S.Res. 523Senate112th Congress (2011-2013)Passed Congress

A resolution 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.

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Submitted in the Senate, considered, and agreed to without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S5023-5024; text as passed Senate: CR S5024; text of measure as introduced: CR S5050)

July 16, 2012

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SenateIntro Referral

Introduced in Senate

July 16, 2012

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July 16, 2012

Floor Debate

24 members

What members said about S.Res. 523 on the floor

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1 Republican23 Democrats

Sen. Sheldon WhitehouseD-RI · Jul 16, 2012

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…

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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 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. 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.

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.

There it is, 85 percent. I underestimated it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sen. Christopher A. CoonsD-DE · Jul 16, 2012

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…

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.

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 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.

Sen. Al Franken D-MN · Jul 16, 2012

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.…

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, 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 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.

Sen. Mark Begich D-AK · Jul 16, 2012

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.

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 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 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.

Sen. Michael F. BennetD-CO · Jul 16, 2012

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 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.

I ask for an additional 2 minutes.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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Agreed to SenateIssued July 16, 2012

III

112th CONGRESS

2d Session

S. RES. 523

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

July 16, 2012

Mr. Udall of Colorado (for himself, Mr. Hatch, Mr. Bennet, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Reid, Mr. Heller, Mr. McCain, Mr. Wyden, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Thune, Mr. Udall of New Mexico, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Tester, Mr. Bingaman, Mrs. Feinstein, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Levin, Mr. Johnson of South Dakota, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Sessions, Ms. Collins, and Mr. Johanns) submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to

RESOLUTION

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

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.