bill that 
allows transparency and accountability in our election process. When 
accountability and transparency become a bad thing, we are in big 
trouble in this country.
  I thank the Senator for the question.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Yes, indeed. I thank the Senator for his 
comments. My comments will be very similar because the DISCLOSE Act is 
a very simple piece of legislation, and it is about letting people know 
who is spending money and how much in order to influence elections, and 
therefore not to allow the democratic process of electing officials to 
be taken over by a few superdonors who pay for these slash-and-burn 
negative ads that are also, by the way, patently false.
  I have had $8 million of negative attack ads run against me. Every 
independent fact-checking organization has said they are either false 
or pants-on-fire false. Yet the public doesn't know where the money is 
coming from in order to run these kinds of ads.
  I really have never seen this kind of situation we are facing this 
year because this 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision has left the door open 
for these megadonors to secretly finance and propel the flow of false 
information. It is not just happening in my State; we are hearing that 
it is happening in a bunch of States. It is not just in Senate 
elections; it is happening in elections at all levels, including the 
Presidential election. What is happening is that these people and these 
organizations are donating so they can satisfy their own agendas, and 
they do so in their own self-interest, to see that it is going to be 
protected in Washington. The ones who are running ads in my State of 
Florida clearly don't care about Florida; they care about their own 
political agenda. In essence, they are trying to buy elections.
  So with this new crop of secretive donors seemingly popping up--new 
ones every day--there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. That is why 
we need a law like the DISCLOSE Act. Voters need to know who is 
influencing the elections. We as Federal candidates have to know 
basically every dime of political contributions and--oh, by the way, we 
are limited in the amount of contributions per contributor that we can 
take, and we can only take from people, not from a corporation. We are 
obviously seeing how distorted the implementation of this 5-to-4 
Supreme Court decision is in this law. That is why we have to pass a 
bill to at least bring it out into the sunshine.
  In this Citizens United 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision which allows 
these unlimited donations, the Supreme Court even said in a part of the 
opinion that there is a need for transparency. Well, that is what we 
are trying to accomplish with this legislation. The Supreme Court, in 
its opinion, said that voters should be well informed about the group 
or the person who is speaking in what they consider free speech. Well, 
that is exactly what this legislation intends to do. It informs the 
electorate, makes sure they have the information they need to judge the 
message for themselves.
  This onslaught of unlimited, anonymous contributions puts everyday 
folks at risk of having their voices drowned out by the billionaires 
and the corporations. If the campaign law says the average person has 
to disclose their contribution to a candidate, why shouldn't 
billionaires and millionaires have to do so as well? It is a question 
of fairness. There should not be two sets of standards for political 
contributions.
  That is why we are here on the Senate floor well into the night 
supporting the DISCLOSE Act. We ought to pass this bill. Yet you see 
partisan politics at its worst when the votes are being recorded. It is 
simple. It says what has already been described: The person who wants 
to donate $100, even $1,000, if they are going through a super PAC, 
they don't have to disclose that, but if they are donating $10,000 or 
more, then that ought to be disclosed and we ought to know where that 
money is coming from and what their agenda is by virtue of us knowing 
where the money is coming from.
  This legislation will stop the special treatment for the super PACs 
by making sure they play by the rules everybody else has to play by.
  Mr. President, there is going to be a lot of commentary tonight. I 
thank the Chair for the opportunity, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, let me, first of all, thank 
Senator Whitehouse for heading up this campaign finance task force. I 
think this has been a real solid effort by a number of Senators. 
Senator Whitehouse, whether it is at Netroots or on the Senate floor, 
has been participating this evening, and we appreciate all of his help. 
The Presiding Officer, Senator Merkley, has also been a key member of 
the task force. Senator Bennet, who is going to be speaking after I 
have finished, is another member of the task force. So we appreciate 
being allowed to get together.
  What we need to be reminded of this evening is where we are. We just 
took a vote to try to get onto the DISCLOSE Act, and 51 Democrats said 
let's get onto the bill, with 44 Republicans--not a single Republican--
voting not to allow us to move to the bill.
  Basically, as Senators Bennet, Whitehouse, and Merkley know, the 
Senate is now in the mode of a full filibuster. We are on a motion to 
proceed and have not been allowed to move to the bill. So people should 
recognize that is the posture we are in right now, so we are going to 
be down here talking about this issue.
  I have joined my colleagues to talk about this serious problem of 
campaign finance reform, one that threatens the very nature of our 
democracy. That threat is the unprecedented flow of money into our 
elections. We need to look at this dangerous torrent of money and 
consider how to stop it. I believe a step in the right direction is the 
DISCLOSE Act.
  In January 2010 the Supreme Court issued its disastrous opinion in 
Citizens United v. FEC. Two months later, the

[[Page 11353]]

DC Circuit Court of Appeals decided the SpeechNow v. FEC, which the 
Supreme Court upheld. These two cases gave rise to super PACs. They 
opened the floodgates of secret cash. Super PACs have poured millions 
of dollars into negative and misleading campaign ads, and, as they 
often do, under the cover of darkness--quiet, stealthy, without 
disclosing the true source of the donations.
  It is ironic. They make all this sound and fury on the airwaves, but 
they are silent on who is paying for it. Why? Why the silence? Why the 
cat and mouse? The American people are blessed with common sense. They 
know usually when someone will not admit to something it is because 
there is something to hide. They have seen where all that shadowy 
campaign money can take us--to corruption, to scandal, to places like 
Watergate, dark days where we have been before. And believe me, I don't 
think the American people want to go back to the era when we had big 
suitcases of cash, with the President keeping cash in his White House 
safe. The American people don't want to return to that time.
  The Citizens United and SpeechNow decision sparked a renewed focus on 
the need for campaign finance reform. But let's be clear, the Court 
laid the groundwork for this broken system many years ago. In 1976 the 
Court held in Buckley v. Valeo that restricting independent campaign 
expenditures violates the first amendment right to free speech. That 
ruling established the flawed precedent that money and speech are the 
same thing--another nail in the coffin of common sense. The result: 
elections based too much on the ability to raise money and too little 
on the quality of ideas, too much on a dedication to fundraising and 
too little on the public good.
  Money and free speech are not the same, and it is a tortured logic to 
say they are. They may seem comparable in the rarified hallways of the 
Supreme Court but not in the rough and tumble streets of political 
campaigns. We know this. The super PACs writing these huge checks know 
it too, and they must be chuckling all the way to the bank. But the 
American people do not find this funny--infuriating perhaps but 
definitely not funny.
  I don't think we can truly fix this broken system until we undo the 
false premise that spending money on elections is the same thing as the 
constitutional right of free speech. That can only be achieved if the 
Court overturns Buckley or we amend the Constitution. Until then, we 
will fall short of the real reform that is needed. But we still should 
do all we can in the meantime to make a bad situation better, and that 
is what we have been trying to do with the DISCLOSE Act. That is what 
we must do with the DISCLOSE Act. It is not the comprehensive reform I 
would like to see, but the perfect should not be the enemy of the good, 
and the DISCLOSE Act is the good we can do now. It is a step forward, a 
vital step forward, even with the flawed Supreme Court precedents that 
constrain us.
  The DISCLOSE Act is a step out of the shadows, and that is exactly 
where we need to be headed. The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 asks a simple 
question--an important and eminently fair question: Where does the 
money come from and where is it going?
  If we don't start asking that question, we may soon be asking another 
one, one we heard when scandal shook this country in years passed: What 
did he know and when did he know it? It is a simple question that 
follows the money because the American people have a right to know who 
is writing the checks.
  Under the bill any covered organization, including corporations, 
labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and super PACs that spend 
$10,000 or more on campaign-related disbursements during an election 
cycle, would have to file a report with the Federal Election Commission 
that discloses all donations above $10,000.
  It also requires the disclosure of any transfer made to a third party 
for the purposes of campaign-related expenditures. This addresses the 
growing problem of using so-called social welfare organizations to 
funnel anonymous money to super PACs.
  This is a practical, sensible measure. It doesn't get money out of 
our elections, but it does shine a light into the dark corners of the 
campaign finance system. A similar bill in the last Congress had broad 
bipartisan support, with 59 votes in the Senate and passing the House. 
Since then we have all watched a flood of money raining down during 
this election year. We are seeing the real impact of the Citizens 
United and SpeechNow decisions on our elections. The need for this 
legislation has become even more apparent.
  I serve on the Senate Rules Committee, and in March Chairman Schumer 
held a hearing on the DISCLOSE Act. We heard several concerns about the 
bill, both from our Republican colleagues on the committee and their 
witness. At the hearing, the minority witness claimed there were many 
provisions in the bill he disliked. He said:

       I think perhaps the most radical is the government-mandated 
     disclaimer.

  While I disagree with his assertion that standing by your ad is a 
radical idea, that is no longer an issue in this bill. We have taken 
the disclaimer provision out. I still believe it is an important 
provision, but we listened to the minority's concerns and revised the 
bill.
  Another concern raised at the hearing was the effective date of the 
legislation. Senator Alexander is our ranking member on the committee, 
and I think a great deal of him and appreciate the work he and Chairman 
Schumer have done on this and many other issues. At the hearing on 
DISCLOSE, Senator Alexander said the following:

       This hearing is as predictable as the spring flowers in the 
     middle of an election. My friends on the other side of the 
     aisle are trying to change the campaign finance laws to 
     discourage contributions from people with whom they disagree, 
     all to take effect on July 1, 2012.

  Well, guess what, Senator Alexander. We have also addressed this 
concern. The bill has been changed so that the disclosure requirements 
go into effect at the beginning of next year. So the shadow groups can 
still do everything in their power to buy this election. They can still 
hide their faces from the voters, but they will have to step to the 
plate the next time around. They can still write the checks, they can 
still try to buy future elections, but they will finally have to say 
who they are at the checkout stand.
  The bill we are considering is as simple and straightforward as it 
gets: If you are making large donations to influence an election, the 
voters in that election should know who you are. That is not a radical 
concept.
  What is disappointing is that this type of disclosure, and campaign 
finance reform more generally, used to have broad bipartisan support. 
Now that conservative super PACs are raising huge sums of cash and 
hiding many of their donors, disclosure has suddenly become another 
partisan issue.
  If we look at past reform efforts, they have always been bipartisan. 
In 1972, the Federal Election Campaign Act passed with strong 
bipartisan support from both parties. After Watergate, Democrats and 
Republicans came together, again to strengthen the act and set limits 
on independent expenditures. More recently, in 2002, we passed the 
bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain-Feingold. That 
bill passed in the Senate with broad support. Five of our current 
Republican colleagues voted for it.
  The constitutional amendment that Senator Bennet and I introduced 
this Congress also used to be bipartisan. Senator Fritz Hollings was 
the lead sponsor for many years, but the amendment was always 
bipartisan. It had the support of respected Republican Senators such as 
Ted Stevens, Arlen Specter, John Danforth, Thad Cochran, and John 
McCain.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has utilized 10 minutes.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
I be allowed an additional 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. So we can see why I am disappointed with the

[[Page 11354]]

partisanship that has taken over this important issue. It is not like 
the problem of money influencing our elections has been solved. The 
recent Supreme Court decision struck down laws my Republican colleagues 
voted for. I hope they will be willing to work with us now to pass 
disclosure laws that will withstand judicial scrutiny.
  And unless we take action, I fear things will only get worse. Earlier 
this year, my friend Senator John McCain said the following at a panel 
discussion on campaign finance reform:

       What the Supreme Court did [in Citizens United] is a 
     combination of arrogance, naivete and stupidity the likes of 
     which I have never seen. I promise you, there will be huge 
     scandals because there's too much money washing around, too 
     much of it we don't know who's behind it and too much 
     corruption associated with that kind of money.

  I think Senator McCain is right. I recall the debate when we 
considered the DISCLOSE Act in the last Congress. Many of our concerns 
then were still hypothetical. We could only guess how bad it might get. 
Well, now we know. Unfortunately, our worst fears have come true.
  The toxic effect of the Citizens United and SpeechNow decisions has 
become brutally clear. The floodgates of campaign spending are open and 
gushing and threaten to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.
  Look at what we have seen already. Huge sums of unregulated, 
unaccountable money are flooding the airwaves. An endless wave of 
attack ads, paid for by billionaires, is poisoning our political 
discourse 501c4 social welfare organizations are abusing their non-
profit status. They shield their donors and then funnel the money into 
Super PACs.
  The American public, rightly so, looks on in disgust.
  A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that nearly 70% of 
registered voters would like Super PACs to be illegal. Among 
independent voters, that figure rose to 78%. Supporters of Super PACs 
and unlimited campaign spending claim they are promoting the democratic 
process. But the public knows better--wealthy individuals and special 
interests are buying our elections.
  Our nation cannot afford a system that says, ``come on in'' to the 
rich and powerful, but then says ``don't bother'' to everyone else.
  The faith of the American people in their electoral system is shaken 
by big money. It is time to restore that faith. It is time for Congress 
to take back control.
  There is a great deal to be done to fix our campaign finance system. 
I will continue to push for a constitutional amendment that will allow 
comprehensive reform. But, in the interim, let's at least shine a light 
on the money. The American people deserve to know where this money is 
coming from. And they deserve to know before, not after, they head to 
the polls. That is what the DISCLOSE Act will achieve.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I thank my neighbor, the Senator from New 
Mexico, for his kind words and his leadership on this issue. I have 
been privileged to have the chance to cosponsor a constitutional 
amendment that I think responds very nicely to what he hears from his 
constituents, as I hear from mine, whether they are Republicans, 
Democrats, or Independent voters. I also want to thank the Senator from 
Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, for organizing this time tonight and for 
his leadership over these many months.
  It is 8:45 p.m. tonight in Washington, DC, as we debate this bill. We 
are not actually debating the bill because we weren't even allowed to 
move to a debate on the bill. I can't tell you the number of times we 
haven't been able to do that.
  I am often struck by the fact that I think the Founding Fathers would 
have wanted us to debate all these bills and to vote up or down on each 
one and then to go home and explain to our constituents why we voted 
one way or why we voted another way. But here we are, not technically 
debating a bill, once again, because we haven't even been able to move 
onto a piece of legislation that historically has been and I hope will 
again become bipartisan.
  As I mentioned, it is 8:45 here. At home in Colorado, it is 6:45. It 
is dinnertime. Families are sitting around having dinner with their 
loved ones, much as I did when I was a boy. I can remember my parents, 
who followed public affairs closely, turned on the evening news every 
night about this time, and Walter Cronkite would be on the television. 
I remember that the ads, as probably does the Senator from New Mexico, 
were things like Geritol, things that cleaned your dentures. I remember 
one ad in particular--I never could believe they could get the cherry 
stains out of those pearls, but every single night they were able to do 
it. And if there was a political ad on television, the candidate had to 
get on at the end and say: My name is Michael Bennet, my name is Jeff 
Merkley, my name is Tom Udall or Dick Durbin or Harry Reid or Sheldon 
Whitehouse, and I approve this message. That is what we saw when I was 
a child.
  Tonight, families all over my State, which is a swing State, are 
going to have to endure advertisement after advertisement that is not 
advertising those consumer products I described but are advocating for 
candidates and political ideas. And many of them will have phony names. 
The Committee for a Strong America or Tall Children or Strong Teeth is 
what they are going to see. Now, because of what the Supreme Court 
ruling did, they can't even find out, if they wanted to, who is 
donating to those in many cases fake committees.
  I wish to start out tonight by making clear what is not at issue with 
this bill. This is not a constitutional question we are debating here 
tonight. There is not a question that disclosure and disclaimer--which 
this bill doesn't even do--is constitutional. Eight of nine Supreme 
Court Justices have not only said it is constitutional but some have 
said that is a desired result.
  Justice Scalia said:

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

  For my part, I do not look forward to a society that, thanks to the 
Supreme Court, campaigns anonymously and even exercises the direct 
democracy of initiative and referendum hidden from public scrutiny and 
protected from the accountability of criticism. This does not resemble 
the home of the brave. It takes courage to put your name on something, 
to stand for something that is unpopular. It doesn't take a lot of 
courage to let somebody use your money in a way that keeps you 
completely anonymous and imposes something on families in our States 
who are trying to make a fundamental American decision to vote in a 
democracy. That doesn't take courage. That is the point Justice Scalia 
was making because Justice Scalia, I believe, thought Congress would do 
its job and enact what is constitutional, require disclosure, require 
disclaimer.
  This issue is one that has been well understood in this country since 
its founding. Here is Patrick Henry in 1788:

       The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, 
     secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed 
     from them.

  Accountability and transparency--that is what this legislation is 
about, and it is emphatically constitutional. So if somebody comes and 
tells you this is about the Constitution, tell them that eight of nine 
Supreme Court Justices have already ruled on this question. They have 
already ruled that what is in the content of this act is 
constitutional.
  What is happening out there as a consequence of a decision that was 
made by the Supreme Court on the one hand and the failure of the 
Congress to act in a timely manner on the other? Well, these super PACs 
have come into being, these anonymous folks who have been able to give 
money.
  There is an owner of a casino in Las Vegas, and he has actually given 
more money to super PACs in 2012 than anybody else in the country--at 
least that is my understanding--but to him this is chump change. So far 
he has given $35 million, and he says he is going to give more than 
that. That is a lot of

[[Page 11355]]

money to most people, but it is not a lot of money to this guy because 
he has a net worth of $23.9 billion.
  We did some math at home, and what we figured out is that in Colorado 
and in America, the average family's net worth is roughly $77,000. So 
if they were to spend the same percentage of their net worth that this 
one casino owner in Las Vegas has spent of his net worth, that would be 
about $108, which is about what people spend a week on groceries who 
are making this kind of money. To them, that would be a little bit of a 
sacrifice, $108, but if they knew they could control the outcome of 
elections in State after State, if they could influence the election of 
the very President of the United States by spending .0001 of their net 
worth, $108, they might do it.
  This is pocket change for him. These numbers get so big it is hard 
sometimes to think about what it means. This one person's net worth is 
332,000 times the net worth of our average family.
  Think about it this way: The median household income in Colorado is 
roughly $56,000. A family earning $56,000 in Colorado every year, year 
in and year out, who never paid any taxes--and is probably paying a 
higher rate, by the way, than this guy in Las Vegas--but who never paid 
any taxes, who never spent one penny of their salary--$56,000 a year, 
year in and year out and didn't spend a nickel of it--would have to do 
that for 441,000 years before it added up to what this guy has. Just to 
give you a sense of perspective, human beings made their appearance on 
this planet 200,000 years ago--less than half of what it would take for 
this diligent and prudent family to raise what this fellow is worth. It 
gives you a sense of the order of magnitude.
  As some of my colleagues have said, one aspect that is really 
interesting about this super PAC phenomenon is it is a very small group 
of very wealthy people who are contributing to it. It is not most 
corporations. It is not some people who have some means. This is a 
tiny, tiny group of people who are committed to a set of political 
outcomes in their economic interests that I am not sure are in the same 
interests of most of the folks who live in my State.
  Again, we are not saying they can't do it. This bill doesn't say they 
can't do it. This bill just says: If you are going to do it, you need 
to tell us who you are. We want to know who you are. Step up and say 
why it is you are doing what you are doing.
  It is not surprising, by the way, that this problem has become 
enormous since this decision was made. In 2006, 1 percent of donors 
were undisclosed; that was it. Ninety-nine percent were disclosed, and 
1 percent was not disclosed. It is even worse today.
  This is 2010, the year I was running and a year when Colorado saw 
more outside money on television than anybody should deserve to see, 
more outside money than any State in the United States of America, and 
44 percent of the money that was spent was not disclosed. The identity 
of the people who gave the money was not disclosed. That is virtually 
half of what was spent, and it is going to be worse this year.
  I have three daughters who are 12, 11, and 7, and everybody who has 
been a parent would know this intuitively. Not surprisingly, as the 
spending has become more anonymous, the advertising has become more 
negative. If one of my kids thinks they can get away with doing 
something negative to one of their sisters--which is not often, but it 
happens--if they think they can get away with it without anybody 
catching them, they are a lot more likely to do it than if they know 
somebody is watching.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has utilized 10 minutes.
  Mr. BENNET. I ask for an additional 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BENNET. I thank the Presiding Officer.
  So you can see that the portion of positive advertising here is much, 
much higher than the negative.
  Today it is almost entirely negative. And between the hours of 6 p.m. 
and 9 p.m. tonight in the State of Colorado and across the United 
States of America, those graphs are going to be borne out by negative 
ad after negative ad.
  We face enormous structural issues in the economy in this country. We 
faced them for a while, and we are facing them again because, as you 
can see from this chart, GDP growth, our economic output, has decoupled 
from wage growth and job growth. That is what has happened in the 
United States. And the job of this Congress and the job of this 
administration and our generation's job is to recouple this so that we 
have a rising middle class. And that is what we should be spending our 
time on as we think about reforming our Tax Code and our regulatory 
code and our statute books. But there are some folks around who aren't 
necessarily all that interested in that because the current system 
works pretty well for them.
  I can't tell you the number of times I have heard people say in this 
Chamber that the government shouldn't pick winners and losers. That is 
really easy to say when you are on the winning side. We ought to have a 
set of rules that are responsive to the needs of the vast majority of 
American people--whether Republicans, Democrats, or Independents--who 
together, no matter where they are in the economic spectrum, all want 
essentially the same thing, which is to make sure we are not the first 
generation of Americans to leave less opportunity, not more, to the 
people who are coming afterwards. I believe that anybody who wants to 
come to that debate, anybody who wants to play in that game is welcome, 
but they ought to tell us who they are.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I see the Senator from Illinois is 
here, and I look forward to his remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for his 
remarks, and a special thanks to my colleague from Rhode Island, 
Sheldon Whitehouse, for gathering us here this evening.
  It is almost 8:30 Washington time. The Chamber is otherwise empty. 
Senator Stabenow from Michigan is preparing to speak.
  This is not really a Senate debate. That happens almost never in this 
body, which is unfortunate. I had hoped that perhaps some Members from 
the other side would come and defend their position, but they haven't. 
It is their right to go home, and they have done it. We think it is 
worth a few minutes of our time to come even this late at night to talk 
about this issue.
  Lyndon Johnson was a pretty famous Senator and President, and back in 
the day he used to say that when he was looking for advisers, he wished 
he had someone near him who would run for sheriff. What President 
Johnson was saying is that the practical experience of politics is 
somehow a lot different from what many people imagine.
  I thought of that when I reflected on this Supreme Court currently 
sitting--the same Court that decided Citizens United--and the fact that 
not one of them has ever stood for election, none of them has gone 
through a campaign. When they addressed Citizens United, it was 
strictly from a legalistic academic viewpoint, and the decision 
reflected it because it was such a gross departure from where we have 
been as a nation.
  A Presidential candidate may argue that corporations are people. Our 
Supreme Court, in Citizens United, said the views of corporations 
should be treated like the views of people, like the free speech every 
American is guaranteed under our Constitution, and with just that twist 
of a phrase they have literally changed the face of politics in America 
in a negative fashion.
  I would say the Citizens United case from the Supreme Court was as 
negative on the political process of America as the Dred Scott decision 
by the same Supreme Court was on the social fabric of America. What 
they have unleashed with Citizens United is a force we have never, ever 
seen before in American politics. It is the force of anonymous, secret 
donors--people, oligarchs, millionaires and billionaires who are 
determined to impose their political will on the body politic and will 
spend whatever it takes to achieve it.

[[Page 11356]]

  We are seeing it all across the country. There is not a single 
contested Senate race in which these super PACs have not arrived and 
spent $5, $10, $12, $15 million already in negative advertising across 
this country--most of it unaccounted for.
  The DISCLOSE Act, which brings us together this evening, is very 
basic in that people who give more than $10,000 must disclose their 
identity. It applies to labor unions, corporations, everyone--it is 
across the board. Disclosure used to be one of the tenets, one of the 
pillars of the Republican position. They used to say: Don't limit what 
a person can give as long as they disclose it in a timely fashion.
  They amended their decision after Citizens United and lopped off the 
end of it: Don't limit what a person can give--period. They do not call 
for timely disclosure anymore.
  The DISCLOSE Act does. Why is it important? It is important because 
Americans have good judgment, and they know if a person--for example, 
the Koch brothers, the Koch brothers of Pennsylvania, if I am not 
mistaken, wherever their home is--they are interested in energy and oil 
production. If they invest millions of dollars on behalf of a certain 
candidate, many voters will say: I wonder what that candidate's 
position is on the issues of the tax treatment of oil companies, on 
energy tax credits, and the like. So Americans will ask the right 
question as long as they know who is behind the issue. Under Citizens 
United there is no compulsion.
  Senator Bennet of Colorado said just moments ago the Supreme Court 
made it clear in the Citizens United decision that though they were 
unleashing the opportunity to contribute, they expected there would be 
accountability--like the DISCLOSE Act. Unfortunately, they did not 
anticipate it would become a partisan issue, and virtually no 
Republicans have supported us. Today when the vote was cast, not a 
single Republican would vote to bring this bill to the floor for 
debate.
  We are now in the midst of a Republican filibuster on the DISCLOSE 
Act, another Republican filibuster. Not one single Republican Senator 
would join us in this effort to bring this bill to the floor for 
debate, amendment, and a vote. We have seen so many Republican 
filibusters. Now we see this one.
  The reason this is more important than most is it gets to the heart 
of our political process. It isn't a matter of who spends what and how 
much in a campaign. I look at it in a little different perspective. I 
am concerned about who will run for office. I used to put myself in the 
category--I think it still applies--of mere mortals who decide to get 
involved in politics. I do not come from wealth. I am not a wealthy 
person. I have never relied on my personal wealth to get me elected. If 
I did, it wouldn't last very long.
  I wonder if people like me will ever get engaged in politics after 
Citizens United. They have to stop and think: No matter how many doors 
I knock on, no matter how many hands I shake, no matter how often I 
study the issues and take the positions I think are meaningful and 
would resonate with voters, the fact is some super PAC could arrive 
tomorrow, spend $1 million, and blow me away. That is a humbling 
thought for someone deciding to engage in a race for public office for 
the first time.
  I think this gets to the heart of what is wrong with politics in 
America--the cost and nature of our political campaigns. It is a fact--
we hear it every day on the floor of the Senate--people measure the 
gravity and importance of votes in terms of their political impact. How 
many times have I heard someone cast a vote here and afterwards say: 
That will be a good 30-second spot. We think about that because we know 
that is what our life experience translates into--messages that can be 
delivered through the media to the voters. Now this outside force comes 
along and spends enormous amounts of money, dramatically increasing the 
amount that has been spent.
  As was said earlier, in 2006, outside groups spent $70 million to 
influence Federal midterm elections; 4 years later super PACs, outside 
groups, spent $294 million, four times as much. Trust me, it is on its 
way up.
  What will the average family think about this? I said to my 
colleagues at lunch a few weeks back: I think the average voter looks 
at this enormous wash of money coming into American politics much the 
way they view gangland killings. As long as they want to kill one 
another off and I don't have to hear the gunfire and my family is not 
in danger, let them have at it. Spend whatever you want, politicians 
versus politicians.
  But the fact is this is going to be gunfire they are going to hear 
because the net result of these super PACs and the money they spend 
will be decisions on critical issues. Trust me, the people who are 
pouring the money into the super PACs have an agenda. It is an agenda 
about the role of government, what the Tax Code will look like, whether 
certain corporations and special interests will be treated in a better 
way by the candidates who are benefited by super PACs.
  So though the average family may think it is just politicians 
squabbling and wasting their own money, it is much worse. It, 
unfortunately, brings us to the point where we have to worry about not 
who runs for office but, once elected, who will stay in office.
  How about those in office? I have thought about it myself. I am sure 
my colleagues have. You cast a vote and you think: I just opened the 
door for a super PAC to come in the next time I am up for election and 
nail me because I took them on.
  If we have reached the point where Members of the Senate are quaking 
and quivering about the prospect of super PAC money being spent against 
them, we are going to lose something very important and fundamental in 
the American body politic.
  I also want to say something about those who are defending the 
secrecy of the super PACs. In my hometown newspaper and the newspapers 
in Chicago, after they print an article, they usually give local people 
a chance to anonymously comment. Occasionally, I read the banter back 
and forth. It is amazing, the chest thumping, fire breathing they get 
in these comments from these anonymous pipsqueaks who do not have the 
courage to disclose their own names. I would say it should be a 
standard in American politics that if someone feels strongly enough to 
put their money on the line in a super PAC, they ought to have the 
courage, and the law should require, that their identity be disclosed 
as well.
  I see Senator Stabenow is here, and I know she has a busy life of her 
own. I am going to yield the floor to her. But I will say one more 
thing.
  I was invited to go on ``The Daily Show,'' which a lot of people 
follow closely, and I enjoy every time I watch. Jon Stewart asked a 
question of me: If you could pass one law that would change politics 
for the better in America, what would it be?
  I said: It may be a little egotistical of me, but it would be a bill 
I have for public financing of campaigns. I honestly believe if we move 
to a stage where we have public financing, shorter campaigns, positive 
messages, real debates, it would enhance not only our reputations with 
the voters of America, it would enhance the institutions we are running 
for.
  Currently, we don't have that. We don't have public financing. Maybe 
we never will. But while we have the current system of money being 
spent, let's at least demand, as the DISCLOSE Act does, that there be 
transparency and accountability for the good of our democracy and for 
the good of the voters.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I first thank Senator Whitehouse for his 
leadership. I am proud to join him and so many of my colleagues in 
supporting and cosponsoring the legislation in front of us. I thank the 
majority leader for his comments, and all of those who care deeply 
about, frankly, our democracy, which is what we are talking about this 
evening.
  I strongly believe in the DISCLOSE Act and think it is critical as 
step 1. I think there is much more that needs to be done even as we go 
forward to add to this. But this is a very important,

[[Page 11357]]

basic standard of transparency. If someone spends $10,000 on ads trying 
to affect an election, people should know who they are. It is just as 
simple as that.
  I think it is important for us to emphasize the fact that the 
majority of the Senate this evening voted for this bill. The reason we 
did not pass the bill tonight is that the Republicans, colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle, are putting us in a situation where we 
have to reach 60 votes and therefore, by not doing that, they are 
filibustering the bill. So they are blocking the bill. They are 
filibustering the bill. We have a majority. All we want is a vote. Give 
us a vote. If we had an up-or-down vote on this bill, this bill would 
have been passed. I think it is incredibly important for everyone to 
understand that. It is not that we do not have the support. We have the 
votes. It was demonstrated this evening.
  At the moment what we do not have is the supermajority to get past a 
filibuster. I urge everyone listening or watching tonight to contact 
their Members, to urge them to support the effort to stop the 
filibuster--which is what we are talking about right now.
  Unfortunately, for everyone in America, we know this is going to be 
the most negative campaign cycle in the history of the country. 
Secretly funded negative ads with ominous music and shadowy figures and 
vicious attacks are going to fill our living rooms for the months 
between now and the election. In fact, in many States that has already 
been happening very intensely.
  We know why. We have been talking about that--a Court decision that 
has tied money to free speech, corporations are people, money equals 
free speech. That creates a situation where now we are being told 
through the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that we, in fact, 
cannot put limits on corporate money or union money or any other kind 
of dollars coming in because it is under the category of free speech.
  It has opened the floodgates for secret money allowing special 
interests--and that is who is spending the money, special interests 
with their own agenda--to spend unlimited funds to essentially buy 
elections, buy a U.S. Senate that works for them, a U.S. House of 
Representatives, a Presidency that works for them. It is not the 
majority of Americans, not the folks who got up this morning and went 
to work. Maybe they took a shower before work, but maybe they took a 
shower after work--the folks working very hard every day, trying to 
hold it together, who have been through the toughest recession we have 
seen since the Great Depression, who have most likely struggled with 
their house underwater and credit card debt too high and trying to 
piece together one or two or three part-time jobs to hold things 
together for their families. They are not the ones who are funding 
these secret ads. It is not their secret money.
  What we know so far is that over half the money that has come in has 
been from 17 multimillionaires in our country. When we think about 
that, it is pretty worrisome. When we think about the fact that 17 or 
18 or 20 people in our country could decide to buy a form of government 
that works for them, that is certainly not a democracy. I think this 
bill is part of an effort that we are all working to achieve, to 
protect the basics of our democracy.
  It is not about making judgments for people about whom they should 
vote for, whom they should support, how they should be involved in 
elections. It is about making sure we all know--that the American 
people know--who is spending the money so each American can make their 
own judgment about the agenda of the people who are spending the money 
and whether that reflects their own agenda and their own values.
  This is simply about shining the light of day, opening up a process, 
transparency, so each of us can make our own judgments about whom we 
choose to believe and not believe in this political process.
  When we run TV ads, the law requires us to disclose. We go on at the 
end of the ad and say: I am Senator Stabenow, and I approved this 
message. Personally, I don't see why someone else running it should not 
be doing that too. I know the sponsor of this bill agrees with that as 
I know do my colleagues on this side of the aisle. But we are not even 
asking that. We are simply saying if someone spends $10,000 or more, 
they need to disclose it. They need to put it on a Web site so the 
public has the opportunity to know who they are and how much they are 
spending.
  There are a couple of brothers we talk about a lot now because of the 
money they have been openly talking about spending. It has been in the 
papers. Certainly, it has been in the media for months--two gentlemen 
called the Koch brothers who have been spending millions and millions 
of dollars. I don't know what the final numbers will be. I have seen 
numbers that show each of the two of them say they want to spend $200 
million, $400 million together.
  I don't know, maybe more to impact the elections. I think it is 
important for the people in Michigan, the people of Rhode Island, the 
people in Colorado, and across the country to know they are doing that. 
They should know who they are and how much is being spent in order to 
make a judgment about how they are choosing to spend their money. If 
someone, whoever it is, is spending $10,000 on influencing elections 
through ads, Americans have a right to know.
  We know right now from the way we have been able to piece together 
what is happening that we are talking about big, wealthy, special 
interest. It is no surprise as to who is spending the money. What is 
their motivation? What are they trying to buy? I know there are those 
who would like to keep special tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. 
We are going to have a chance, once we complete this debate, to vote on 
legislation of mine called the Bring Jobs Home Act. There are those who 
don't want us to eliminate the tax break that allows folks who are 
shipping jobs overseas to write it off their taxes, which I find 
outrageous. There are folks on the other side shipping jobs overseas 
who want to keep that tax break, and they may very well want to spend 
money against candidates and against Members who vote for my bill.
  We know big oil companies want to keep taxpayer subsidies even though 
they are the most profitable companies in the history of the world. 
Probably when the tax incentives started in 1916, it made a lot of 
sense for new and emerging companies. It doesn't make sense today, from 
a taxpayer standpoint, to be paying high prices at the pump from one 
pocket and subsidies to companies out of the other. We know they may 
very well want to spend money to be able to keep those subsidies. 
Seventy-three percent of Americans want to end oil and gas subsidies, 
but the special interests are fighting to keep them. We know there is 
money being spent in the elections, secret money, to support people who 
will keep those tax subsidies.
  So the question is: Why is this in the public interest? In America, 
the greatest democracy in the world, why in the world are we letting 
this happen? Our democracy is not for sale. It should not be for sale, 
and we are fighting to make sure it is not for sale. The people of our 
country are the ones who have the power to decide who represents them, 
and it should not be a group of anonymous billionaires somewhere who 
are able to do that.
  So when those billionaires want to buy attack ads and influence our 
votes, the least they can do is have the courage to come forward and 
say how much they are spending and put their name to it and be able to 
have to disclose that to everybody. The American people have a right to 
know. The people in Michigan have the right to know. We have already 
seen millions of dollars being spent in Michigan, and people have the 
right to know who is spending that money. What is their background? 
What is their interest? They need to know so they can make their own 
judgment about whether it has any credibility.
  The 2010 midterm election saw a more than 400-percent increase in 
spending from what has been called the super PAC. That is a 400-percent 
increase in spending 2 years ago.

[[Page 11358]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 10 minutes has expired.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, if I might just have 1 more minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. Let me indicate also that in the first 4 months of this 
year, 90 percent of all outside money being spent on this coming 
November Presidential election was secret. Again, that is 90 percent of 
what was spent in just the first 4 months of this year was secret. This 
is about openness, transparency, and whether everyone in our country is 
going to have the opportunity to have information to make their own 
judgments. We need to be allowed to pass this bill. We need an up-or-
down vote on this issue. We need to stop the filibuster that is 
happening by the Republicans on the other side of the aisle. Stop 
blocking the bill. Let us vote on it. We have the votes to get it 
passed. The American people deserve to have this passed.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I know we have Senator Hagan, Senator 
Bennet, and Senator Franken all here waiting, but I would like to do 
some quick parliamentary business that needs to be accomplished.


                      Resolutions Submitted Today

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Senate proceed to the immediate consideration en bloc of the following 
resolutions which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 520, 521, 522, 
and 523.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senate will proceed to the resolutions en bloc.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, the motions to 
reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action 
or debate, and any statements related to the resolutions be printed in 
the Record at the appropriate place as if read.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolutions were agreed to.
  The preambles were agreed to.
  The resolutions, with their preambles, read as follows:

                              S. Res. 520

  (Commending the National Association for the Advancement of Colored 
            People on the occasion of its 103rd anniversary)

       Whereas the National Association for the Advancement of 
     Colored People (referred to in this preamble as the 
     ``NAACP''), originally known as the National Negro Committee, 
     was founded in New York City on February 12, 1909, the 
     centennial of the date on which President Abraham Lincoln was 
     born, by a multiracial group of activists who met in a 
     national conference to discuss the civil and political rights 
     of African-Americans;
       Whereas the NAACP was founded by a distinguished group of 
     leaders in the struggle for civil and political liberty, 
     including Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, 
     Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, and William 
     English Walling;
       Whereas the NAACP is the oldest and largest civil rights 
     organization in the United States;
       Whereas the NAACP National Headquarters is located in 
     Baltimore, Maryland;
       Whereas the mission of the NAACP is to ensure the 
     political, educational, social, and economic equality of 
     rights of all people and to eliminate racial hatred and 
     racial discrimination;
       Whereas the NAACP is committed to achieving its goals 
     through nonviolence;
       Whereas the NAACP advances its mission through reliance on 
     the press, the petition, the ballot, and the courts;
       Whereas the NAACP has been persistent in the use of legal 
     and moral persuasion, even in the face of overt and violent 
     racial hostility;
       Whereas the NAACP has used political pressure, marches, 
     demonstrations, and effective lobbying to serve as the voice, 
     as well as the shield, for minorities in the United States;
       Whereas after years of fighting segregation in public 
     schools, the NAACP, under the leadership of Special Counsel 
     Thurgood Marshall, won one of its greatest legal victories in 
     the decision issued by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of 
     Education (347 U.S. 483 (1954));
       Whereas in 1955, NAACP member Rosa Parks was arrested and 
     fined for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in 
     Montgomery, Alabama, an act of courage that would serve as 
     the catalyst for the largest grassroots civil rights movement 
     in the history of the United States;
       Whereas the NAACP was prominent in lobbying for the passage 
     of--
       (1) the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (Public Law 85-315; 71 
     Stat. 634);
       (2) the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (Public Law 86-449; 74 
     Stat. 86);
       (3) the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-352; 78 
     Stat. 241);
       (4) the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. 1973 et seq.);
       (5) the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, 
     Cesar E. Chavez, Barbara C. Jordan, William C. Velasquez, and 
     Dr. Hector P. Garcia Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and 
     Amendments Act of 2006 (Public Law 109-246; 120 Stat. 577); 
     and
       (6) the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq.);
       Whereas in 2005, the NAACP launched the Disaster Relief 
     Fund to help hurricane survivors rebuild their lives in the 
     States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, and 
     Alabama;
       Whereas in the 110th Congress, the NAACP was prominent in 
     lobbying for the passage of H. Res. 826, the resolved clause 
     of which expresses that--
       (1) the hanging of nooses is a horrible act when used for 
     the purpose of intimidation;
       (2) under certain circumstances, the hanging of nooses can 
     be criminal; and
       (3) the hanging of nooses should be investigated thoroughly 
     by Federal authorities, and any criminal violations should be 
     vigorously prosecuted;
       Whereas in 2008, the NAACP vigorously supported the passage 
     of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007 
     (28 U.S.C. 509 note), a law that puts additional Federal 
     resources into solving the heinous crimes that occurred 
     during the early days of the civil rights struggle that 
     remain unsolved and brings those who perpetrated those crimes 
     to justice;
       Whereas the NAACP has helped usher in the new millennium by 
     charting a bold course, beginning with the appointment of the 
     youngest President and Chief Executive Officer in the history 
     of the organization, Benjamin Todd Jealous, and its youngest 
     female Board Chair, Roslyn M. Brock;
       Whereas under the leadership of Benjamin Todd Jealous and 
     Roslyn M. Brock, the NAACP has outlined a strategic plan to 
     confront 21st century challenges in the critical areas of 
     health, education, housing, criminal justice, and the 
     environment;
       Whereas on July 16, 2009, the NAACP celebrated its 
     centennial anniversary in New York City, highlighting an 
     extraordinary century of ``Bold Dreams, Big Victories'' with 
     a historic address from the first African-American President 
     of the United States, Barack Obama;
       Whereas as an advocate for sentencing reform, the NAACP 
     applauded the enactment of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 
     (Public Law 111-220; 124 Stat. 2372), a landmark piece of 
     legislation that reduces the quantity of crack cocaine that 
     triggers a mandatory minimum sentence for a Federal 
     conviction of crack cocaine distribution from 100 times that 
     of people convicted of distributing the drug in powdered form 
     to 18 times that sentence: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) recognizes the 103rd anniversary of the historic 
     founding of the National Association for the Advancement of 
     Colored People; and
       (2) commends the National Association for the Advancement 
     of Colored People on the occasion of its anniversary for its 
     work to ensure the political, educational, social, and 
     economic equality of all people.

                              S. Res. 521

(Designating September 2012 as ``National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness 
                                Month'')

       Whereas the estimated 1,275,000 individuals in the United 
     States who live with a spinal cord injury cost society 
     billions of dollars in health care costs and lost wages;
       Whereas an estimated 100,000 of those individuals are 
     veterans who suffered the spinal cord injury while serving as 
     members of the United States Armed Forces;
       Whereas accidents are the leading cause of spinal cord 
     injuries;
       Whereas motor vehicle crashes are the second leading cause 
     of spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries;
       Whereas 70 percent of all spinal cord injuries that occur 
     in children under the age of 18 are a result of motor vehicle 
     accidents;
       Whereas every 48 minutes a person will become paralyzed, 
     underscoring the urgent need to develop new neuroprotection, 
     pharmacological, and regeneration treatments to reduce, 
     prevent, and reverse paralysis; and
       Whereas increased education and investment in research are 
     key factors in improving outcomes for victims of spinal cord 
     injuries, improving the quality of life of victims, and 
     ultimately curing paralysis: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) designates September 2012 as ``Spinal Cord Injury 
     Awareness Month'';
       (2) supports the goals and ideals of Spinal Cord Injury 
     Awareness Month;
       (3) continues to support research to find better 
     treatments, therapies, and a cure for paralysis;
       (4) supports clinical trials for new therapies that offer 
     promise and hope to those persons living with paralysis; and

[[Page 11359]]

       (5) commends the dedication of local, regional, and 
     national organizations, researchers, doctors, volunteers, and 
     people across the United States that are working to improve 
     the quality of life of people living with paralysis and their 
     families.

                              S. Res. 522

 (Designating September 2012 as ``National Child Awareness Month'' to 
 promote awareness of charities benefitting children and youth-serving 
organizations throughout the United States and recognizing efforts made 
by those charities and organizations on behalf of children and youth as 
       critical contributions to the future of the United States)

       Whereas millions of children and youth in the United States 
     represent the hopes and future of the United States;
       Whereas numerous individuals, charities benefitting 
     children, and youth-serving organizations that work with 
     children and youth collaborate to provide invaluable services 
     to enrich and better the lives of children and youth 
     throughout the United States;
       Whereas raising awareness of, and increasing support for, 
     organizations that provide access to healthcare, social 
     services, education, the arts, sports, and other services 
     will result in the development of character and the future 
     success of the children and youth of the United States;
       Whereas the month of September, as the school year begins, 
     is a time when parents, families, teachers, school 
     administrators, and communities increase their focus on 
     children and youth throughout the United States;
       Whereas the month of September is a time for the people of 
     the United States to highlight and be mindful of the needs of 
     children and youth;
       Whereas private corporations and businesses have joined 
     with hundreds of national and local charitable organizations 
     throughout the United States in support of a month-long focus 
     on children and youth; and
       Whereas designating September 2012 as ``National Child 
     Awareness Month'' would recognize that a long-term commitment 
     to children and youth is in the public interest, and will 
     encourage widespread support for charities and organizations 
     that seek to provide a better future for the children and 
     youth of the United States: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate designates September 2012 as 
     ``National Child Awareness Month''--
       (1) to promote awareness of charities benefitting children 
     and youth-serving organizations throughout the United States; 
     and
       (2) to recognize efforts made by those charities and 
     organizations on behalf of children and youth as critical 
     contributions to the future of the United States.

                              S. Res. 523

(Recognizing the heroic efforts of firefighters and military personnel 
 in the United States to contain numerous wildfires that have affected 
                      tens of thousands of people)

       Whereas firefighters and residents of the United States 
     have contended with extreme and erratic fire behavior and 
     rapid rates of fire spread;
       Whereas, as of July 12, 2012, more than 31,754 wildfires 
     have burned more than 3,281,008 acres of land, resulting in a 
     devastating loss of life and property;
       Whereas, as of July 12, 2012, firefighters have battled 
     fires all across the Nation, including--
       (1) 1,637 fires that have burned more than 516,482 acres in 
     the Southwest United States;
       (2) 13,584 fires that have burned more than 291,957 acres 
     in the Southern United States;
       (3) 3,178 fires that have burned more than 819,345 acres in 
     the Northern and Central Rocky Mountain region of the United 
     States;
       (4) 4,963 fires that have burned more than 975,669 acres in 
     the State of California and the Great Basin region of the 
     United States;
       (5) 787 fires that have burned more than 595,096 acres in 
     the State of Alaska and the Northwest United States; and
       (6) 7,605 fires that have burned more than 82,459 acres in 
     the Eastern United States; and
       Whereas, the brave men and women who fight wildfires on a 
     daily basis help minimize the displacement of individuals and 
     protect against the loss of life and property: Now, 
     therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) recognizes the heroic efforts of firefighters and 
     military personnel to contain wildfires and protect lives, 
     homes, natural resources, and rural economies throughout the 
     United States;
       (2) encourages the people and Government of the United 
     States to express their appreciation to the brave men and 
     women in the firefighting services throughout the United 
     States;
       (3) encourages the people and communities of the United 
     States to act diligently in preventing and preparing for a 
     wildfire; and
       (4) encourages the people of the United States to keep in 
     their thoughts the individuals who have suffered as a result 
     of a wildfire.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In conclusion, I note that S. Res. 520 recognizes the 
103rd anniversary of the founding of the NAACP, which for reasons I 
will discuss later, is an interesting irony in today's debate coming 
from the Republican side.
  I will now yield to Senator Bennet of Colorado, and he will be 
followed by Senator Hagan.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. I wish to thank the Senator from Rhode Island for his 
leadership and my other colleagues who are out here tonight.
  I wish to be clear again about what this bill is. First of all, it is 
very clear it is constitutional. In the Supreme Court, eight of nine 
Justices have said that. As I listen to the debate tonight, I also 
think people at home should know this is about a few actors in the 
country who have been allowed to spend wild amounts of money without 
saying who they are. This doesn't prevent them from spending the money. 
It simply says they need to say who they are.
  My sense, having spent time with people who are often asked to 
contribute to these campaigns, is that people who have the means to 
spend $10,000 on political activity, by and large, would actually like 
this disclosure requirement. The reason they would like this disclosure 
requirement is so they can say to people who are trying to list them 
and distorting our politics and having them pay for negative attack ads 
they don't agree with and they don't think are true, could say no 
because they know they could say to the people: I am not going to sign 
up for that because I don't want to put my name on that.
  There is an enforcement mechanism I think virtually everybody in 
America would support and certainly at home would support. I would 
argue the only place in America that anybody would think that spending 
vast amounts of money by a small group of people without having to tell 
us who they are makes sense, and that is right here in Washington, DC. 
Maybe some people will benefit from making the ads or those who are 
paid to place the ads on television. But otherwise, it is hard to find 
anybody who would think this wasn't in their interest and certainly not 
in their children's interest.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Senator 
Coburn's column in the op-ed page of the New York Times where he lays 
out in a very succinct and compelling view some of the things that are 
wrong with this place.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                        Norquist's Phantom Army

                            (By Tom Coburn)

       When the antitax lobbyist Grover G. Norquist made a visit 
     to Capitol Hill recently, leading Democrats welcomed the 
     chance to build up their favorite boogeyman. Harry Reid, the 
     Senate majority leader, said Mr. Norquist has ``the entire 
     Republican party in the palm of his hand.'' A spokeswoman for 
     Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, said Mr. Norquist--
     who is famous for getting lawmakers to pledge not to support 
     tax hikes or deficit reduction that is paired with revenue 
     increases--was coming to give the G.O.P. its ``marching 
     orders.''
       But this story is utterly false. Senate Republicans--and 
     many House Republicans--have repeatedly rejected Mr. 
     Norquist's strict interpretation of his own pledge, a reading 
     that requires them to defend every loophole and spending 
     program hidden in the tax code. While most Republicans do, of 
     course, oppose tax increases, they are hardly the mindless 
     robots Democrats say they are.
       What the narrative does, however, is let Democrats off the 
     hook. If they can make out Republicans as uncompromising 
     ideologues, they can continue refusing to offer detailed 
     plans to reform entitlement programs. That is the real 
     obstacle to a grand bargain on spending, not Mr. Norquist's 
     pledge.
       Consider the evidence: I recently proposed amendments to 
     end tax earmarks for movie producers and the ethanol 
     industry. Mr. Norquist charged that those measures would be 
     tax hikes unless paired with dollar-for-dollar rate 
     reductions. And yet all but six of the 41 Senate Republicans 
     who had signed his pledge voted for my amendments.
       Those 35 Republican pledge-violators are hardly soft on 
     taxes. Rather, they understand that the tax code is riddled 
     with special-interest provisions that are merely spending by 
     another name. If asked to eliminate earmarks for things like 
     Nascar, the tackle-box industry or Eskimo whaling captains--
     all of which are actual tax ``breaks''--most of my colleagues 
     would be embarrassed to demand dollar-for-dollar rate 
     reductions, and rightly so.

[[Page 11360]]

       As a result, rather than forcing Republicans to bow to him, 
     Mr. Norquist is the one who is increasingly isolated 
     politically. For instance, while his organization, Americans 
     for Tax Reform, was calling my ethanol amendment a tax hike, 
     the Club for Growth, which is far more influential among 
     conservative lawmakers, endorsed my amendment outright.
       What's more, my colleagues have repeatedly rejected Mr. 
     Norquist's demand that Republicans walk away from any grand 
     bargain on the deficit that includes even a penny of new 
     revenue. Speaker of the House John A. Boehner, who calls Mr. 
     Norquist ``some random person,'' offered to trade revenue 
     increases for entitlement reform in talks with the White 
     House last summer. Republicans on the National Commission on 
     Fiscal Responsibility and Reform made a similar offer, as did 
     Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, during last 
     year's deficit supercommittee negotiations. My colleagues, by 
     and large, know that doing nothing to confront our fiscal 
     challenges would mean an automatic tax increase and a cut to 
     entitlement programs.
       The problem with the pledge is that it is powerless to 
     prevent future automatic tax increases and has failed to 
     restrain past spending. The ``starve the beast'' strategy to 
     shrink the size of the federal government by cutting revenue 
     but not spending was a disaster. Every dollar we borrow is a 
     tax increase on the next generation.
       And in a debt crisis, higher interest rates and the 
     debasement of our currency would be additional tax hikes. In 
     that sense, no one is doing more to violate the spirit of the 
     pledge than Mr. Norquist himself, who is asking Republicans 
     to reject the very type of agreement that could prevent 
     future tax increases.
       What unifies Republicans is not Mr. Norquist's tortured 
     definition of tax purity but the idea of a Reagan- or 
     Kennedy-style tax reform that lowers rates and broadens the 
     tax base by getting rid of loopholes and deductions. It's 
     true that Republicans would prefer to lower rates as much as 
     possible, and it's true that Republicans believe smart tax 
     reform will generate more, not less, revenue for the federal 
     government. But Republicans would not walk away from a grand 
     bargain on entitlements and tax reform that would devote a 
     penny of revenue to deficit reduction instead of rate 
     reduction.
       Free-market conservatives have repeatedly given openings to 
     Democrats that they have chosen to ignore. The president, for 
     instance, knows that his calls to raise taxes on earnings 
     over $250,000, which follows his gimmicky Buffett Rule, is a 
     nonstarter unless paired with fundamental tax and entitlement 
     reform.
       The majority of Democrats and Republicans understand the 
     severity of our economic challenges. They know they have to 
     put everything on the table and make hard choices. 
     Legislators who would rather foster political boogeymen only 
     delay those critical reforms.

  Mr. BENNET. It also calls for the kind of principled leadership we 
are going to apply in order to solve the challenges we face with 
respect to our debt and deficit to get this economy moving again. It 
includes recoupling rising wages and job growth to our economic growth, 
energy policy, educating our kids in the 21st century. It is all the 
things people at home want us to be working on.
  In a State such as mine that is one-third Republican, one-third 
Democratic, and one-third Independent, there is not that much 
difference in opinion about what the solutions ought to be.
  The reason I support the DISCLOSE Act is that I think it is one 
important step. It is certainly not the only step, but it is one 
important step toward recoupling the conversation we are having in 
Washington and to recoupling the priorities that are in Washington. 
Maybe it is better to say it this way: to recouple the priorities the 
people have at home to the work being done or not done in Washington, 
DC.
  We should pass this bill and get on with the people's business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I ask the Senator from Colorado 
that in an environment in which the bulk of the political spending is 
being done by outside groups and the bulk of the outside spending 
groups is secret, what is the likelihood of those goals being 
accomplished with the best interests of the American people in mind and 
not with the best interests of the special interests behind those 
secret donations in mind?
  Mr. BENNET. I thank the Senator for his question. I think it is going 
to be made much more difficult. There are plenty of people I know at 
home who watch the stuff going on, on TV, and they don't recognize 
themselves and the cartoon that is playing. Sometimes they don't 
recognize their priorities playing out on the Senate floor. They don't 
recognize the convictions they have or the aspirations they have for 
the communities or the debate they are having. It is a natural reaction 
for people to say: I don't want any part of that.
  As Dick Durbin was saying, somehow this is a knife fight that has 
nothing to do with me, and I am not going to pay attention to it. The 
problem is, as with any fight such as that, what we end up doing is 
ducking and covering because that is what we have to do in order to 
stay out of the way. That isn't going to put us in the position of 
being able to deliver on the promise of generation after generation of 
Americans to make sure the folks coming after us actually have more 
opportunity, not less, than we had.
  Remember, this is a tiny proposal. This is simply requiring 
disclosure. It is not even requiring a disclaimer. Frankly, if it were 
up to me, I would want people who funded these committees to have to 
stand up at the end of the ads to say: I am John Smith or I am Mary 
Jones, and I paid for this ad. But this bill doesn't even do that. All 
it says is they have to say who they are. I think poll after poll shows 
that 90 percent of Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, 
agree with that.
  This is one issue where the sort of optical issues that happened 
somehow on the beltway ought to not lead us to a place where we obscure 
the vision of the American people, which on this issue is as clear as 
can be. We have to get this done and get on to the rest of the business 
at hand.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mrs. HAGAN. Mr. President, I too echo the comments of the Senator 
from Colorado, and I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for bringing 
this bill forward and for putting together what the American people 
expect from people who donate to campaigns.
  Today, I join my colleagues, as I did 2 years ago, to discuss the 
state of campaign finance and reflect on what I think is a dark cloud 
that has been cast over our Nation's election system.
  The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United created a watershed 
effect in our elections process. The decision eviscerated decades of 
campaign finance law that was in place for the purpose of making sure 
the American people, not special interests, decided our elections. It 
was 2 years ago that I expressed my deep concern that this ruling would 
weaken the voice of the American people in elections, and I am afraid 
my fear and the fears of many others have come true.
  Since the ruling, many political operatives have established 
nonprofit proposed social welfare organizations under 501(c)(4) of the 
Tax Code. These groups utilize a loophole in the Tax Code to receive 
huge, secret donations intended solely to influence political campaigns 
rather than promote the social welfare of our citizens.
  In 2006, outside groups spent $69 million on political campaigns. 
Only 1 percent, $690,000 in 2006, of that funding came from undisclosed 
sources.
  By comparison, in 2010, the amount of outside group spending on 
political campaigns skyrocketed to $305 million, and the sources of 44 
percent of that money were not disclosed. So in 4 years' time, the 
amount of undisclosed dollars grew exponentially from 1 percent to 
almost half of all outside political spending.
  This year, outside group spending is projected to rise at an 
astounding rate, and we are certainly seeing it now. Of the $140 
million raised by super PACs thus far, 82 percent has come from secret 
donors. That is shocking, and we know it is growing.
  In North Carolina, the story is no different. Last week, the 
Charlotte Observer reported that ``more than any congressional battle 
in the south . . . North Carolina's 8th District has become a magnet 
for money.'' And that is outside money. In that same article, the 
newspaper reported that only two other districts in the entire country 
have seen more outside spending than

[[Page 11361]]

the $1.6 million poured into the eighth congressional district. The two 
candidates themselves have only spent $1 million through the end of 
June.
  Let me point out that this level of spending is for a runoff primary 
election in a mostly rural part of North Carolina. I cannot imagine 
what the general election race will look like.
  The level of secret, anonymous money influencing our political 
elections is breathtaking. America's campaign finance process should 
and must be transparent. Of course, every American, including the 
wealthiest among us, has the right to have his or her voice heard, but 
those spending huge amounts of money to influence elections should not 
hide their activities. Information on who is funding political advocacy 
should be available to the public so voters can ultimately make fully 
informed decisions.
  The DISCLOSE Act would take a step in the right direction to ensure 
accountability in our system. The bill would institute comprehensive 
disclosure requirements on corporations, on unions, and other 
organizations that spend money on Federal election campaigns. By 
increasing the transparency of campaign spending by these groups, the 
DISCLOSE Act seeks to prevent unregulated and unchecked power over our 
elections by a handful of wealthy corporations and individuals.
  Right now, the voices of ordinary Americans--of ordinary North 
Carolinians--are being drowned out by secret money. North Carolina 
deserves better and our country deserves better. That is why I am 
cosponsoring the DISCLOSE Act. The voices of North Carolinians--not the 
voices of a few wealthy companies and individuals--should determine the 
outcome of our elections.
  I will continue to work with my colleagues here in the Senate to 
protect the integrity of the elections process. We came very close last 
time, with 59 votes. We were one vote away. I hope my colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle will join this effort to achieve a fair and 
transparent elections process.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, Senator Coons will be joining us very 
shortly. He was on the floor a moment ago and will be back very 
shortly. I wish to take a moment before he returns--here he is. I will 
not take a moment before he returns.
  I yield the floor to the Senator from Delaware. I await hearing from 
him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise today to join the chorus of voices 
from our caucus who have tonight spoken to the value, to the importance 
of transparency in elections. Transparency, as we all know, is critical 
for free and fair elections and for democracy to function, because the 
people of this country--the voters, the constituents, those whom we 
serve and those who hire and fire all who serve them at Federal and 
State and local offices--need to know who they represent, who is 
funding their campaigns, what goals they will pursue in office, and 
whether the ends serve their interests. Tonight, as the Presiding 
Officer knows all too well, colleagues have joined to speak in support 
of the DISCLOSE Act--a bill that would make important progress toward 
clearing away the clouds that have been laid on the face of the 
American body public because of the decision of Citizens United.
  The integrity and the fairness of our elections is at the very heart 
of American democracy. It is in some ways the proudest legacy of our 
Founding Fathers and, in my view, a beacon to the rest of the world. A 
difficult, a regular part of modern electioneering, of modern 
campaigns, is campaign ads. In fact, many of us spend a huge amount of 
our time raising the money and delivering the content to connect with 
our constituents through television. I am blessed to represent a small 
State--roughly 800,000 souls--so we actually get to campaign door to 
door, to go door-knocking, to meet people in person in my State. But, 
still, television ads play a very important part. In other larger 
States, folks will often never even meet in person the candidates for 
offices in the House and in the Senate or for President, and television 
ads there dominate the whole campaign election process. No one likes 
campaign ads, but they are a part of our politics, and an effective 
and, sadly, a powerful part as well.
  For most of our modern political history, voters at least knew who 
the ads were coming from--the candidates and the parties that supported 
them--and could make judgments accordingly. If someone thought an add 
was too nasty, they could vote against the candidate who ran it. That 
is the whole point, forcing us as candidates to own our ads, to say, 
``I am Chris Coons and I approved this ad.'' We all know as candidates 
who have stood before our electorate how it feels to put our personal 
name, our face, to an ad that might be hitting a little too hard, and 
that pulls us back from sometimes overreaching.
  But what we are here to talk about tonight is the whole new world 
that has been unleashed by a Supreme Court decision. In my view, the 
basic right of every American to free and fair elections has been 
compromised by a new flood of tens of hundreds of millions of dollars 
from wealthy individuals, from corporations, from shadowy national 
special interest groups, since the Supreme Court, through Citizens 
United, opened these floodgates to unlimited secret campaign 
activities, threatening to overwhelm the fundamental trust of our 
constituents and the transparency so essential to our democracy.
  As a lawyer, Citizens United was one of the most surprising Supreme 
Court decisions of my life, because it radically upended settled 
constitutional understanding as well as bipartisan agreement that had 
been reached here in the Senate regarding appropriate limitations on 
corporate speech. When the McCain-Feingold law passed in 2002, 6 years 
prior, it showed a strong bipartisan intent to rein in corporate 
spending, to rein in and manage spending by interests of all kinds in 
politics. That is why I was shocked when, in the opinion in Citizens 
United, it was joined by the so-called ``originalist'' or ``strict 
constructionist'' members of the Court. The originalist mode of 
interpretation of the Constitution attacks every question by asking a 
common question: Would the Framers have thought the action or law being 
challenged before the Supreme Court is constitutional?
  That is why, if one had asked me in 2008, looking at Citizens United 
and at the issues presented to the Court, whether an originalist 
interpreting the first amendment would have found the corporate 
electioneering regulations this body had adopted in McCain-Feingold to 
be valid, it seems to me there was only one possible answer, and that 
was yes.
  Our Founding Fathers recognized corporations are creatures not 
endowed, as the rest of us are, with inalienable rights. They are, 
rather, fictional, legal creatures--creatures of legislative grace. 
Were this not the case, the corporation by the name of Citizens 
United--the corporation that was at issue in this decision--wouldn't 
have stopped at simply making a movie attacking Hillary Clinton, but 
would have actually cast a vote against Hillary Clinton. Of course, it 
couldn't. Corporations don't have bad hair days; corporations don't 
have tasteless ties; corporations don't have moods and opinions. 
Corporations are not people. They exist as people only in legal 
fiction.
  I would note the first amendment states: ``Congress shall make no law 
. . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.'' If freedom of 
speech included fictional entities, nonhuman entities such as 
corporations, there would have been no reason to separately affirm that 
the press also enjoyed that freedom granted to real, living, breathing 
individuals. In my view, then, Citizens United was wrongly decided.
  As shown through a long line of legislative and judicial 
interpretation, a view of corporations as having first amendment rights 
that are limited, and can and should be limited more than can be 
limited for real, living, breathing individuals, has remained the 
dominant one throughout our modern history.

[[Page 11362]]

  In 1907, the Tillman Act prohibited campaign contributions by 
corporations. In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act prohibited expenditures and 
the application of this law further. It was upheld by the Court in 1957 
in U.S. v. Automobile Workers. When the Supreme Court first made the 
leap from the expenditure/contribution distinction in Buckley v. Valeo 
in 1971, even then it left intact the longstanding distinction between 
the first amendment rights of living, breathing individuals and 
corporations--legal fictional entities.
  In the 1982 case of FEC v. National Right to Work Committee, Justice 
Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous Court that it was proper to treat 
corporations more restrictively than people. Oh, how I wish that were 
the majority opinion of the Court today.
  The further analysis in 1986 in FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for 
Life, though striking down restrictions on speech by a pro-life 
organization, actually underscored the original understanding that when 
the Constitution protects corporate speech, it only does so as a proxy 
for the underlying free speech rights of real, living, breathing 
individuals. In that case, a nonprofit organized and funded 
specifically for the purpose of bringing about a political goal--pro-
life policies--was seen as having free speech rights only because of 
the rights of those individuals who funded it and organized it. When we 
talk about a corporation's first amendment rights, then, we should be 
using shorthand for the first amendment rights of those who are its 
shareholders or who own it or who control it.
  The corporate/individual distinction was even again affirmed as 
recently as 1990 in the Austin case.
  The constitutional history of limitations on corporate speech was so 
clear that the Supreme Court had upheld the McCain-Feingold Act in 
2003, just 6 years before they struck it down. What possibly could have 
changed in those intervening years that would be so convincing to an 
originalist mindset? I don't know. In my view, this decision did not 
make sense. But I do know that campaign finance, which was a bipartisan 
issue in this Chamber in 2003, where Senator Feingold and Senator 
McCain, a Democrat and a Republican, led a strong bipartisan coalition 
to rein in the negative influence of special interest money--that has 
changed. That has shifted to today, sadly, a starkly partisan issue.
  As we have seen today, Senator after Senator of the other party has 
risen to speak about lots of issues, but none has addressed head-on why 
disclosure is no longer in the best interests of our citizens, why 
transparency is no longer essential to democracy. Yet Democrat after 
Democrat, Senator after Senator from my side of the aisle, has risen to 
stand firmly with those organized by Senator Whitehouse who has led so 
ably this discourse on the floor today, who view the DISCLOSE Act not 
as curing the errors of Citizens United but as striking one important 
blow, to ripping the cover off the millions of dollars in secret 
contributions that today I think threaten to swamp our electoral ship.
  If the Citizens United case has tilted elections toward those with 
the money to buy them, the DISCLOSE Act is to me an opportunity to 
level the playing field a little bit. Instead of with money, it arms 
voters with information.
  The DISCLOSE Act does just what its name suggests: It requires 
disclosure. It requires any covered organization, including unions, 
corporations, and super PACs, which spends $10,000 or more on certain 
campaign activities to promptly file a report with the FEC--to file a 
report with the Federal Election Commission--within 24 hours. This 
brings some measure of fairness and transparency back to our elections 
so voters can make informed decisions instead of simply being pushed 
and prodded and ultimately duped by a flood of negative ads.
  I am confident it does not restrict or limit free speech of any kind. 
This bill simply allows voters--those who are in the driver's seat or 
should be in our system, those who hire and fire us--to see who is 
spending money to influence their decision at the ballot box.
  The DISCLOSE Act imposes the minimum possible burden on organizations 
spending vast amounts of money on elections, while still requiring the 
kind of prompt and timely disclosure voters deserve and expect in this 
electronic, in this digital age, where the ads that flood the airwaves, 
that push for a decision, happen so close to an election that it is 
important to have disclosure real time.
  We voted on the DISCLOSE Act earlier tonight, but my colleagues 
across the aisle lined up in lockstep against it. Sadly, every Member 
of the other party voted against it. What is so wrong with voters 
having information about who is trying to influence their vote? Why is 
this basic information so important to hide from the American people? 
Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be 
expedited, should be swift, should be available so voters can judge for 
themselves what is appropriate.
  I could not agree more. I agreed when the esteemed Republican leader 
said those exact words in 1997, and I agree with them today. 
``Disclosure'' he said, ``is the best disinfectant.''
  Earlier today I had the honor of presiding, as you do now, Mr. 
President, and I got to listen to the Republican minority leader speak 
against disclosure. There are many other issues to which we can and 
should turn. There are many other important issues before our country, 
and he raised them all in turn. But the thing I had the hardest time 
with was his leading the other caucus, one after the other, to speak 
against, to vote against disclosure--something he himself, the 
Republican leader, spoke so forcefully in favor of as recently as 1997: 
``Disclosure is the best disinfectant.'' Back then, the talking points 
for the other caucus were: Spend all you want. There should be no 
limits on campaign contributions as long as there is disclosure. 
Disclosure will keep things open and fair.
  Sadly, today, even that small measure of rationality has been openly 
abandoned. Voters in my home State do not want secret spending clouding 
the legitimacy of our elections. They want to exercise this most basic 
American right out in the sunshine--with knowledge, with information 
about who backs whom--just as, I believe, our Founders intended.
  Let's face it, folks. These super PACs are not raising hundreds of 
millions of dollars to run campaign ads that are updates on the latest 
sports scores, that are filled with YouTube videos of sneezing pandas 
or yawning kittens. These super PACs are gearing up to run the most 
negative possible campaign ads--the sorts of ads that can change hearts 
and minds because they have no accountability, because they have no 
one's name at the bottom line, because they feel free and are free to 
make the nastiest and most unfounded personal attacks.
  Four years ago, at this point in the campaign cycle, just 9 percent--
9 percent--of the political ads on TV were negative, according to the 
Wesleyan Media Project, which has scored ads by their negativity or 
positivity. Just 9 percent.
  What do you think that number is this year? At this stage, this still 
early stage in campaigning, 70 percent. Seventy percent of the ads have 
been negative, and it is only July. It is not even August.
  At the same point in 2008, 3 percent for the ads came from outside 
groups like super PACs. This year, 60 percent have been paid by outside 
groups. Campaigns themselves have inevitably, as a result, taken on a 
more negative tone, a more caustic aspect. There is no doubt in my mind 
that the primary mission of most super PACs is to fund the sorts of ads 
that destroy candidates and campaigns, that tear them down, that 
contribute to the steady pollution and degradation of our political 
discourse. They are raising money to buy television ads that assault 
the fame and destroy the candidates they do not like.
  This same study from the Wesleyan Media Project bears that out. It 
found that 86 percent of the ads the super PACs and interest groups 
have run during this cycle have been negative. Is

[[Page 11363]]

there any wonder then that our campaigns, our politics, our culture has 
become more steadily divisive and on this floor more consistently 
divided?
  There are no centrist super PACs. There are no (c)(4)s that are 
determined to fund a message about bringing America together. These 
super PACs are designed to divide us, and they are doing a great job.
  At the end of the day, one of the questions we have to have for the 
citizens of America is, what does this mean for you? What does it mean 
to have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into negative 
ads, driving the outcome of elections at the State and Federal level 
that simply divide us? It means more partisanship. It means more 
rancor. It means less progress. It means fewer problems solved.
  If the intentions of these super PACs, of these special (c)(4)s, were 
so positive, then why would they need to hide whom they were 
supporting? Why would they need to conceal the purposes of the ads they 
support?
  Let me, if I might for a few moments, respond to some things I heard 
earlier today from Republicans while I was presiding and while I was 
watching in my office.
  One of my Republican colleagues earlier today claimed the DISCLOSE 
Act does not apply to labor unions and suggested that this was a big 
wet kiss to organized labor from my side of the aisle. This suggestion 
was made by several in leadership. It is a ludicrous claim. Every 
provision in the DISCLOSE Act applies equally to covered organizations, 
corporations, business associations, membership organizations, and 
unions.
  Why have a $10,000 threshold? To reduce the burden on all membership 
organizations of all kinds; the $10,000 threshold is enough to cover 93 
percent of the money raised by these super PACs and thus does not 
needlessly burden national membership organizations, with thousands of 
members who contribute $25 or $50 or $100.
  It is these handful of folks, who are contributing huge amounts of 
money, whose contributions we hope to expose to the sunshine, to make 
positive contributions to allowing voters to know who is contributing 
to whom and why.
  One other thought I want to add to tonight's debate is, as the Africa 
Subcommittee chair on the Foreign Relations Committee, I often have the 
opportunity to hear from and meet with legislators and heads of state 
from Africa who come to meet with us here in Washington. They come to 
the United States to listen to us and to hear from us how our democracy 
functions, because for much of the world we are considered the gold 
standard of how to run free, fair, and open elections, of how to 
deliberate as an open and positive body, of how to be accountable to 
and serve the people of the United States.
  We already have some challenges making progress, listening to each 
other, and getting past the partisan divide. But if we already have 
challenges, if the folks listening wonder whether the Senate of the 
United States listens to our citizens enough, just wait until another 
billion dollars of secretive special interest money pours into our 
campaigns.
  In my view, one of the things we can hold up to the rest of the world 
is that we have clean, fair elections. This decision by this Supreme 
Court, in Citizens United, threatens that at its very core. This flood 
of money suggests that what is our greatest accomplishment in many ways 
as a nation is at very real risk. We cannot, in my view, lose the moral 
high ground of being a country that has fought so hard for so long to 
be a place where every person--every real person--has an equal vote and 
an equal right to be heard.
  The unfortunate reality is we are not going to be able to amend the 
Constitution to repeal the Citizens United decision this year. I wish 
we could. But it is not going to happen on that timeline. As we saw 
earlier today, this Senate is apparently not even willing to require 
the slightest bit of transparency and accountability by passing the 
DISCLOSE Act, as we should. Maybe we will get the votes tomorrow. Maybe 
after listening to this tonight, after hearing from us, our 
constituents will be moved to contact other Members of this body.
  But I am concerned. I am concerned that the Congress is not going to 
be able to stem the massive influx of cash into our elections this year 
or this cycle. It may, in fact, be too late for that. There is a reason 
campaigns and super PACs fund these negative ads. They work. They are 
designed to go around your head and target your heart. They move you to 
vote on what you are afraid of, not what you aspire to. And they can be 
so highly effective.
  I do not like negative ads. The Presiding Officer does not like 
negative ads. Our citizens and our constituents do not like negative 
ads. We still have a choice, though. We may not yet be able to amend 
the Constitution. We may not be able to persuade the other side to pass 
the DISCLOSE Act this time. But we can allow ourselves instead to say, 
we will not listen to these craven, destructive ads. We can change the 
channel. We can ignore the ads. We can learn about candidates and their 
records. We can vote from a place of power instead of fear. Each and 
every one of us, each and every citizen, can be more powerful than the 
Supreme Court, can be more powerful than the billionaires and 
corporations who are trying to sway our votes by deciding to be better 
with our politics, by deciding to listen past the smear campaigns and 
the negative attacks.
  It is my hope we will be able someday to pass the DISCLOSE Act and to 
amend the Constitution. But until then, I am left with this: With the 
encouragement of my colleagues, with confidence in our citizens, and 
with optimism that somehow through this smear campaign of super PAC ads 
the truth of the American system will still be shown to the world.
  Thank you. With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Coons for his 
remarks, echo one point he made, and make an announcement.
  The point I wish to echo is that the importance of American democracy 
and of clean American elections does, indeed, extend beyond our 
borders, as Senator Coons mentioned from his role as the chair of the 
Subcommittee on Africa in the Foreign Relations Committee.
  I grew up in the Foreign Service and served on the Intelligence 
Committee. I have traveled pretty widely in that role. There is a 
reason Presidents have talked about our Nation as a city on the hill. 
There is a reason Presidents have described our Nation as a lamp raised 
in the darkness, that the glow from what we accomplish lights the 
world. There is a reason the hymn ``America The Beautiful'' talks about 
how our ``alabaster cities gleam.'' There is not much gleam on those 
alabaster cities tonight, not after this vote. There is a lot of mud on 
the walls of those cities, and it is going to get worse unless we pass 
this vote.
  And people get it, which brings me to my announcement, which is that 
up to this evening, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has had 
34,269 Americans sign its petition supporting the DISCLOSE Act. Demand 
Progress has had over 50,000 Americans sign up for its petition 
supporting the DISCLOSE Act. CREDO Action, as I mentioned earlier, has 
had 213,000 Americans--213,000 Americans--sign up as citizen cosponsors 
of the DISCLOSE Act. This stack of papers I have in the Chamber has 57 
names to a page--213,000 Americans who really put their name down 
there, something that, evidently, the big, sneaky donors are not 
willing to do and our colleagues are not willing to force them to do.
  And DISCLOSEAct.com has 320,378 signatures supporting the DISCLOSE 
Act. That Web site got so much activity earlier tonight, as we rolled 
into this vote, that the Web site crashed from the activity of 
Americans trying to be a part of the debate we are having here, trying 
to make their voices heard because they perfectly well understand that 
these big special interests--the ones that do not want how and why they 
spend their money in politics to be known to anybody--they do not have 
Americans' best interests at heart, and they see this coming, and they 
want to fight back.

[[Page 11364]]

  That total is 617,000 Americans who have signed up to have our backs 
and to support this bill.
  So as we go forward into the remarks from Senator Pryor, Senator 
Blumenthal, and then Senator Franken, we should know that it is not 
just the one, two, three, four, five, six of us who are now in this 
Chamber. For each one of us, there are 100,000 Americans who are behind 
us and want this to happen.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for 
his great leadership not just on this issue but many issues. But this 
is certainly a very important issue.
  I rise today to the lend my voice to support campaign finance reform 
and specifically the DISCLOSE Act. I want to come back to the phrase 
``lend my voice'' in just a minute. The DISCLOSE Act--a lot of times, 
people back home hear about these bills that are 500 pages long or 
2,000 pages long. This one is barely 20 pages long. It is really about 
19 pages and 4 lines long. This is a short bill, very concise, very to 
the point. I am for it.
  I am for even broader campaign finance reform, and let me give you 
one example of why I support campaign finance reform. There has been 
too much money in Federal politics for a long time. This did not just 
start last year or even 5 years ago, this has been building over a long 
period of time.
  When I ran for attorney general in my State in 1998, I raised and 
spent somewhere around $800,000. That may not sound like a lot of 
money, and certainly in a Federal race it is not a lot of money, but 
that got the job done. I had a Republican opponent. We fought it out. 
She was a very worthy opponent. We had debates, and we sort of 
barnstormed around the State. It was wonderful.
  In 2002, 4 years later, I decided to run for the Senate. That year I 
had to raise somewhere in the neighborhood--I do not have the figures 
in front of me but a little bit over $4 million. So same State, 
basically the same population, same voters; nothing had really changed 
except I went from a State race, statewide race, for which I raised and 
spent for the campaign about $800,000, to about five times that amount 
in 2002. That was before there were super PACs. That was before money 
really took over, the way you see in 2012. And money really has taken 
over the system. It is not good. It is not good at all.
  I am for the DISCLOSE Act, but I also think we should do larger 
campaign finance reform based on transparency. Actually, I am 
supportive of lower giving amounts instead of higher giving amounts.
  I support something we used to do in Arkansas. I have not looked at 
the State law in a while. I assume it is the same, where PACs have to 
play by the same rules everybody else does. They are subject to the 
same limits. I think that takes away a lot of the funny business that 
goes on with PACs.
  I think that when we do campaign finance reform, we have to reform 
more than just the campaigns themselves because right now the campaigns 
are very regulated. There is a lot of transparency. There is a lot of 
disclosure. There are a lot of limits and requirements on campaigns. If 
it is Mark Pryor for U.S. Senate or whoever it may be, there are lots 
of rules that govern that. That is the way it should be. The problem is 
outside the campaign, the extracurricular activities. That is where the 
real challenge is.
  That takes us to Citizens United. I must say, with all due respect, 
that I think it is naive to hold that money does not have a corrosive 
effect on politics. It does. We have seen it for two centuries in this 
country. We have seen that money has a corrosive effect on politics. 
There have been various reform movements that have been designed to 
curb that corrosive effect, but unfortunately the Citizens United case 
just kicked the door open wide, as wide as it has ever been kicked in 
American history.
  I do not want to criticize the Supreme Court, but I certainly hope 
that after the 2012 elections they will have an opportunity to revisit 
that decision. I hope they are looking at the press reports where these 
super PACs and other groups are saying they are going to raise and 
spend hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, one tabulation I saw is 
that just against President Obama's reelection campaign--just to make 
sure he does not get reelected--there is well over $1 billion they 
claim they are going to raise and spend to defeat this President. That 
skews the whole political system in this country. It is not healthy. It 
is not good.
  I see these pages here who are with us today. They are learning about 
our democracy. I am so proud of them for being here and being here late 
night, both on the Democratic and Republican side. I am so glad they 
have this opportunity. I hope it is the opportunity of a lifetime for 
them. But I do not want the lesson to be that money owns politics, 
because that is kind of where we are today. We are going to find out in 
2012 how much of an impact it has.
  Let's go to the first amendment. Again, I do not want to get too 
deeply into the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United because I 
hope they revisit it. But we as citizens have rights that are protected 
by the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution calls us persons. They call 
us people. Unfortunately, in this recent decision, the U.S. Supreme 
Court has basically said that corporations are people and persons and 
are given that same right. I disagree with that. Corporations cannot 
vote; they cannot be drafted into the military; they do not have a 
religion to be protected. There is a lot of difference in corporations. 
There has always been this legal understanding that a corporation can 
be a person for certain purposes--everybody agrees with that; we 
understand why--but not for all purposes and not for political 
purposes.
  One of the truths that we hold self-evident in our system of 
government is that our rights are inalienable. They do not come from 
the State. Our rights come from some higher authority than just the 
Constitution or just the U.S. Government or just the Congress. Our 
rights are inalienable. Well, corporations are created by people. They 
do not have inalienable rights. It is ridiculous to think they do.
  Again, I hope the Supreme Court will take an opportunity, based on 
what they saw in 2012, to revisit that decision.
  Let me talk about the current state of affairs. I know I have 
colleagues waiting. I want to wrap this up as quickly as I can. The 
current state of affairs is that we have unlimited money coming into 
the political system and secret money coming into the political system. 
That is a bad combination. That is not good for the public's welfare. 
It is not good for the average voter and the average citizen.
  Again, we have a first amendment right to free speech. There is no 
doubt about that. And we should. And we should zealously and jealously 
protect that. But in the political situation we have today, if I have a 
person in Arkansas who wants to give $100 for a campaign--say, a local 
congressional campaign, he wants to give $100--well, somebody else can 
come along--it may be an individual, it may be a corporation; we do not 
know who it is--and they can give $1 million or they can give more. It 
can be unlimited, but I want to use round figures here so we can talk 
about this in a concise way. So $100 from the voter in the State who is 
actually voting in that election and $1 million from who knows where. 
Well, I would say this. I talked about it earlier. I want to lend my 
voice to this. I want that voter to have a voice. I do not want that 
outside or that secret money or whomever is offering that to have a 
voice that is 10,000 times louder than that person in Arkansas. It 
would be like right here. If I were here speaking today and talking 
about being for the DISCLOSE Act and I turned around and there were 
10,000 other people crammed in this Chamber talking about the same act 
but talking against the act, whose voice is going to be heard by the 
public? It is not going to be mine. That is the problem with the 
current state of affairs.
  So let's say a television spot--I will just pick a number--costs 
$500. That is

[[Page 11365]]

the cheap spot. That is a laughably cheap spot in a lot of markets, but 
let's say it is a small market and it is not in prime time. Let's say 
it is $500. I will just pick that figure. So if that person gave $100, 
they bought one-fifth of a TV ad--one-fifth. That is about a 6-second 
TV ad. If that corporation or outside person--whomever it is--gave $1 
million, they have bought 2,000 TV ads--2,000 compared to 6 seconds. No 
comparison at all. It is unfair. It grounds out and dilutes our first 
amendment right that is protected in the Constitution.
  This is the last point I wish to make on this unlimited money, and 
then I would like to make my final point in just a second. On the 
unlimited money, you need to ask yourself: Why are they doing this? Why 
are they giving this money? Is it out of the goodness of their hearts?
  No, that is not it. That is not it. Elections have consequences. They 
want to influence the election because they want the consequence to be 
that they have influence, they have power, they have control. That is 
what this is about.
  We talk about it in terms of 30-second ads and negative ads. What 
this is about ultimately is who makes decisions in this country. Is it 
the general public? Is it elected officials who are here because 
sometimes they go through bruising campaigns to get here, but they are 
here and they are trying to put the public interest first or are those 
decisions going to be made by people whose elections were bought lock, 
stock, and barrel with unlimited and secret money? That is what is at 
stake today. That is what is at stake tonight. That is why I am for the 
DISCLOSE Act. I do not think it goes far enough. But I do want to 
finish on that last point.
  The DISCLOSE Act is about transparency. That is a major step in the 
right direction. I do not think it is the whole ball game; it is a 
major step in the right direction. I think this is a good piece of 
legislation.
  I thank all of my colleagues who are here tonight and who are talking 
about this and bringing awareness to the American public about this 
because I think it is important. And I think this is something we do 
have to get right, and we need this reform. This is a great place to 
start.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Rhode 
Island for his leadership on this and so many other issues. I thank the 
Senator from Arkansas for his comments. I recommend them to anyone.
  Minnesotans are proud of our participation in civic life. We believe 
very strongly in hearing each other out. In the last Presidential 
election, 78 percent of eligible voters in my State turned out to 
vote--well above the national turnout of 64 percent of voting-age 
citizens in 2008. In fact, Minnesota has led the Nation for voter 
turnout in the last six elections. This is really remarkable. It is one 
of the reasons I am so proud to represent my State here in the Senate. 
But when the Supreme Court upended 100 years of law with Citizens 
United, it yanked the microphone away from average Minnesotans and 
turned it over to a handful of millionaires and billionaires and 
corporations intent, as Senator Pryor said, on controlling the outcome 
of our election and controlling the decisions that are made that affect 
the men, women, and children in my State.
  A single person writing a check for $1 million or $10 million or $100 
million can drown out the voices of everyone else, and they can do so 
in total secrecy. We have heard about a handful of millionaires and 
billionaires who have written fat checks to bankroll Presidential 
candidates, but what is most terrifying about this is that we only know 
about those people because they decided to let us know. For every 
billionaire who tells us he is writing a check to a candidate, there 
are probably 10 or 100 or 1,000 corporations and ultrawealthy 
individuals who are writing similar checks in secret. Even one of the 
ones we know about because he decided to let us know now says he is 
also going to give secretly.
  I was listening to C-SPAN radio in my car. That is right, I listen to 
C-SPAN in my car. They had a woman on who was a journalist. Her beat is 
money and politics. She writes for a major American daily paper. C-SPAN 
was talking calls, and one caller basically said all of this is about 
privatizing Social Security and Medicare so Wall Street folks can get 
their hands on the money from those programs and so insurance programs 
get their hands on Medicare money. You know there is truth to that. So 
the expert says in the answer--and I am paraphrasing--that is what we 
thought. Most people thought it was going to be corporations giving us 
money, but it turns out it is just ultrawealthy people who are doing 
it. Then she paused and said: Of course, we don't know that because so 
much of the money is secret.
  I thought to myself, here is a woman whose whole area of expertise--
this is what she thinks about 10, 12 hours a day--money and politics--
and yet, even she, because this money is secret--even she is capable of 
being confused or not understanding the implications of all this secret 
money--even if it was just for her for a moment or a couple of moments.
  That is the purpose of why we are up here tonight to talk about the 
proliferation of secret money post-Citizens United and its implications 
on our democracy. Americans may not like it--I sure don't--but the 
Supreme Court has ruled. At least for now Citizens United is here to 
stay. The Supreme Court isn't final because it is right; it is right 
because it is final. So we need to accept that. Absent a constitutional 
amendment, Congress can no longer limit corporate contributions or 
campaign contributions to outside or independent groups--so-called 
independent groups. As much as we may want to, we can't stop 
corporations and ultrawealthy individuals from flooding our elections 
with massive amounts of money. We can't stop it. But the Supreme Court 
said we can shine light on the shadowy interests behind those 
unprecedented contributions. We can force these organizations and 
ultrawealthy individuals to disclose.
  Justice Anthony Kennedy said this in his majority opinion in Citizens 
United:

       Prompt 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.

  Justice Kennedy went on to say:

       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 give proper weight to different speakers and 
     messages.

  I could not have said it better myself. This is in his majority 
opinion of Citizens United. My colleagues and I have simply taken 
Justice Kennedy's words to heart, and we have drafted a bill that will 
bring transparency and accountability to the electorate so they can 
make the decisions about who should lead our country. That is critical 
because elections matter.
  Elections determine who is going to get to Washington, who is going 
to get here to make decisions on behalf of the rest of the Nation. 
Americans need to know who is spending tons of money to get candidates 
elected.
  That is why we are here today to talk about the DISCLOSURE Act. This 
bill is not a panacea. It will not overturn Citizens United, and it 
will not stop the tsunami of money pouring in from corporations. But it 
will require that all that special interest money be disclosed 
publicly, and that will have tremendously beneficial effects for this 
country.
  We may not be able to stop the tidal wave of unlimited cash, but we 
can, and we should, at a minimum know who is writing those big checks. 
Not only will this type of disclosure discourage backroom deals 
conducted under a cloak of secrecy but, more importantly, it will 
discourage donors from unleashing negative, misleading,

[[Page 11366]]

and deceptive ads against politicians who are trying to do the right 
thing.
  But that is not our world today. Companies don't want us to know they 
are giving lots of money to elect or defeat someone. So they do 
something that looks a lot like money laundering, but it is legal.
  They might create and give money to a shell corporation, which in 
turn donates to a super PAC. When we look at the records for the super 
PAC, we will see the shell corporation but not the original source of 
the money.
  A company might give money to one shell corporation, which in turn 
gives money to a PAC or another shell corporation, and so on, until it 
finally reaches the ultimate super PAC. It is nearly impossible to 
trace it back to the original corporation. That is in the super PACs.
  The company can just give money to a 501(c)(4)--a so-called social 
welfare organization--which is under no obligation to disclose a single 
thing. Of course, there are rules in place to make sure these 
nonprofits are truly social welfare organizations and deserving of 
their privileged tax-exempt status. Specifically, they must spend less 
than 50 percent of their money on political activities. Unfortunately, 
the IRS has not been aggressively enforcing this rule. We suspect that 
many of these 504(c)(4)s are not spending more than 50 percent on 
nonpolitical ads.
  But no matter how companies or wealthy individuals secretly funnel 
their money into elections, we all lose. We lose because we don't know 
who is paying for the negative attack ads that are constantly 
dominating our TV or the newspaper ads or the Web ads online or the 
robocalls that interrupt dinner or the misleading mailers or the field 
operatives who knock on our door or call us on Saturday mornings.
  Minnesotans believe strongly in hearing each other out, and they want 
honest, informed debate. They want to hear all sides of an issue before 
they make up their minds. This is why we have such a high voter turnout 
in our State. They want to listen to the competing priorities for our 
State and our Nation because these issues are not simple. They want to 
hear all sides before deciding who to vote for at the polls.
  Unfortunately, Minnesotans cannot listen to all sides when worthwhile 
debate is being drowned out by a tsunami of corrosive, negative, and 
often deceptive ads paid for by outside special interest groups. These 
days, especially if one is in a swing State, people can't turn on a 
television without seeing them.
  But it is not just volume that drowns out legitimate debate and turns 
off voters; it is what the ads are saying. More and more are negative, 
deceptive or both. According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center--
listen to this--85 percent of the dollars spent on Presidential ads by 
the four top-spending 501(c)(4)s--or so-called social welfare 
organizations--were spent on ads containing at least one deceptive 
claim--deceptive. No wonder people are disenchanted with our political 
system.
  Anonymity fuels this. It is easy to pay for ads that deceive voters 
when they don't have to attach their name to them, and so they have no 
accountability. It is easy to launch personal attacks when they are 
doing so in secret--under the cloak of anonymity. It is these so-called 
social welfare groups that are responsible for so many of these 
deceptive ads that have absolutely no requirements to disclose their 
donors.
  The public doesn't know when they watch political ads whether they 
are true or deceptive. That is a problem because there is no question 
that advertising works. People watch TV. They love TV. I love TV. I 
made a living in TV. When we watch TV, there are commercials, and 
commercials work. Do you know the show ``Mad Men''? It is popular and 
it is about advertising in the early 1960s and it is about how 
advertising works. They discovered this a long time ago, and it is 
true; it works. Advertising helps influence what we buy, what we eat, 
what we drink, where we shop and, yes, which politician we will support 
when we go to the polls.
  Most Americans don't watch or listen to C-SPAN in their spare time. 
Most Americans aren't engrossed in politics, keeping track of every 
vote we take in Congress. That is why political ads can make or break 
how Americans feel about a candidate come election day.
  The Supreme Court recognized this in Citizens United when it noted it 
had previously upheld disclosure laws in order to address the problem 
of purportedly independent groups running election-related ads while 
``hiding behind dubious and misleading names.''
  It is these generic and sometimes misleading names for outside 
groups--with nice words such as ``America'' ``freedom'' or 
``prosperity'' in their titles--that are manipulating the public now. 
In the 2010 election, these outside groups spent more than $280 million 
on campaign ads, which was more than double what they spent in 2008 and 
more than five times what they spent in 2006. Even more shocking, there 
are estimates that outside groups will spend more than $1 billion on 
independent expenditures this election cycle.
  The public has every right to know who is bankrolling these ads, so 
it can better understand what motivates these messages and take what 
they say in some context and with a grain of salt.
  As important, what we are not seeing, what has been drowned out by 
all these negative deceptive ads is debate and discussion about the 
issues most Americans care about: How am I going to pay my mortgage? 
How am I going to put my kids through college? How am I going to find a 
job in this difficult economy? Will I be able to retire and enjoy my 
golden years?
  Why is this happening? Why aren't ads focused on these issues? The 
answer is quite simple. Ads that dominate the airwaves are expensive, 
and they are being bought by corporations and ultrawealthy individuals 
for their own interests.
  Corporations aren't evil--far from it. There are many great 
corporations in Minnesota. But it is their duty to maximize shareholder 
profit. Their focus is on cutting costs or consolidating their position 
in a market or on reducing the number of regulations they need to 
comply with to keep their workers safe, in some cases, or maybe to keep 
our air and water clean. Their first priority isn't helping the middle 
class, and they are not going to spend money from their general 
treasuries on ads urging candidates to keep college affordable or push 
for funding for Pell grants, Head Start or for medical research.
  But the bigger issue--and the reason why disclosure matters so much 
in our political system--is that corporations don't just buy ads to 
make their views known; they use them as a weapon against politicians. 
This is a real problem. It is happening today, and it is only going to 
get worse and worse now that corporations can spend what they want, as 
much as they want, whenever they want, with absolutely no transparency.
  Candidates know if they do not support the policies that corporations 
are pushing, they are likely to face a torrent of negative ads funded 
by that corporation or industry when they are running for election or 
reelection. All those ads will come from a shell organization with a 
name such as the American Prosperity Fund for America's Prosperity in 
the Future in America. The public will not know that a corporation or 
wealthy individual is buying these ads, but the candidate will, and the 
candidate will be powerless to stop it.
  This is why I think the Supreme Court got it wrong in Citizens 
United--and this is a quote from the Supreme Court--when it found 
``independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do 
not give rise to the corruption or the appearance of corruption.''
  Wow. That is what the Court said. They made that statement without 
any citation to legal authority, without any citation to evidence. This 
statement was plucked from thin air. It doesn't pass the smell test. 
Any Minnesotan knows intuitively that is just flat-out wrong.
  The reality is, unfortunately, money does equal power in this 
country. Elections cost money--a lot of money. With

[[Page 11367]]

each election cycle it is costing more and more. When a corporation or 
wealthy individual can spend a truckload of cash to support its 
favorite politician and kick out a courageous politician who may have 
hurt its bottom line, our entire democratic system is undermined. If 
this continues, we risk becoming an oligarchy, which would undermine 
our already undermined middle class and would quash the working poor's 
aspirations for entering the middle class. It would be harder to get a 
wage that could put a roof over your head, harder to afford child care, 
and harder to send a kid to college. There will be an even greater 
disparity between the rich and everyone else.
  Already, since the 1970s, our Nation has been growing apart as the 
rich get richer and the poorer and middle class fall further and 
further behind. They have seen little or no return on their increased 
productivity and longer working hours. If money and power continue to 
accumulate among a few individuals and companies, it will only get 
worse. There will be less money for education, less money for 
unemployment insurance, and less money for basic research to cure 
diseases. It will be harder to get health insurance, if health care 
reform is repealed, and they might even be successful in pushing to 
privatize Social Security or Medicare. This will not benefit working 
families.
  Your power to sway elected representatives should be the same 
regardless of whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a 
police officer in a small town. Unfortunately, we are careening toward 
a world where that is no longer the case and where the average 
American's voice is drowned out by all the special interests 
monopolizing our public discourse.
  Thomas Jefferson once said:

       The end of democracy and the defeat of the American 
     Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of 
     lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.

  I fear, Mr. President, we are on the brink of just that.
  The DISCLOSE Act will not fix all the harms of Citizens United, but 
it is certainly a step forward. It will bring much needed sunshine to 
our political system which will go a long way toward reducing the 
number and dishonesty of negative attack ads that further corrode our 
public dialogue and ultimately threaten our democratic system.
  I am disappointed my colleagues do not recognize just that, and they 
have refused to even let us have a full debate on this important bill. 
I understand we may be taking up a motion for reconsideration, and I 
urge my colleagues to reconsider and join me in supporting this 
important piece of legislation and join those of us who are here 
tonight. If it is allowed to come up for an up-or-down vote, I am 
confident this body will pass it, and that would be cheered by the 
American public.
  In closing, I would like to remind this body of an exchange Benjamin 
Franklin had with one of the delegates at the closing of the 
Constitutional Convention in 1787. When asked whether we have either a 
republic or a monarchy, Dr. Franklin responded: ``A Republic, if you 
can keep it.''
  Our Founders created the greatest Nation in history. It is our job to 
keep it that way and make sure a nation premised on equality and 
freedom does not become a nation beholden to just the rich and the 
powerful.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Minnesota for 
his very powerful and eloquent words, and I particularly want to thank 
my distinguished friend and colleague from Rhode Island for his 
leadership on this issue. I also thank others who have been at his side 
and working with him. I have been proud to be a cosponsor of this 
measure.
  I would like to thank Senator Schumer, who introduced a similar 
measure in 2010. The DISCLOSE Act of 2010 has been, in fact, 
considerably narrowed and tailored to target the anonymity of huge 
donations--increasingly large donations today--and it is the kind of 
tailoring and narrowing that reflects the care and precision and hard 
work that my colleague from Rhode Island and others--and I am proud to 
be among them--have given to this matter.
  As I rise at this late hour, we can't know--we can only hope--that 
America is listening or that our colleagues are listening, but I do 
know we should be listening to America. I am listening to Connecticut, 
and what I hear from Connecticut, the people of my State--as so many of 
my colleagues are hearing from their constituents and citizens--is they 
are losing trust in the greatest democracy in the history of the world. 
The greatest country in the history of the planet is losing the 
confidence and faith of its people.
  I am hearing from people such as Catherine Sturgess of New Canaan, 
CT, who says:

       Undisclosed campaign money influences candidates, elections 
     and undermines the role of the voter. In turn, the election 
     process is corrupted. Only a few cannot be allowed to impact 
     a system which is intended to represent us all.

  Lawrence Poin of Fairfield tells me, and I am listening:

       Right now, foreign governments, oil tycoons, and Wall 
     Street banks can spend millions to buy our democracy, and the 
     American public will never know.

  And I am listening also to Garrett Timmons of Brooklyn, CT, who says:

       I think campaign and election reform should go much further 
     and include a constitutional amendment in light of Citizens 
     United, but I know how unrealistic that is. At least this 
     act--

  He is referring to the DISCLOSE Act of 2012--

       is a step in the right direction, and I hope a no-brainer 
     for our Congress. The people of this country are losing their 
     representation in government to special interests and the 
     funders of political campaigns. And to make matters worse, we 
     don't even know who are stealing our elections.

  I am listening to those people who are watching. They are watching 
what is happening in this country, and they are losing faith because 
they believe Washington is failing to listen to them. There are 
millions of other hard-working families who are struggling to put food 
on the table, stay in their homes, and find jobs who believe the system 
is not working for them and not listening to them as much as it is to 
the people who can afford to give to political campaigns, let alone who 
can afford to give tens of millions.
  If we listen to the people of America--and I am listening to the 
people of Connecticut--we will pass the DISCLOSE Act of 2012.
  All this bill requires is openness and disclosure and accountability. 
It places no limits on what can be contributed, on what can be done, on 
what can be said. It is completely consistent with Citizens United. I 
am not here to relitigate that case.
  The Supreme Court, in the Bullock decision, recently indicated it 
would not relitigate that case anytime soon. It invalidated a Montana 
State law that prohibited corporations from making independent 
expenditures. We are not going to relitigate whether a corporation is a 
citizen or whether any of these entities can contribute or in what 
amounts.
  The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is completely consistent with Citizens 
United. In fact, in a certain very true sense, Citizens United, in its 
majority opinion, presumed disclosure. The Supreme Court, in the 
majority opinion in that case, made clear the first amendment protects 
political speech when it said:

       . . . and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to 
     react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way.

  The framework, the reasoning, the logic of Citizens United is no 
limits on speech but disclosure of who is speaking and who is funding 
and supporting that speech. That basic premise is one that runs through 
the precedence of this Court and of others who have litigated these 
cases. It is not too much to say that the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is an 
essential predicate to the framework, the legal framework, that 
Citizens United presumes.
  I would rather go further as well. As one of my constituents said, I 
would favor a constitutional amendment that would enable some limits 
consistent with the Constitution. Money is corrosive. Too much money in 
the system

[[Page 11368]]

corrupts. But, again, we are not here to set limits, we are here to 
deal with secrecy, with anonymity. Secrecy and anonymity not only 
corrode, they destroy the essence of our democracy. By opening the 
system to the sunshine that will eliminate that secrecy, we are helping 
to restore trust and faith in government, and we would be showing that 
Washington will listen to the American people, including the people of 
Connecticut.
  The Supreme Court decisions, like elections, have consequences, and 
Citizens United certainly has shown that it has consequences. During 
the 2010 midterm elections, the first election season after Citizens 
United, outside groups spent nearly $300 million--four times as much 
money as in the 2006 midterm election before the Citizens United 
decision. Nearly half of the money spent in the 2010 election after 
Citizens United was spent by just 10 groups. Think about it. Ten groups 
spent more than half of that $300 million.
  As spending has quadrupled, transparency has been lessened. Nobody 
knows where this money is coming from. In 2006, only 1 percent of 
political spending by outside groups was anonymous. In 2010, 44 
percent--nearly half--was anonymous. We know anonymity on the Internet 
or in the public sphere breeds negativism, it breeds deception, and 
often it breeds outright lies.
  Accountability is one of the watch words of our democracy, and the 
anonymity of this spending, of these contributions of tens of 
millions--indeed, hundreds of millions of dollars that are contributed 
by a handful of people and entities, whether it is corporations or 
business associations or unions, is corrupting to the process.
  The majority opinion in Citizens United dismissed concerns about 
unlimited political spending by claiming that prompt disclosure would 
make these entities and individuals accountable to shareholders, 
voters, consumers, and the public at large. Yet elections have been 
inundated with secret money.
  Citizens United had consequences unintended and unanticipated by the 
Supreme Court. People may say: Well, the Justices were naive. But the 
fact is this body, the Congress, must compensate to ameliorate and 
remedy the unintended consequences of that decision. The American 
people have shown in polls as well as those letters I mentioned earlier 
that they expect us to do so. Seven in ten Americans believe super PACs 
should be illegal, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and 
Independents. This issue is not partisan. It should be bipartisan. It 
has been bipartisan in the past and must be again. More than seven in 
ten Americans feel there is too much money in politics, including, 
again, the majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Seven 
in ten Americans, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and 
Independents, believe there should be limits on contributions to 
political campaigns. One in four Americans say they are less likely to 
vote because of the super PACs and these anonymous donations. Finally, 
seven in ten Americans agree that ``new rules that let corporations, 
unions, and people give unlimited money to super PACs will lead to 
corruption.''
  Let the Senate listen to the people of Connecticut and America. Let 
them say: We respect what you are saying again and again, and we will 
act in a bipartisan way to protect our democracy.
  Americans want their choice of candidates to be an election, not an 
auction. At the very least, we should tell them and make possible for 
them to know who is doing the bidding in those auctions, who is doing 
the buying, and who is doing the selling. Nobody wants there to be an 
auction, but if contributions are not limited, the auction at the very 
least should be in the open so that the public can see who is buying, 
who is selling, and who is bidding. That view of American democracy may 
not be a very elevating one, but we deal with practical reality, and as 
we speak, tens of millions of Americans are watching what we will do. 
Maybe not tonight, perhaps not at this hour, but at the end of the day, 
at the end of this debate, they will hold the Senate accountable for 
what it does or what it fails to do.
  I urge my colleagues to reconsider and approve the DISCLOSE Act of 
2012.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in 
supporting the DISCLOSE Act.
  I commend Senator Blumenthal for his extraordinarily insightful and 
articulate words with respect to this critical issue. I particularly 
wish to commend the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse. He has 
been the driving force to bring this issue to the floor, to educate all 
of us in the Senate and the American people about what is at stake, and 
in many respects, it is our democracy. It is the presumption that every 
American has their vote count just as much as anybody else's vote, that 
elections are decided based upon issues and ideas and not by the sheer 
volume and the sheer magnitude of 30-second advertisements that are 
designed more to divert than to inform, designed more to excite than to 
inform. Most people believe in a system that is based on thoughtful 
consideration of ideas and issues and in a system in which everyone's 
vote counts.
  Senator Whitehouse is an extraordinarily gifted attorney. He 
understands these issues perhaps as well as anyone in this body. He was 
a Federal attorney and our state's attorney general, and he has brought 
not just knowledge of the Constitution but this passion for justice and 
fairness and decency and democracy to the forefront of our debate 
today, and this will not be the last day we will be debating this 
issue. So let me begin by commending his efforts.
  A fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution is the right to 
vote. Each citizen gets one vote, and this right represents a critical 
pillar of our democracy because we treat everyone equally, allowing 
each citizen to have this crucial and critical say in who governs, on 
the issues, and ultimately what is the course of this great country.
  But because of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, I worry 
that our political and civic conversations now advantage those who 
flood our airwaves, papers, and Web sites by talking--if not shouting--
louder simply because they have more money and resources to do so.
  The New York Times recently included the following in an article, 
giving us one indication of how much money is awash in our political 
system, and it reflects what my colleague from Connecticut said.

       During the 2010 midterm elections, tax-exempt groups 
     outspent PACs by a 3-2 margin, according to a recent study by 
     the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public 
     Integrity, with most of that money devoted to attacking 
     Democrats or defending Republicans. And such groups have 
     accounted for two-thirds of the political advertising bought 
     by the biggest outside spenders so far in the 2012 election 
     cycle, according to Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis 
     Group, with close to $100 million in issue ads.

  And the clock is still ticking and the amount is accumulating.
  That electioneering in the shadows is not what most Americans want. 
They want robust debate. They want candidates to engage as candidates, 
not the witting or unwitting beneficiaries or victims of anonymous 
advertisements in their race.
  This is not, I believe, what the creators of the Constitution thought 
would happen or hoped would happen. They envisioned a country in which 
the best ideas and the best arguments prevailed regardless of how 
loudly one spoke; that it was the quality of the argument, not the 
volume of the speaker, that mattered.
  What should be important is this quality of speech, not the quantity, 
and, frankly, there is a direct correlation between the amount of money 
you have today and the quantity of your speech in the media. That is 
just the reality of paid advertisement, which dominates political 
campaigns.
  But I think this vision, because of Citizens United, has been turned 
on its

[[Page 11369]]

head. Now those with the greatest resources, the most money, have been 
given a disproportionate advantage.
  By allowing corporations and unions to unleash the full power of 
their treasury funds and explicitly advocate for the election or defeat 
of candidates in Federal or State elections in the name of protecting 
and promoting free speech, I think the Supreme Court missed the mark. 
It missed the mark about the centrality of an individual's vote and the 
substance of a campaign being about ideas, not about derogatory 
advertising, not about anything else except the issues. That is the 
ideal. That is what our Founding Fathers were hoping for and, indeed, I 
think expecting, and I think that has been terribly distorted by this 
opinion.
  There is an interesting situation going on here. In the attempt to 
create, under Citizens United, what the Supreme Court, I expect, was 
hoping to do--create an atmosphere in which speech is free--they 
created a situation in which speech is no longer free. Effective speech 
is no longer free; it actually comes with a very high cost and goes to 
the person who is the highest bidder. That is not free speech, not 
effective free speech; it is purchased speech. And if our elections are 
going to be decided not by free speech but by purchased speech, they 
will be won always by the highest bidder, by the person with the 
biggest wallet, the person who is willing to spend as much as necessary 
to prevail. And it will raise and it does raise the specter of, is this 
about the future of the country or is this about the narrow self-
interest of someone who is willing to invest a great deal of money into 
a particular race? And I think most people would conclude that it is 
probably about the narrow self-interests of someone who invests a great 
deal of money in a race.
  Simply put, I think Citizens United is deeply flawed, and more than 
one expert has voiced their frustration and disappointment with this 
decision.
  Shortly after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens 
United in 2010, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, 
which is a center-right--more right than center, perhaps--organization, 
wrote, in a column in Roll Call called ``Court Way Oversteps its 
Authority With the Citizens United Case,'' these words:

       I hoped Citizens United would be decided narrowly but 
     feared that the court would take a meat ax to a century of 
     settled law and policy. My worst fears were realized.
       This decision equates corporations, which have one goal, to 
     make money, with individual citizens, who have many goals and 
     motives in their lives, including making a better society, 
     protecting their children and grandchildren and future 
     generations, and so on . . .
       This was a case never raised by the plaintiffs and never 
     formally brought before the Roberts Court. We do not have an 
     instance where an actual for-profit corporation has 
     complained that it has been barred from its ability to get 
     its message across in the political process. The cases 
     overturned and the laws struck down were considered carefully 
     by judges and Congresses past, including in the McConnell 
     decision barely six years ago. Only one thing has changed 
     since--the political and ideological complexion of the 
     Supreme Court brought on in particular by the retirement of 
     Sandra Day O'Connor.

  Additionally, Richard Posner, a respected Conservative Judge on the 
7th Circuit Court of Appeals, who was appointed to the bench by 
President Ronald Reagan, recently stated the following on his blog:

       [T]he Court, rather naively as it seems to most observers, 
     reasoned in the Citizens United case that the risk of 
     corruption would be slight if the donor was not contributing 
     to a candidate or a political party, but merely expressing 
     his political preferences through an independent organization 
     such as a super PAC--an organization neither controlled by 
     nor even coordinating with a candidate or political party. . 
     . .
       It thus is difficult to see what practical difference there 
     is between super PAC donations and direct campaign donations, 
     from a corruption standpoint. A super PAC is a valuable 
     weapon for a campaign, as the heavy expenditures of Restore 
     Our Future, the large super PAC that supports Romney and has 
     attacked his opponents, proves; the donors to it are known; 
     and it is unclear why they should expect less quid pro quo 
     from their favored candidate if he's successful than a direct 
     donor to the candidate's campaign would be.

  Judge Posner, I think, is making the case very effectively. If there 
are limits on direct individual donors' contributions because you do 
not even want to create the appearance of a quid pro quo, the idea a 
super PAC, whose donors are known, has less of an ability to influence 
a candidate and more--I think, significantly, not only a candidate but 
perhaps an elected official--that does not follow. I think Judge 
Posner's comments are very on point in that this also invites the 
perception and perhaps the reality of inappropriate influence on 
candidates and on elected officials. That was a great deal at the heart 
of why we passed campaign reform legislation decades ago.
  Even these points of view by Norm Ornstein and by Judge Posner have 
not, unfortunately, convinced my Republican colleagues to join us in 
effect in trying to correct a deficiency which my able colleague from 
Connecticut pointed out was the fact that the case of Citizens United 
presumes disclosure. We have tried to debate this legislation and 
variations many times before. I think we have taken even much stronger 
action in previous versions, but today we are here in a good-faith 
effort to meet our colleagues more than halfway.
  There are those who opposed previous versions of the DISCLOSE Act on 
the grounds that there were provisions unrelated to disclosure. But 
these concerns are addressed head on in this legislation crafted by my 
colleague because it focuses solely on disclosure, and it is effective 
after this fall's elections. So I ask my colleagues, especially those 
who have said they are all for disclosure, to join us. Join us to pass 
this legislation because it is all about disclosure.
  Let me go back to the language of the Supreme Court opinion quoted by 
Senator Blumenthal because they presume in the decision there would be 
full disclosure, and that is what we are asking for tonight on this 
floor: Give the Court what it thought it had, a system by which the 
American public can know immediately who is putting all this money into 
the elections.
  In the words of the Court in Citizens United:

       [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 give proper weight to different speakers and 
     messages.

  That is what the court said. Yet, if we do not pass this legislation, 
there will not be enough disclosure; because corporate shareholders 
cannot make judgments about what their corporate directors and managers 
are investing in, in terms of political activities. Individuals cannot 
make judgments about the commercials they are seeing because they don't 
know who is behind them, really.
  If we want to create the context which presumably undergirded the 
Supreme Court's decision, we have to pass this legislation. If you do 
not want to ignore, indeed, what the Court has said, do not want to 
ignore what our constituents have said, and do not want to allow this 
anonymous money to flood our elections, to not raise doubt about the 
process, to not undercut what people traditionally think is the 
American way--one person, one vote;--then let's start by passing this 
legislation.
  I urge my colleagues to support the DISCLOSE Act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise tonight to join what so many have 
spoken of tonight, which is our system of electing officials to various 
levels of government. In the case of the Federal Government we are 
always concerned about how that process plays out. We live in a country 
where for generations now we have urged people to come to the public 
square, in a sense, to vote, to participate, to use their free speech 
rights, their freedom of association--

[[Page 11370]]

the rights they have to participate in elections.
  What we are confronted with now, without the passage or in the 
absence of the passage of this legislation, is what I would say are 
special rules for secret money--or maybe better said, special rules for 
a small group of individuals or entities to spend secret money.
  We, in Pennsylvania, as one of the buildings in the Capital area, 
have the finance building. It is a building I worked in for a decade. 
When it was built in the 1930s, they had as inscriptions around the 
border, the perimeter at the top of the building, precepts about 
government, what it should be, so people who worked in that building 
would aspire to higher ideals.
  One of the inscriptions says the following:

       Open to every inspection. Secure from every suspicion.

  A pretty simple precept. I think we all understand what that means. 
If we have a system or a candidate or an organization or a process that 
is open to inspection, the chances of there being suspicion about that 
candidate or about that process or about that organization would be 
diminished. So more disclosure, more scrutiny.
  We all know the old direction--I am not quite sure who said this, but 
we have all used this--the idea of sunlight being the best 
disinfectant, to make sure we keep our political process open.
  It is baffling to me why someone would not want to vote for this 
legislation when we consider the language. It is legislation which 
barely gets to the 20th page. It is not very long. I was looking at 
page 5 of the authors of the bill--Senator Whitehouse from Rhode 
Island, who has done great work on this, and so many others who worked 
with him--the language on page 5 says as follows: It is under the title 
``Disclosure Statement.'' It is very simple language:

       Any covered organization that makes campaign-related 
     disbursements aggregating more than $10,000 in an election 
     reporting cycle shall--

  And this is the mandatory part--

       not later than 24 hours after each disclosure date, file a 
     statement with the [Federal Election] Commission made under 
     penalty of perjury that contains information described in 
     paragraph (2).

  Then it goes on to describe what you have to disclose. It is very 
simple. I don't know how you could be opposed to that if you believe in 
debates in the public square. It is not as if we say to people: Come to 
the public square, but a few of you can go into a corner. We are going 
to cloak you in secrecy. You are going to be in the shadows. Everyone 
else in the public square is going to know who is on the square, is 
going to know what your point of view is, what is your position in the 
light because there are a couple of others who we are going to be put 
in the shadows, but the rest of you don't worry about it.
  It sounds strange, doesn't it? It doesn't sound very American.
  I think when people see what happened in the last couple of years, 
they are very concerned that we have a system now that has too much of 
this secret money. There is too much money in the shadows without the 
sunlight providing the disinfectant.
  When you consider what we are doing now and compare it to what has 
happened over the last generation where candidates not only file 
reports about who has contributed to their campaigns but even their 
advertising--they have disclaimers at the bottom of the advertising. 
Now in the more recent period the candidate, himself or herself, has to 
identify themselves by name and say that they paid for the ad.
  This legislation doesn't get to that. It focuses on the basic 
question of disclosure so a citizen can say: This organization made 
this assertion in an advertisement, and I am going to find out who they 
are so I can make a judgment about the advertisement before I vote.
  It is very simple. It is how our system works. People go to the 
public square, they have a debate, there is a lot of sunlight, a lot of 
disclosure, and the debates are freewheeling. They are tough, but they 
are in the open, and they comply with that precept I started with. They 
are open to every inspection, and therefore the chances of suspicion 
are lessened because everything is out in the open.
  That is all this is. It is providing a measure or degree of sunlight 
into that process, into that public square. So if all these generations 
of reform have told us--which I think they have told us, and I know 
this is true in Pennsylvania--that more disclosure, more sunlight, more 
scrutiny is going to lead to better elections and better participation, 
I don't think we should run counter to that history.
  I am not trying to assert that everything else about our elections is 
perfect. We still have a lot of other reforms we could institute. But 
at least we can give people some measure of confidence that when they 
hear an assertion in that public square they are going to know where it 
comes from. They are going to know the origin of that statement. They 
are going to know the bias or point of view, and they are going to make 
a judgment about that before they exercise their right to vote.
  We should allow people that opportunity to maybe be a little bit 
suspicious, but it is hard to be secure in your knowledge about 
information if you do not know where it comes from, if you do not know 
who is the real speaker, and you do not know their point of view.
  I think there are a lot of Americans who know our system is not 
perfect even with passage of this legislation, but they at least say to 
us: Let's at least remove the possibility, which I think is evident 
now, that you have a small group of people who are allowed to spend 
this secret money and, therefore, elevate or raise suspicion, and maybe 
even cynicism, about our system.
  Let's be open to every inspection and to every measure of scrutiny, 
and let's bring our points of view to the public square as we have for 
so many generations. Let's pass the DISCLOSE Act and make sure that at 
a minimum, as tough as times are for a lot of people right now, at 
least they are going to have the information they need about point of 
view before they vote.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I wish to thank all my colleagues 
who have been so diligent, hardworking, and prescient on this issue. Of 
course, Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island, the leader of our task 
force, led us to this point. Senator Merkley has been very active and 
involved, as have you, Mr. President, as well as Senator Shaheen and 
Senator Bennet. There have been so many people on the task force who 
did a very good job, including Senator Udall and so many of our 
colleagues.
  The fact that we have been on the Senate floor now for close to 5 
hours and there hasn't been a moment's pause says something. It talks 
about the broad support that this modest but powerful act has on our 
side of the aisle. The fact that no one, unfortunately, on the other 
side of the aisle has come to debate this issue says something as well. 
The only debate, in fact, we heard was the Republican leader in a brief 
speech that was almost 1984ish. His reason we shouldn't disclose is 
that people who give would be harassed.
  If we go by that, we should probably have everything be in secret 
because, of course, in an open democracy, when we do things in the 
political arena, we are subject to criticism. That is what freedom is 
about. To come up with this inside-out argument that we shouldn't 
disclose because people might be criticized for the contributions they 
make or the ads they fund is the most antidemocratic, anti-U.S. 
Constitution argument I have heard. It just doesn't even pass the laugh 
test. I am surprised. My colleague is one of the most brilliant 
political minds we have around here. Even when I disagree with him, I 
respect his mind. But this argument is--to say sophistry is kind. I 
don't think it is going to catch on with people.
  Anyway, we have had very few comments, other than that made by 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle tonight, and that is truly 
unfortunate.

[[Page 11371]]

We should have a debate on this issue, but I have a feeling most of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle realize by their previous 
statements, by the previous position of the Republican Party, and by 
knowing them, we are right.
  Disclosing contributions is only fair and only right and American and 
in keeping with our democracy and our Constitution. I think the reason 
so few people have shown--or no people on the other side have shown is 
that the reason they are not supporting us is not out of conviction but 
out of short-term political advantage. Obviously, the super PACs, large 
multimillion dollar contributions are coming mostly from the other side 
and may indeed benefit them in the election. In the long run, it is bad 
for our democracy. In the long run, it is bad for the Republican Party 
to shy away from not only debating this issue but supporting this bill 
because the issue of disclosure is so simple, so easy, and so right. 
The issue of disclosure is one that is now wracking the Presidential 
campaign. You can run, but you can't hide. The argument of disclosure 
will, in a sense, chase you down and beat you so you may as well join 
in now and do the right thing.
  I would like to make a point. The two top advertisers in this 
election cycle are predictably the two candidates' campaign. What is 
the third just after the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign? It is 
something called Crossroads GPS. In the last week alone, Crossroads GPS 
announced almost $25 million in advertising against the President and 
the Senators. The group, Crossroads GPS, has a name, and it doesn't 
mean much. They don't have to disclose a single one of their donors. In 
fact, reports indicate that Crossroads GPS raised $77 million in its 
first 2 years of existence, and 90 percent of that came from, at most, 
24 donors. That is an average of $2.9 million per donor.
  So far in this election cycle, as of May 31, super PACs have spent 
$135.6 million in an election year. Twenty percent comes from 501(c)(4) 
organizations, ``social welfare organizations'' that don't have to 
declare their donors at all thanks to the decision in Citizens United. 
Many of the donors behind the other 80 percent of super PACs could also 
be anonymous. That is because people can donate to the 501(c)(4)s that 
require no disclosure and then the 501(c)(4)s can donate to the 527s 
which requires some disclosure. The level of disclosure under our 
present law isn't just inadequate, it is laughable. The voters deserve 
to know the truth, ugly or not, of who is behind the super PACs. If the 
wealthy special interests want to invest hundreds of millions of 
dollars in our government, then they should pay their fair share of 
taxes rather than fund candidates who will give them special tax breaks 
paid for by middle-class Americans.
  Yet because of the flawed Citizens United ruling, the corporations 
that can't vote in our elections are trying to buy the electoral 
outcomes that benefit them, and it is all in secret. Our solution is 
simple: The DISCLOSE Act simply restores transparency and 
accountability. There are many of us who would limit what people can 
give and how they can give it.
  I believe, frankly, that Buckley v. Valeo is not as bad a decision as 
Citizens United, but it is a bad decision. I introduced legislation, a 
constitutional amendment, to undo it years ago. Two years ago, I joined 
my colleague from New Mexico who had spearheaded this drive in the 
House to support his legislation.
  I believe there ought to be limits because the first amendment is not 
absolute. No amendment is absolute. A person can't scream ``fire'' 
falsely in a crowded theater. We have libel laws. We have 
antipornography laws. All of those are limits on the first amendment. 
What could be more important than the wellspring of our democracy? 
Certain limits on first amendment rights that if left unfettered, 
destroy the equality--any semblance of equality in our democracy of 
course would be allowed by the Constitution. The new theorists on the 
Supreme Court who don't believe that, I am not sure where their 
motivation comes from, but they are so wrong. They are so wrong.
  I hope we are going to move to change this law. I hope we are going 
to pass first this DISCLOSE Act and then the broader bill that has been 
introduced, which also has disclaim. I hope eventually we will find a 
Supreme Court that allows reasonable limits on campaign contributions. 
That is so important for the future.
  I have to tell the Chair I am an optimist, and I love this country. 
We had our DSCC retreat this weekend, and we heard stories about people 
who had risen from poverty to now run for the U.S. Senate after having 
careers of great accomplishment. I am not going to name specific 
individuals, but you heard them. They were moving. It is what America 
is all about, being there. It made me so proud to be an American. Most 
of our families are examples of this. My father was an exterminator. He 
didn't go to college. I am here. What a place.
  Despite my love for this country and my fervent belief in its future, 
the thing that worries me most is the effects of the Citizens United 
case. To have 17 people contribute half of the money to Republican 
super PACs and to have the vast majority of that money undisclosed is 
frightening.
  I know maybe our Supreme Court Justices do think in absolute terms. 
After all, this is the first amendment. But I am sure of one thing: 
None of them have run for office. They have no idea of the power of 
these negative undisclosed ads, the corrosive effect it has on our 
democracy, and the influence that those who offer these ads have. It 
makes me worry about the future of this country if we continue along 
this path. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court seems to have very little 
doubt based on the Montana case where they even refused to hear it. We 
have to worry about the fundamental fairness of how our system 
functions.
  We are not a pure democracy. We are a Republic, if we can keep it, 
and a Republic says there ought to be some intermediation. There is an 
understanding in a Republic that the Founding Fathers were very much 
aware of it. I guess Alexander Hamilton, my fellow New Yorker, leading 
this part of it, that those who have achieved success in America 
deserve some influence--maybe a little more influence than others--they 
believed that; that is how our Republic is set up.
  The pendulum has swung so far that I truly, for the first time in my 
life, worry about the future of this democracy. If a small group of 
people can control the entire political process through the powerful 
vehicle of undisclosed ads shown on television time and time again. If 
when people run for office they are afraid to offend those who have 
great wealth or power because these ads may be run against them, it 
presents one of the greatest dangers to this democracy that we have had 
in over 200 years.
  Maybe one of those nine--particularly one of those five--on the 
Supreme Court are watching so they have some understanding of the 
damage this decision is doing to our democracy. Do they understand that 
when they write: We are not against disclosure, and that as long as 
Citizens United continues to exist it is almost a catch-22--the way our 
political structure works, the heavy money that comes in on the other 
side--and then not a single Republican, even many of those who probably 
agree with us in their hearts are willing to vote even for disclosure--
means we will never get it and it is an empty promise. Do they 
understand the so-called independence of independent expenditures has 
become a joke, that the very underpinnings of their decision in 
Citizens United does not square at all with reality? Do they understand 
what every 1 of the 100 of us here and the 435 Members of the House on 
the other side and Presidential candidates are living with? Do they 
have any understanding of that?
  So here we are. What else can we do? We are here late at night 
desperately trying to either persuade our colleagues whose self-
interests mitigate against them joining us to persuade the people--
although the issue of campaign finance is often an abstract one at a 
time when people are so busy working hard paying the bills, raising

[[Page 11372]]

their families, and experiencing the vicissitudes that life and that 
God gives and visits on each and every one of us. In fact, maybe one of 
the Justices on the Supreme Court is sort of living in a fantasy world 
as their decisions undo the very democracy they are supposed to 
preserve.
  We are trying. That is all we can do. The one thing I want to assure 
my colleagues of on both sides of the aisle, the American people, and 
everybody else who is involved in this issue is we are not going to 
stop trying until we succeed.
  Dr. King, one of the great men of America, said that ``the arc of 
history is long, but it bends in the direction of justice.'' He was 
talking about justice for people of color. There also has to be a 
justice for average folks who can't reach into their checkbooks and 
spend $1 million on an ad, undisclosed, that excoriates, often 
unfairly, someone they disagree with. They need justice too, those 
average folks. They are not going to get it until this simple measure, 
and others that are stronger than it, start succeeding.
  We are going to keep at it. We are not going to stop until we 
succeed. Under the leadership of many who are here tonight sitting in 
this Chamber, we will keep working and working and working until our 
government is truly one of the people, by the people, and for the 
people.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schumer). The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, this is a very interesting night on the 
Senate floor as many of us keep coming down and talking about what it 
means, the money involved in politics, and the corrupt system that is 
now plaguing us with these super PACs and these 501(c)4s. I bet if we 
asked the average person what is a 501(c)4, they would have no idea. We 
would say, turn on the TV in one of those swing States and see 1 of 
those 1,000 ads in a week; that is a 501(c)4 running those ads.
  I know it is late here. It is not too late from Alaska's perspective; 
it is late here. It is around 11 o'clock in Washington, DC. In Alaska 
it is about 7 o'clock, the sun hasn't set, and here we are in the 
Senate talking about what is important not only to my folks in Alaska 
but also to the rest of the folks in this country.
  It is just July and we are already up to our elbows in negative and 
dirty and distorted attack ads. Imagine what it will be like by 
November. These kinds of negative ads are cheap-shot ads, many of them 
funded by anonymous donors who make outrageous negative claims based on 
half truths at best and outright lies at worst, all paid for by secret 
fat cats and unlimited deep pockets--money that no one knows where it 
comes from. Alaskans tell me when I am back there--and I try to get 
back there at least twice a month or more and I hear from Alaskans all 
the time. They are fed up with it. I know we are fed up with it. I 
think the American people are fed up with it. So I am happy to join my 
colleagues tonight to stand up and fight back, demanding transparency--
something so simple. That is all we are asking for tonight: 
transparency, openness, and honesty.
  I don't know what they are afraid of. If you contribute money, you 
should be proud and excited about who you are supporting. For some 
reason they hide. They don't want people to see who they support.
  I want to take a few minutes--I know many people have heard tonight, 
who have been watching and listening, and maybe it has been through C-
SPAN or through news clips or whatever else might be going on, through 
our own Web sites--to describe how we got here, why we are in this 
dilemma. The Citizens United case expanded free speech rights to 
corporations as if they are free people. Whoever thought ``corporate 
personhood'' would become part of our vocabulary?
  In fact, Alaskans are very concerned about this. Just last week, the 
city and borough of Sitka passed a resolution about the opposition to 
corporate personhood. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record this resolution from a small community in Alaska that is 
concerned about the issue.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                           Resolution 2012-15


 A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF SITKA TO SUPPORT AMENDING THE 
   UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION TO RESTORE THE PEOPLE'S POWER TO LIMIT 
           CORPORATE INFLUENCE IN ELECTIONS AND POLICYMAKING

       Whereas, Due to the incorrect interpretation of the 
     Constitution and the adverse impact on the rights of people 
     in our democracy in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 
     Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission (FEC), local, 
     state, and federal elected officials must take action to 
     restore the authority of the American people to restrict the 
     undue influence of corporations on our elections and public 
     policy; and
       Whereas, the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Citizens 
     United v. FEC broke away from the legal precedents that 
     acknowledged the power of citizens through their elected 
     representatives to limit corporate influence in elections 
     because the interests of corporations do not always 
     correspond with the public interest and therefore, the 
     political influence of corporations should be limited; and
       Whereas, the Supreme Court's radical rewrite of the First 
     Amendment's protections will permit even greater corporate 
     influence over our political process by allowing unlimited 
     spending from corporate profits to favor or oppose 
     candidates; and
       Whereas, the Supreme Court's decision will allow the free 
     speech rights of a corporation to dilute and outweigh the 
     free speech rights of ordinary citizens, because of the vast 
     financial resources corporations have for spending money to 
     influence elections compared with regular people; and
       Whereas, the Supreme Court's elevation of corporate 
     ``rights'' may have constitutional repercussions that go far 
     beyond this one case and will undermine the ability of the 
     people to regulate corporations in numerous policy areas 
     affecting people's health, wealth and opportunities; and
       Whereas, THE American people, through their local, state, 
     and federal governments must reclaim their rightful place as 
     sovereigns in our democracy and protect the electoral process 
     from corporate domination; and
       Whereas, fair elections are fundamental to the health and 
     well-being of our democracy, and
       Whereas, the City and Borough of Sitka Assembly stands in 
     agreement that corporations are not entitled to the same 
     first amendment rights in our elections as people and further 
     urge our state legislators to adopt and send to the United 
     States Congress a resolution in support of amending the 
     Constitution to restore the ability of the American people to 
     limit corporate spending in our elections. Now, therefore, be 
     it
       Resolved by the elected officials of the City and Borough 
     of Sitka that: the City and Borough of Sitka, strongly 
     condemns the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United vs. 
     FEC and supports amending the U.S. Constitution, to limit 
     corporate influence and restore democracy in our elections 
     for the benefit of the American people.

  Mr. BEGICH. I also want to talk about the solution to a growing 
problem, and that is the DISCLOSE Act. As I presided, sitting where the 
Presiding Officer is now, and now down on the floor, I noticed no one 
from the minority is here in this Chamber countering or debating what 
we are talking about tonight. They are at home away from the TV cameras 
because earlier this evening they voted in a bloc against moving the 
DISCLOSE Act forward. That is kind of interesting because I don't know 
how many times I hear from the other side: Please let us have the right 
to have a debate on a subject matter. Don't filibuster it; don't 
require 60 votes. Let us vote. Let us amend these kinds of issues. So 
all we are saying is, Let's get to the vote. They would get a chance to 
amend it if they want, if they don't like pieces of it, but they won't 
let us do that. They voted in favor of unlimited negative political 
ads. They voted against transparency, openness, and honesty. They voted 
against the American people. They should be ashamed. They should be in 
hiding.
  So what exactly is Citizens United? The Citizens United ruling by the 
Supreme Court--again, that many of us have spoken about already--2 
years ago opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and special 
interest money in elections. As a result, corporations and other 
wealthy interests exert vast influence in our political system through 
secret, anonymous, untraceable money. Individuals, ordinary Americans, 
are having their voices drowned out. Super PACs--we hear that phrase 
often--disclose their donors, but these 501(c)4s--that is what they are 
called, 501(c)4 groups, which is a code underneath the

[[Page 11373]]

IRS code--they are actually called--this is what is amazing--social 
welfare organizations, 501(c)4s. They don't have to disclose anything. 
They can run their own negative ads or they can give unlimited money to 
super PACs without any disclosure. Either way, they don't have to 
disclose their donors.
  The era of secret money is here, and it is a lot of money. We have 
heard the numbers. This year, we estimate almost $1 billion will be 
spent in negative ads no one has to know who is paying for. If they 
love these ads, if they think they are so great and they are so 
factual, all we are asking is to tell us who you are, tell us what you 
are doing.
  When I was mayor of Anchorage, I had to deal with a group like this 
in one of my reelection campaigns. They ran an ad. No one knew who they 
were, but I had a pretty good idea. I started talking about it. I will 
tell my colleagues what happened. In Anchorage, people rejected those 
ads. I won my reelection. I won the largest margin in my city's 
history. But they started running these secret ads. They didn't want to 
disclose themselves. They didn't like a decision I made and then they 
never came forward, but we knew who they were.
  Again, we think it will be up to $1 billion. They have already spent 
a quarter of a billion dollars.
  The last time we had an issue such as this in this country around 
electioneering in the sense of elections being bought by very special 
interest groups was around 1972. Some people may not remember the 
history, but all I have to say is a couple of words: Scandal. 
Watergate. That is what happened. It was election money--more money 
than people could ever imagine. The rules were unlimited in 1972. As a 
matter of fact, it got so bad that it was truly a constitutional 
crisis. The President had to resign. Think about it. That was the last 
time we did election reform in the sense of campaign financing. And 
campaign financing reform came in fast and furious after that, because 
it was corruption with the money of a very few people. It brought down 
our President at that time and almost brought down this country.
  Things have changed quite a bit since then. I want to give a couple 
of stats because I think it is important to know where we have been and 
where we are in the sense of this debate. Forty years ago was the last 
time we had meaningful, aggressive election reform in the sense of 
campaign financing. Back then we could buy a gallon of gas for 55 
cents. Imagine that. HBO was launched as the first paid-for cable 
network channel, or TV station. Today, cable is everywhere and the 
amount of money flowing into it is enormous. Digital watches were 
introduced. Everything is digital now. Back then it was just beginning, 
but it was a different era. It was a crisis that occurred with the 
corruption of money that tried to buy our governments, buy every 
elected official they could get their hands on, and in that case the 
Presidency. That was 40 years ago.
  Now here we are. When we think about the money that will be spent 
this time--$1 billion--almost 70 percent of the money so far has been 
used for negative ads. Poll after poll, I don't care if it is a 
scientific poll or sitting at the coffee shop, or when I am traveling 
around Alaska--people hate negative ads. But they continue to buy them 
and they never want to tell anyone who is paying for them. Again, if 
they are so proud and they are factual, step to the plate.
  The election is 4 months away from now and we are going to see an 
enormous amount of ads. When I think about how this affects my State of 
Alaska--not so long ago, Alaska had some of the strictest campaign 
finance laws in the country. Alaskans said we don't want outside money 
or a few rich locals buying elections.
  Let me give an example. Five hundred dollars is the maximum amount 
one can contribute to a candidate in a calendar year. Individuals, 
nonresidents, the maximum amount for a Governor's race is $20,000, 
total. Corporations, business organizations, unions in Alaska, 
prohibited. Groups from outside, not based in Alaska, prohibited. 
Nongroup entities based outside of Alaska, prohibited. We have some of 
the toughest laws.
  But now this effort is stepping on what citizens did through an 
initiative. They put at risk our State laws. Now corporations can make 
independent expenditures on behalf of State candidates in Alaska, which 
they could not do before. Our own campaign financing agency in Alaska 
just issued an opinion that will allow for unlimited spending. This 
will allow outside groups and money to influence Alaskans in Alaska 
elections--exactly what we didn't want, through our own citizens 
initiative.
  There is one thing we don't like in Alaska and that is outsiders 
telling us how to do our business. They did that for decades and took 
everything they could out of Alaska. Every dime, every inch of land 
they could take in the sense of ownership of mineral resources, they 
took it all for their benefit--for a few. Alaskans said, No more. Not 
only did we change our laws that govern, we also changed our elections 
law. Citizens did this.
  What can we do in Congress? It is so simple: disclosure and 
transparency.
  Members of both parties have said for decades that sunlight, as we 
heard tonight, is the best disinfectant. We need more transparency. I 
am a huge advocate for transparency. I post my own schedule. I post my 
financial statements. I disclose my wife's income, which is not 
required. I called for crop insurance transparency. I cosponsored the 
STOCK Act.
  People just want to know what we are up to. And these corruptive 
systems of a few, a dozen or so, who are trying to buy this election 
for their own personal gain--we just want to know who they are. They 
can spend the money they want, but we want to know who they are.
  Transparency, disclosure, used to be a bipartisan idea. Senator 
McConnell said himself many times--we heard this earlier; I want to 
repeat it because sometimes what happens around this place, I have 
noticed after only 4 years here, is memories get very vague of what 
people said before and suddenly they change their ideas based on the 
politics, not the policy--here is his direct quote from 15 years ago:

       I think disclosure is the best disinfectant. I think it 
     gives our constituents an opportunity to decide whether or 
     not we're in the clutches of some particular interest group 
     and whether or not that's a voting issue for them. I'm 
     certainly in favor of enhanced disclosure.

  That is from the minority leader. Nearly every Senator in this body, 
on both sides of this aisle, has said they want more transparency. 
Polls show Americans want to know exactly who spends money to influence 
elections--they want to know it--because they want to have more faith 
in their representatives. Maybe this explains why they are angry at us, 
why Congress has such a low rating.
  The bill is very simple. I know people have said it over and over 
again, but sometimes I think we have to repeat it. The bill is very 
simple. It requires any organization that spends $10,000 or more on 
influencing politics to file a simple--simple--disclosure report with 
the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission. It is not complicated. Every 
group is treated the same. I have received a few e-mails. I have to 
say, the e-mails on this issue: all for it, except for only one 
against, so far. I know once I have said this, tomorrow I will see a 
ream of them because five or six of these special interest groups will 
be churning out stamped-out letters.
  But this treats everyone the same: corporations, nonprofits, labor 
unions, 501(c)(4)s, 527 organizations. They only have to disclose money 
spent on elections, and only from individuals giving more than $10,000.
  Under this bill, money given to these groups for other purposes does 
not need to be disclosed, despite what you read in the papers and the 
blogs--the misinformation that is put out there or by the undisclosed 
groups that tell you the misinformation, that will not tell you who 
they are but want to give you more misinformation.
  This is a new and improved version of the DISCLOSE Act that failed on 
the Senate floor 2 years ago by just one

[[Page 11374]]

vote. Under that bill, the cutoff for disclosure was $600. Now, in this 
bill before us tonight, the threshold is $10,000. That is not too much 
to ask. If you give $10,000 or more for negative political attack ads 
that distort the truth, the American people deserve to know who you 
are. And if you are so proud of those ads, you should disclose who you 
are.
  The bill will not force groups to release their member lists. Some 
people have e-mailed me. I want to make it very clear, if you belong to 
the NRA--and I belong to the NRA. I am a lifetime member. Actually, I 
do not have any problem with the NRA releasing my name. If they want to 
put it on their Web site that I am a lifetime member, go for it, I am 
all for it. I am proud to be a member. Put my name up there. But this 
does not require us--if you are a dues-paying member to a group such as 
the NRA, your name will not be listed. So that misinformation from some 
groups out there, shame on them.
  This bill is not an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. The 
DISCLOSE Act puts no restrictions on speech and is fully consistent 
with the Supreme Court decision.
  The bill also incorporates the Court's ``effective disclosure'' 
rules.
  Let me sum it up. This bill--and I think the Senator from Arkansas 
spoke to this, and I thought it was great because we always hear that 
these bills are so big, they are pages--this is it. If you look at it, 
it is double-spaced. It takes only half the page, each one. It is not 
complicated, pretty simple.
  The bill is narrowly tailored and very simple. It does not prevent 
any special interest group or any corporation from donating any amount 
they want. All we are asking is, tell us who you are. When I say 
``us,'' not us here--the American people, who want to know.
  The bill will give Americans faith that their elected representatives 
are not being bought and sold by hundreds of millions of dollars of 
secret untraceable money.
  So I hope we vote on the DISCLOSE Act again, and as soon as tomorrow. 
And I hope my colleagues from the other side come back to this. Maybe 
they will have something to say. I do not know. It has been a long 
night. We have not heard a word from them. It would be nice to have a 
debate on this. But also let's do what I know Alaskans are asking me 
every day: Clean up the system. The best way you can do that is to tell 
people where the money is. Show me the money. Follow the money. And 
when you follow the money, as in 1972 they did, you know exactly who is 
trying to buy the government. In this case, we just want to know.
  If you are so proud of these ads you run--and I am sure we all sat 
around a little bit talking about this. As soon as we come to the floor 
and say these things, people will be--I am sure 2 years from now when I 
am up, they will be thinking: I am going to run those ads against that 
Begich guy. My view is, hey, if you want to run them, run them. People 
want to know who you are. But if you will not disclose, then you pay 
the consequence of what I think Alaskans will feel; that is, these 
people who hide behind this money, secret money, do not disclose 
themselves, basically what they are pitching, what they are selling is 
hogwash.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I am proud to join so many of my 
colleagues in speaking out tonight at this late hour to try to call 
attention to a very serious issue before the body; that is, whether 
political contributions of over $10,000 should be disclosed.
  As Senator Begich eloquently stated, I think people are concerned and 
very troubled by the fact that we are even having this debate; it so 
defies common sense. I think people at home are saying to themselves: 
Why is this even an issue? Why are we debating this? Why didn't one 
Republican step up to join a group of Democrats to say: Obviously, if 
you are contributing to the political process $10,000 or more, you 
should make yourself known.
  I think Senator Begich, the Senator from Alaska, listed many 
important points. I wish to underscore the point he made about 
transparency.
  Our government is far from perfect. It is the oldest democracy, but 
it is the best we know of. What are the reasons our democracy is the 
best and it works most of the time pretty well? It is because it is, 
most of the time, transparent. The press can come here anytime and 
write about what we speak. Every word is written in a public record. 
All the records, vital records of the United States, are public. We 
publicize our real estate transactions in almost every jurisdiction I 
know of. There is so much public information available. It is one of 
the reasons our democracy works pretty well.
  So this is a real step backward. And it is a dangerous step backward 
to have a democracy that prides itself on transparency and here we have 
half of this Chamber running out the door after they basically voted to 
keep contributions secret. What is it they are ashamed of? I mean, what 
is it they are trying to hide? If they are proud of who they are 
supporting, if they believe in the causes to which they are investing, 
why not let people know? As the Presiding Officer said, he is a member 
of the NRA. All of us are members of different organizations. I most 
certainly do not mind the organizations--I am chair of the Adoption 
Caucus. I love to see publicity about the members and what we do, and I 
am proud of what our organization does. It is nonpartisan, of course. 
But I believe in and we advocate for those principles.
  I am alarmed at the stubbornness and the position our friends on the 
other side of the aisle have taken to not want to let their 
constituents know who is contributing and for what reason. So I believe 
that transparency clearly is in jeopardy tonight over this DISCLOSE 
Act, and I hope we can have another vote and persuade more people to 
join us, to open up, let the sunshine in, let people see what is 
actually going on.
  The other point I wish to make is that the middle class in this 
country is under assault. There was a very startling article in the New 
York Times last week that talked about in the last 2 years the income, 
the net worth of the average American has fallen by 40 percent because 
of secret deals on Wall Street, because of secret collusion of some of 
the largest financial institutions in the world, because of a lack of 
transparency in our financial system, and a number of other reasons; 
but that was primary--and the lack of enforcement, of having good 
regulations and the enforcement of good regulations. You would think 
people would be moving forward to open the process to make it more 
transparent. This is going in the opposite direction.
  The middle class is under assault. Congressional rating is at an all-
time low. So what do we do? We say it is OK to give tons of money to 
elections, and to cover it up, and to be secret about it, and to not 
tell anyone who is giving and for what purpose.
  Our poll numbers for Congress are down. I think they were down to 3 
percent or 13 percent or something. It is going to go negative. And I 
would not blame people. We will be a negative number in the polls. 
Because people are losing confidence in the system. This is an example 
of why they should lose confidence in the system.
  I am disappointed it is just those of us on our side of the aisle who 
seem to be concerned about this. And the other Members, I am not sure 
what their points are in the debate because not one single person has 
come to the floor, at least in the last several hours. I know the 
minority leader made some weak attempts at explaining their position 
earlier in the night. If they felt so strongly about this being a 
pillar of our democracy, they most certainly should be on the floor 
talking about why, but they are not. They ran out of the Chamber, and 
they are not here.
  And so with the middle class under assault, with people understanding 
and thinking and seeing special interests having their day in 
Washington, letting some sunshine in most certainly would not hurt.
  The DISCLOSE Act is a necessary piece of legislation to respond to 
the

[[Page 11375]]

U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United.
  This legislation, as we said, does not limit the amount of money 
outside interest groups can spend on campaign expenditures. It simply 
requires disclosure. We are doing a better job of disclosing our 
income, our stock transactions. I think our records should be public, 
our tax returns. I have submitted many of my own in elections. I hope 
Mitt Romney steps forward to submit more than 1 year of his tax 
returns. I think it helps to build confidence when those of us who hold 
public office have full and complete disclosure.
  But the money that is being spent in these campaigns is exorbitant. 
It is billions and billions of dollars. I think this campaign cycle is 
setting records--and to have this all done in secret. So you are being 
attacked on television or positions are being taken, and no one 
watching the ads has any idea who is behind them because there is no 
requirement for disclosure.
  I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership. Senator 
Merkley has also been very active, other Senators. Senator Schumer has 
taken a leadership role as well. I appreciate the committee that has 
come together, and I am happy to be of assistance to them in this 
effort.
  But again, this does not limit the amount of money anyone can give to 
a campaign. It just says, if you give over $10,000, you should disclose 
it. It does not limit free speech. It does not limit the amount of 
money that can be spent by an outside organization. It simply says that 
during this election cycle, you would have to report expenditures of 
over $10,000.
  Of the more than $140 million that has already been spent during this 
election cycle, the first Presidential election cycle since Citizens 
United--more than $140 million has already been spent. Why would these 
groups be spending this much money if they were not going to ask for 
something? What is their motive? What are they expecting? These are 
wealthy individuals. These are not organizations of thousands and 
thousands and thousands of people. Many of these are individuals who 
are contributing and want to hide behind the recent ruling of the 
Supreme Court.
  So I am proud to lend my voice to the DISCLOSE Act. I am proud to be 
a cosponsor and want to join my colleagues in asking our colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle: Do we not need more transparency in 
government? Do you not think the middle class is under enough assault? 
Do you not think this would build some confidence that our government 
would be more transparent, people could see what was actually happening 
and understand why some of those contributions are being made?
  So we have some time. We have opportunities to cast another vote. I 
hope our colleagues will, and the public will, demand that we have 
additional votes until we get the required votes necessary to pass such 
a commonsense solution to a real problem.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Louisiana for 
her remarks. Would the Senator be able to engage in a question or two?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Yes.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I think back to the period when our forefathers and 
foremothers came here and said: We are going to set up a new set of 
colonies, a new set of rules.
  One of the things at the very heart of that was the notion that we 
the people, we the settlers, we are colonists. We are going to decide 
how things run rather than having kings and queens or other very strong 
folks handing down the laws from now on. That was a powerful concept 
that got integrated into the first three words of our Constitution, 
``We the people.''
  Does the Senator have any sense whether this flood of secret, this 
massive flood of secret money coming from powerful individuals, 
billionaires and companies, does damage to this concept of ``we the 
people''?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Absolutely. The Senator is correct. As I said, the 
recent polling I have seen has the opinion of Congress and the way 
Washington government is operating at an all-time low. People do not 
believe they are getting the whole story, the full picture. This is 
going to contribute in a very negative way to that opinion, which is 
detrimental to the foundation, the essence of this democracy. I think 
our Founding Fathers would be horrified to actually think a small group 
of individuals can, through campaigns, buy the outcome of the election 
or buy the attention of the candidate or the cause, and not even have 
to disclose their identity or why they might be interested.
  Everyone is entitled to free speech. I do not think people are 
entitled to secret speech or secret attacks. If you are going to get 
into a fight, you would like to know with whom are you fighting. 
Identify yourself. This system obscures the truth, which I think people 
have a right to know. I think it does cut at the heart of some of the 
strongest principles of our democracy.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I was thinking back to a book that a friend gave me to 
read. It was called ``Treason of the Senate.'' When I first heard him 
speak about it over the phone, I think he was saying he had a book 
about the reason of the Senate. It turned out to be not the reason, but 
the treason. It was a series of articles, I believe about 20, that were 
written during the muckraker period.
  It was each month taking a different Senator, how they had basically 
been put in office through a particular company in a different State--
different powerful interest. This set of articles apparently was one of 
the things that led to a constitutional amendment because it helped the 
public mobilize against the indirect election of Senators and pushed 
for the direct election.
  So here was the public saying: You know, we the people have this 
system, and it has been violated. So we have to try to change the 
system so we can reclaim it.
  I think that is maybe some evidence of the role of excessive power 
and money and its corrupting influence or its corrosive influence on 
the electoral process.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. The Senator is perfect to point that out and is an 
excellent student of history. He has demonstrated his understanding. 
Before Senators were directly elected, they were elected by the 
legislators of their States, and oftentimes literally sent to 
Washington by special interests--for instance, the railroads.
  Instead of the laws being written to help people, average citizens or 
homesteaders or people trying to get a hand up and a helping hand, some 
of these Senators came, basically bought, sold, delivered, and packaged 
to Washington, DC, to argue on behalf of one special interest.
  It is tough to keep things in balance here right now without us going 
back to these times. That is what is so frightening. I see Senator 
Whitehouse on the floor. He has been studying this and has many 
documents he is referring to, but that is what is alarming. I do not 
think people realize--I mean this is really moving backwards in time.
  When Washington operates in secrecy, there is no way to get the 
information. Why would we want to do this at a time when the middle 
class is under assault? They have lost 40 percent of their net worth. 
At a time when our popularity and trust with the people is at an all-
time low, this does not make any sense to me. I do not understand any 
benefit that would come from it.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I follow up on the points that Senator Merkley 
made. The comparison he made to the constitutional change that took the 
Senate from election by State legislators to direct election by the 
people is very much a model for what is happening here. There was a 
desire to get the vote away from the special interests and put it in 
the hands of the actual people.
  Here it is a desire to get the spending, the money behind the vote, 
out of the hands of the special interests and back to the people. What 
Citizens United did was to go backwards, open

[[Page 11376]]

the flood gates of special interest money, and allow it to be secret. 
Try to put ordinary voters up against that kind of a force. It is not 
fair to ordinary voters. It is not right. In some respects it puts the 
right they are taking up inside out, and that is the right of freedom 
of speech.
  I think we all have seen the four freedoms, the posters by Norman 
Rockwell. Perhaps the most famous of those posters is the one of the 
fellow in the tan windbreaker jacket, a thin guy. He is standing up 
tall surrounded by people, clearly at a townhall meeting. Why is he 
standing and what is he doing? He is speaking. He is having his say.
  The way Citizens United worked out, they are basically saying we do 
not have a constitutional right to speak. We have a constitutional 
right to listen. We have a constitutional right to listen when big 
money speaks. It is essentially a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-big-money 
version of the first amendment. When money is speech, which is the 
principle of Citizens United, guess what. Those with the most money get 
the most speech.
  Those who do not have a lot of money do not get a lot of speech, and 
those who have no money get no speech. That is not what the Founders 
intended. So there is a strong similarity between the move to take the 
vote and put it in popular hands and what we are trying to do with 
disclosure, which is put the money in popular hands. We cannot do that 
under Citizens United.
  With the DISCLOSE Act, at least you know what is going on. You can 
look at the game that is being played. It is cards up on the table. If 
you are being denied the ability to speak on even terms with the CEO or 
a billionaire or a major corporation or some big lobbying group, at 
least you have the right to know what they are doing, what they are 
saying, what is going on. You can keep score. When you get together, 
you can get mad and do something about it.
  Behind the veil of secrecy you cannot even keep score. You do not 
know what is going on.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Just a moment ago our colleague from Louisiana was 
noting that we have important work to do to shore up the American 
family. Families have lost--the number is, on average, $100,000 of 
equity in their house per family. That is a phenomenal amount. If we 
look at the equity held by our Hispanic families, our African-American 
families, they have been virtually wiped out by a system of 
deregulation, predatory mortgage, leading to a housing bubble.
  We have a desperate need for jobs. I think what I hear the Senator 
saying is that in the face of these needs, allowing unlimited spending 
by the most powerful interests in the country to pursue the interest of 
the most powerful is not going to help us create those living-wage jobs 
Americans so desperately need. It is not going to help us fund those 
health care clinics that are the front door for folks who do not have 
the big salaries and the big benefit packages. It is not going to help 
put food on the table for those out of work and hungry, and in that 
sense this process of us working by and for the people is being 
corrupted by these vast pools of secret spending?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Absolutely. That is why I said the Senator is correct; 
why I am astonished that people on the other side of the aisle who talk 
about good government, government for the people--you know, that is 
what the tea party movement is supposed to be about. It is supposed to 
be about taking government back. This is not taking government back to 
the people; this is giving it away to people who have the most power 
and the most money, and you do not even know who you gave it to because 
you did not have disclosure.
  I think this is going in the opposite direction of what the American 
people want us to do right now. If the middle class is not angry 
enough, they really should be angry about this because the consequences 
of secret, undisclosed, unlimited amounts of money puts the average 
person at risk. It disenfranchises them.
  We have worked for over 230-something years to go through a process 
of perfecting our democracy to where every man, every woman, every 
person 18 and older has a right to vote and participate.
  Now what do we do? Just wake up after 230 years and say: That is not 
working. Let's just give the government back to the rich, the few, and 
they do not even have to say who they are. They do not have to disclose 
anything about themselves.
  This is absolutely going in the wrong direction at the wrong time. I 
hope people listen to this debate and not say, well, there they go 
again, but I hope they really understand the consequences of this kind 
of secret money in the system. It is corrupting. It is not right.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I was a prosecutor for many years. I 
was the U.S. attorney for our State. I was the attorney general for our 
State. When you are prosecuting crimes, there is one very important 
thing that you always look for. Motive. You look for a motive. And I 
think one of the things that is obvious to all Americans is that the 
folks who engage in unlimited election spending do so because they have 
a motive. Someone may give $1,000 here or there because they are 
passionate about an issue. They may give $20 because they know the 
councilman who is running. But these folks who are giving $4 million at 
a hike, they are doing it because they have a motive, and it is 
important for the public to know what that motive is.
  So now you take the next step. If it is unlimited, it is to open the 
doors for the people who have a motive. If it is secret, what does it 
tell you about that motive? If it is secret, what it tells you about 
that motive is that it is a bad motive for the American people.
  This goes back to the point Senator Landrieu and Senator Merkley were 
making, whether it is trying to help get your kids through college, not 
having to pay the increased interest rates, to be able to get a Pell 
grant or whether it is paying to put food on the table or trying to get 
a decent job--and Rhode Island still has 11 percent unemployment--you 
can name your issue.
  If this special interest, unlimited, secret money was aligned with 
what the American people want, they would not be fighting about this. 
They would not care whether it was secret. They need it to be secret. 
They filibustered this bill because they know those special interest 
motives are against the public interest, against the interests of the 
American people. There is no other logic.
  There is no reason people would give that much money in a race--
unlimited money--if they didn't have a motive. There is no reason they 
would want their behavior to be secret unless that motive was bad. 
There is no other explanation.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I ask the Senator, when the company gets involved in 
that manner or a billionaire gets involved in that manner and their 
motive is largely to advance their financial interests, do they use 
that to fund ads that are an accurate representation of the facts?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is a fascinating development. I don't remember 
the numbers off the top of my head, but I will try. My recollection is 
that before the super PACs kicked off with all this, 9 percent of the 
ads were negative in the last election cycle, at a time when 78 
percent, I want to say, were negative--or 70 percent. It went from 9 
percent being negative the cycle before--the Presidential cycle 
before--to 70 percent being negative now. That is nearly eight times as 
much negativity--more than half, nearly three-quarters, where it was 
less than 1 in 10 before--an explosion of negativity.
  So we know that is happening. The other thing we know is happening is 
it is misleading. It is not accurate. It is deceptive. The Annenberg 
Institute has done a study of the top four outside spenders--outside 
political spenders that aren't campaigns or parties--these special 
influence manipulating machines. The top four--they looked at their ads 
and, if I remember the figure correctly, 76 percent of them contained 
information that was deceptive.
  Mr. MERKLEY. While the Senator is on that topic, I have the Annenberg 
chart here, I believe.

[[Page 11377]]


  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. There it is, 85 percent. I underestimated it.
  Mr. MERKLEY. It was 85 percent deceptive and 15 percent accurate. To 
the other point, this is taking one of the contests between Gingrich 
and Romney. You can see the red bar, the negative ads, benefiting 
Romney for attacks on Gingrich. Positive ads for Romney was zero. Over 
here, Gingrich didn't have very much super PAC money in this race and 
so it kind of was wiped out completely.
  So what we see is not just a flood of money on behalf of the powerful 
special interests, but it is being spent to attack people--the negative 
side--and through lying. Can this in any possible way be healthy for a 
democracy?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I will respond to that, if I may. The Senator hit the 
nail on the head. Some people--I am one of them--believe there is 
literally an effort to discourage people generally from believing that 
government can work at all by being so negative either to an individual 
or to the concept of government that it discourages people from voting 
and participating, and the end result of that is that a small group can 
manipulate the system.
  If people think the system is rigged, which it seems like it is 
getting more and more because of laws and rules such as this that we 
cannot seem to get straight, what happens is people get despondent and 
turned off, and then the special interests can run the show if people 
don't vote and contribute. So it is a part of a whole strategy to kind 
of take the government away from the people and hand it over to a group 
of special interests with unlimited money, secret attacks to basically 
fashion and write the laws that benefit the few as opposed to the 
masses. It is completely against the concept of our democracy.
  Again, I know there are people who have a lot more money than others, 
and they should be free to make decisions about what they do with it. I 
don't have a problem with that, although I have supported campaign 
limits. But it is the disclosure--the lack of disclosure, I should say, 
that is frightening here and the secret nature of this--to go on 
television night after night and tell people how this person is either 
wrong or the system is broken and people stay home and less and less 
people vote and the few people who have the power, access, and 
privilege write the rules even more in their own favor.
  This is taking our democracy, in a dangerous way, in the wrong 
direction.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I can add an additional point that Senator McCain 
and I made in our brief to the U.S. Supreme Court opposing the Citizens 
United decision and asking for its reconsideration. It is terrible what 
these negative ads filled with deception do to the American public, and 
it is discouraging to people about the participation we expect of 
Americans and government and, ultimately, it leads to corruption, as 
the Senator points out. At least in the example Senator Landrieu gave, 
you see the spending. There is at least a dirty, deceptive, negative 
attack campaign up on the air. So it is not completely invisible. You 
just don't know who is behind it.
  What that leaves open--again, this is the prosecutor in me talking--
is the threat of that same campaign--the visit from the lobbyist who 
comes in to the Congressman and sits him down in a quiet room and says: 
Have a look at this and places a 30-second commercial--negative, 
deceptive, slashing, vitriolic, vile, all against him, and says, you 
know what, under Citizens United, we have the right to spend $5 million 
playing that ad against you all through the next election, and we are 
thinking about doing it. You know what, under Citizens United, we have 
the right to put up phony shell corporations so they will never see our 
fingerprints. The only thing the public will see is Americans for 
peace, puppies, and prosperity. That will be the phony name we are 
going to use. If you vote right, this will be the last time you hear 
from me. If you don't vote right, you are going to hear $5 million 
worth from me through my shell companies. How are you going to vote?
  If the Congressman gives way to that kind of pressure--pressure that 
was never possible before Citizens United and is not as possible if it 
is not secret--then you have no clues and you have actual corruption 
and the system is even worse than what we see out there.
  In some respect, as awful as what we see is that it might be the 
iceberg that you see above the water and the 90 percent that is under 
the water that you don't see could be worse still.
  Mr. MERKLEY. To my colleague from Rhode Island, I ask this: How is it 
possible for 5 members of the Supreme Court to look at this issue of 
unlimited, secret spending and knowing that can be used to intimidate 
and corrupt the electoral process and corrupt the debate by the threat 
of future activities, future secret activities, secret negative, lying 
activity, and not see the corruptive or corrosive effect on the 
American democracy?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is an interesting question. One would have to 
look into the hearts of those five Justices to get the answer to it. 
But why they would be willing to make such a dramatic, activist move 
without working with four other colleagues to try to bring them along--
why it is always those five making these activist steps toward the 
Republican agenda is a question I can't answer. What is their motive? 
They know that in their hearts. I don't.
  One can observe that over and over again, the five Justices who are 
performing the Republican role on that Supreme Court are delivering the 
goods and doing things that advance the Republican agenda. That is not 
me talking, those are people who have followed this Court for decades--
the most prominent writers about the Supreme Court--who noted that 
fact.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. May I expand on the Citizens United? The Senator from 
Rhode Island and Senator McCain wrote a brief to the Supreme Court 
suggesting the detrimental impact of the decision the five Justices 
have made. Did they, in that decision--how did they treat corporations? 
Do they treat corporations as people? Is that what they did, on equal 
footing with Citizens United, or was it more of just there should not 
be limits on contributions? Did they say that corporations are like 
people and should be allowed to contribute unlimited amounts?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In effect, that is what they did. The famous 
expression that ``corporations are people, my friends,'' is the 
expression actually of Governor Romney. But it sort of attached itself 
to the Citizens United decision, which doesn't actually use those 
words. But it does treat corporations as having the same rights in the 
political process as human beings do. They don't have consciences 
because they are not human.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. They don't have hearts, and they don't have minds.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. They don't have children. They don't have 
aspirations. They don't have souls because they are not human. They 
don't have goals. They don't have all the things that make us different 
and make us human. But, evidently, they have the same rights. Because 
they don't truly exist, it is a legal fact that they are a legal 
fiction. What that is doing is empowering the people behind the 
corporation, the people who control the corporation, ultimately.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. It is actually giving more power to the people who 
control the corporation. Not only do they control their own vote and 
personal opinion, which is fine, but it gives them extra power because 
they have access to wealth and influence in the business structure.
  It also occurs to me that if the tiny State of Delaware would take 
this one step further, they might be able to expand their congressional 
delegation in Washington because I think they have quite a few 
corporations that are evidently alive and well and walking around in 
Delaware. Since they have many corporations that are there, they should 
press this issue a little further and they might only be stuck with two 
Senators, but who knows how many House Members they could get--maybe 
equal to California.
  This issue or decision the Court made is mind-numbing, doesn't make 
sense, and it flies in the face of what is good

[[Page 11378]]

for our democracy and in the face of decisions that courts have made. 
That aside, which is troubling enough, then you take the next step, as 
the Senator from Oregon knows, and say that not only are corporations 
people and have access to their own vote and if you happen to run a 
corporation, you get a vote for that corporation as well and all the 
people who run it, then you can do it all in secret. It is very 
troubling.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Even the corporation itself doesn't know what it is 
doing; that is, the corporation might have 10,000 shareholders and they 
are the cooperation. The corporation is a legal fiction, as our 
colleague says, that allows a board of directors to make decisions on 
behalf of those thousands of people who own stock. So they are not 
spending their own money, they are spending money that belongs to the 
stockholders. But those stockholders have no idea how that money is 
being spent under Citizens United. So it is not just corporations 
spending money that is secret from the rest of us, it is the officers 
spending it secretly from the corporation itself, and that is the 
stockholders.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. It makes no sense. We can stay here all night, and I am 
not sure we can get anybody to understand it. We have to reverse this 
law and get transparency back into our electoral process.
  Mr. MERKLEY. To the Senator's point about the distinction between a 
corporate forum and an individual justice, John Paul Stevens addressed 
this in his dissent. He said:

       In the context of elections to public office, the 
     distinction between corporate and human speakers is 
     significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our 
     society, corporations are not actually members of it. They 
     cannot vote or run for office because they may be managed or 
     controlled by nonresidents. Their interests may conflict in 
     fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. 
     The financial research, legal structure, and instrumental 
     orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about 
     their role in the electoral process.
       Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if 
     not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to 
     guard against potentially deleterious effects of corporate 
     spending in local and national races.

  So here is the esteemed Justice saying not only--not only is there a 
compelling constitutional basis but probably a democratic duty. And 
what is he talking about? He is talking about ``We the People,'' the 
first three words of our Constitution--the vision that we have a 
democracy, that we have a representative form of government, we have a 
republic, and that it is centered around, as President Lincoln so aptly 
described, ``a government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people.'' We have a duty to protect that.
  Montana had a duty to protect that 100 years ago. Earlier this 
evening, Senator Tester was here on the floor, and he was speaking 
about the 100-year present the Supreme Court delivered. Montana said 
100 years ago that companies, through a variety of means, have taken 
over our State, that it is no longer a government by the people, and so 
we are going to take it back. We are going to exclude corporations from 
the electoral process. And they have done that for 100 years with the 
direct purpose of people, not companies, controlling their State. That 
is the democratic duty Justice John Paul Stevens was speaking to.
  So the people of Montana were very upset about Citizens United. Some 
folks said: Well, Citizens United is a case. Surely Montana can't 
continue to keep companies or corporations out of their electoral 
process, so we will challenge that. And that challenge went all the way 
to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court basically issued a summary 
judgment--a judgment in which they said: We are not going to look at 
the facts from Montana. We are not going to look at the 100-year 
history of why the people of Montana chose to fight for ``We the 
People.'' We are not going to consider any information at all. We are 
just going to summarily decide that this case will not stand, and we 
are going to throw out the Montana law.
  Well, that was some gift to the people of Montana who are fighting 
for ``We the People.'' And this is why I thought I might summarize 
Citizens United in the following way:
  In Citizens United, five Justices of the Supreme Court have taken the 
first three words of the Constitution and they have X'd out ``people'' 
and have written in ``powerful,'' so it is now ``We the Powerful.'' 
That is what Citizens United is all about.
  Now, I am deeply disturbed that our Supreme Court made a finding of 
fact in Citizens United that unlimited secret money--not just dark 
pools of unregulated cash but vast oceans of unregulated, undisclosed 
secret money--can be utilized in the electoral process without the 
people having any right to know. That is what the Supreme Court said is 
just fine, and that is what attacks ``We the People'' in favor of ``We 
the Powerful.''
  Now, not a single member of the Supreme Court has run for office, to 
my knowledge. Not a single member of the Supreme Court has served in 
elected office, to my knowledge. I am happy to stand corrected if any 
of my colleagues know otherwise. So perhaps they didn't have the 
personal experience to understand the types of things my colleague from 
Rhode Island was speaking about, that folks who can wield huge sums in 
elections not only can affect the outcome of elections, but they can 
use it as a lever to corrupt the very process we are in tonight--the 
debate and voting on bills. So one would think, at a minimum, the nine 
Justices, knowing they may not have the personal experience but who 
need to make a finding in order to proceed, would want to hear all the 
evidence. But instead what the five Justices did in summarily 
dismissing the case from Montana was to cover their ears, cover their 
eyes, and say that facts don't matter, corruption doesn't matter, the 
corrosive influence, the vast oceans of secret money--none of it 
matters. And that is simply wrong.
  I must say, when I think about what we are doing here on this floor, 
fighting to have a Senate and a House that are all about what President 
Lincoln described as ``of the people, by the people, and for the 
people,'' and across the street we have a Supreme Court determined to 
tear down the fundamental heart of our Constitution, it is completely 
wrong, and yet they won't even listen to the facts in order to 
understand the issue they are addressing.
  It is so important for Americans across this Nation on the right and 
on the left to understand that this is an attack on their power as 
citizens to chart the course of their community, their State, and our 
Nation.
  I think I will conclude my remarks. I have a lot of facts and history 
here that I thought about presenting tonight, but I think the 
discussion we have been having is really at the heart of this; that is, 
as we wrestle with the fundamental challenges facing our Nation--a 
shrinking middle class because we are losing manufacturing jobs--and we 
need to understand why that is happening and how we can create living-
wage jobs in this Nation, where health care is becoming more and more 
expensive and an enormous challenge for families, where for the first 
time in the history of our country we are becoming the first group of 
parents whose children are getting less education than we got--as 
parents, we are seeing our children get less education--those problems, 
as we tackle them, are not served by vast oceans of secret money 
weighing in on elections because that money does not come from the 
point of view of fighting for the health and welfare of the citizens of 
our Nation.
  Our forefathers and foremothers talked about, in order to create a 
more perfect union and enable citizens to pursue happiness and provide 
for the general defense, and none of these fundamental things were the 
point or the goal of these entities with vast pools of money. That in 
itself shows how corrosive and corrupting that money is.
  So I say to my colleagues across the aisle, each of us came here and 
we swore an oath to this constitution. And at the heart of this 
Constitution is not ``We the Powerful.'' At the heart of our 
Constitution is ``We the People.'' So before we vote a second time on 
whether to proceed to this bill, I ask my colleagues to examine their 
hearts and their responsibility to their citizens, their responsibility 
to the Constitution, their responsibility to ``We the

[[Page 11379]]

People,'' and to find that we do have a responsibility to debate this 
bill in this Chamber, and for that reason to vote yes when we again 
vote on whether to proceed.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Landrieu). The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I will be the last speaker for 
tonight. Let me close with a number of thank-yous.
  First, let me thank the Presiding Officer, Senator Landrieu of 
Louisiana, for staying past the midnight hour to help keep the Senate 
open. Let me thank Senator Merkley, who has been--to the extent one can 
be enthusiastic about staying until this hour, there he is, smiling. 
Yes, ``enthusiastic'' is the right word. He was part of a group Senator 
Schumer organized himself, along with Senator Michael Bennet, Senator 
Tom Udall, Senator Al Franken, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Jeff 
Merkley, and myself, who worked together to redraft this legislation, 
trim it down, and to organize today's vote and events and tomorrow's 
vote. So I thank all of them for their enormously hard work.
  I thank the pages, who have had to stay very late, and the floor 
staff, who have had to stay very late. I appreciate the fact that we 
have put a burden on them and on their families, and we would not be 
doing that if we didn't consider this to be a very important issue.
  I wish to thank the entire Democratic caucus for their support. Our 
colleague Bill Nelson has had a unique experience. He has actually 
ridden a rocket up into space. He has been up with the NASA program as 
an astronaut. In some respects, I feel that I and others who were 
leading this were really doing nothing more than riding a rocket of the 
enthusiasm of our caucus to get this thing done for the sake of our 
country.
  I thank the American people, who went out of their way to have their 
voices heard in this debate. We know the public is strongly behind 
this.
  Six in ten Americans say the middle class isn't going to catch a 
break while the big lobbyists and big donors control things in 
Washington. Americans get that you don't spend this kind of money 
without a motive, and they get that if you will only do it in secret, 
it is probably not a good motive. They can figure this out, so they 
understand. Seven out of ten believe super PACs should be outright 
illegal--not secret, but illegal. Seven in ten agree with the statement 
that new rules that let corporations, unions, and people give unlimited 
money to super PACs will lead to corruption. Seventy percent of 
Americans agree with that. Seventy-seven percent want to reform the 
campaign finance laws and consider that to be very important. As a 
number of my colleagues have said, one in four Americans is so upset by 
what this has done to degrade American democracy. They think it makes 
them actually less likely to go out and vote because they figure, why 
bother, this is just a racket at this point.
  These numbers really should be a call to arms for the people who 
believe America is, in fact, a city on a hill, the American 
exceptionalists--of which I consider myself to be one--the lamp held up 
to other nations, the alabaster city is gleaming. That is all for real, 
but the Citizens United decision and the failure to support us on 
DISCLOSE does nothing for that.
  But it wasn't just the polling that brought that up to a lot of 
people. People came online in a very big way to participate in this 
debate--617,000. Mr. President, 617,000 Americans have signed up as 
supporters of the DISCLOSE Act now on a variety of different Web sites, 
including DISCLOSE Act.Com. DISCLOSE Act.Com got so much activity just 
before the vote that the public interest in it actually crashed the Web 
site. So the American public is really paying attention. I thank those 
folks who paid attention, and I thank those who set up the 
opportunities for those Americans to have their voices heard. I 
appreciate it very much.
  I want to thank some of the leading newspapers in this country for 
their editorial support in the past few days. I have already spoken 
before about the New York Times' editorial, so I won't go back and 
repeat it at length, except for the phrase they used:

       Corporations love the secrecy . . . because it protects 
     them from scrutiny by nosey shareholders and consumers.

  The Washington Post had a very strong editorial entitled ``Expose the 
Fat Cats.'' It said the following things:

       Not a single Republican in the chamber has expressed 
     support for the Disclose Act . . . It should be interesting 
     to hear how the Republican senators justify this monumental 
     concealment of campaign cash.

  They allude to the Watergate break-in and the bad old days of 
unregulated cash contributions and describe what has happened recently 
after Citizens United as, ``We seem to have created the political 
equivalent of secret Swiss bank accounts.''
  They asked the question, Who is writing checks for $10 million or $1 
million at a single throw? And what do they want? We don't know. This 
shadowy bazaar undermines our political system. They note that until 
recently Republicans supported full disclosure. Now that the tide of 
money is running in their favor, they don't. They described this 
DISCLOSE bill as a reasonable bill that would, among other things, 
require identification of donors of $10,000 or more to certain 
organizations that spend money on political campaigns, and they close 
with this question and this observation: There is a very good chance 
that when some government decision or vote comes along next year, 
responsible politicians will find themselves haunted by the secret 
money of the 2012 campaign.
  Is it really worth it? The Washington Post asks: Do these donors 
deserve to remain hidden? Why can't they handle a little sunshine?
  I want to thank USA Today for a July 6 editorial supporting this: 
``Freed by the Supreme Court from spending limits,'' they observed, 
``all manner of special interests are opening the spigots to buy 
influence.''
  ``Especially worrisome,'' USA Today points out, ``are secret 
donations, which are proliferating. A corrupting influence in any 
campaign, secret money is even more dangerous in less expensive races 
where it can buy a seat in Congress or a state legislature, without 
voters knowing who the buyers are or what their agenda is.''
  USA Today folks 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. . . . 
     Today's version, scheduled for Senate debate this month, 
     requires that all groups--social welfare, union and 
     business--report all expenditures and all donations more than 
     $10,000.

  They fear that ``the inevitable result is that come November, voters 
in many closely contested races will make their decisions based on a 
late flood of ads of dubious credibility paid for by people whose names 
and motives are unknown. How long it will take voters to realize 
they're getting conned and demand disclosure is anyone's guess.''
  I will briefly point out that the claim that the DISCLOSE Act favors 
unions is a complete nonstarter as a criticism. The bill is very short. 
It has very big print. You can read it very quickly. There is nothing 
in the bill that gives unions any advantage over any other form of 
organization. It is just not there.
  I have challenged Republican colleagues to point to a single 
provision or make a single counterproposal, and they have done neither. 
The DISCLOSE Act applies equally to all corporations, period, end of 
story.
  The $10,000 threshold eliminates another problem, which is this 
business that membership organizations are going to have to disclose 
their donor list. As recently as today, the Republican leader said this 
will force organizations to disclose their donor lists. It won't. Not 
at a $10,000 threshold. You can get a lifetime membership in the 
National Rifle Association for $1,000. If you are a cat and you have 
nine lives, you can get nine lifetime memberships in the NRA and still 
not break the $10,000 threshold. It will catch 93 percent of the money 
that goes into the super PACs because it goes in in such big chunks.

[[Page 11380]]

  So it is a good number to use. It protects the small membership 
organizations but hits virtually all the big donors. Clearly, it is not 
an attack on the first amendment. This charge has its roots only in the 
opponents' imagination, not in the U.S. Constitution. It contains no 
restrictions or limitations on speech of any kind. None. Pure 
disclosure legislation, plain and simple, as my Republican colleagues 
have heretofore usually supported.
  The Court, in Citizens United, fully supported disclosure. Prompt 
disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with 
the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials 
accountable for their positions.
  An important point, going back to the words that began this vote, 
from our Founding Father James Madison: A popular government without 
popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a 
farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. The Supreme Court recognized this, 
and clearly it is constitutional.
  The last is the argument that this bill in some way will intimidate 
the big spenders. First of all, the idea of the billionaire Koch 
brothers or gigantic coal barons or ExxonMobil--the largest corporation 
in the world--being intimidated by the unkind words of some blogger is 
preposterous on its face.
  Second, Justice Scalia has said: Requiring people to stand up in 
public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which 
democracy is doomed.
  May I point out that it is a rather small courage. On the way here 
this afternoon, I passed through the trolley lobby. Down in the trolley 
lobby was a young marine from Pennsylvania who had lost both his legs 
to an IED explosion in Afghanistan. We can ask our young men and women 
to travel the roads of Kandahar and to risk blowing off their legs and 
coming home like that young man, but we can't ask billionaire big 
spenders to even show who they are even though, clearly, the link to 
motive and influence and control and corruption is apparent? It is a 
ridiculous proposition, and I hope my colleagues will not persist in 
following it.
  They have even compared themselves to the NAACP during the civil 
rights movement--Black families burned out of their homes, and they 
compare the Koch brothers being criticized by bloggers to that. It 
simply isn't so, and it simply isn't right.
  I will conclude by saying that we are not done. This is too 
important. It is too important for what America stands for. It is too 
important for the middle class who are going to be losers in the 
debates that are influenced and corrupted by special interest money. It 
is too important for the world which depends on the example that 
America provides.
  So we didn't have any luck today. We are going to vote again 
tomorrow. I urge my colleagues to vote with us. But even if we don't 
win tomorrow, we will be back again and again and again.
  When Joshua took the Israelites around the city of Jericho, they went 
around and around blowing their rams horns so that those walls would 
come tumbling down. It didn't happen on the first circuit, it didn't 
happen on the second. According to the Bible, Joshua had to go around 
the city of Jericho seven times before the walls came tumbling down. I 
don't care if we have to do this 7 times or 77 times; we are going to 
do this because it is right.

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