My presence here today is an extension of that effort. I don't know many people in Eastern North Carolina who believe that transparency is a bad idea, or that Chinese or Russian-flagged companies should be able to spend unlimited amounts to influence U.
This bill would address those issues. Chairman Robert Brady D-PA : The bill being discussed today helps restore some of the balance between the citizen and his or her right to a government that's accountable only to them.
The Committee on House Administration has jurisdiction over federal elections, and therefore the vast majority of this bill. The Committee already held its first hearing on this matter back in February and I am announcing that I will be holding a hearing on this legislation as soon as next Thursday. The Hill's must read political newsletter that breaks news and catches you up on what happened in the morning and what to look for after lunch.
Delivered to your inbox every weekday evening, our politics and policy newsletters are a daily digest of today's news and what's expected to break tomorrow. National Security. Agency Insider. Don't miss a brief. Sign up for our daily email. Your Email. Contributors Become a Contributor. As Common Cause points out , "the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected any arguments that disclosure requirements silence speech" and has continually upheld their constitutionality on the grounds that the public has a right to know who is influencing an election.
Even the late Justice Antonin Scalia supported disclosure , writing in Doe v. Reed that "[r]equiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. Senator Elizabeth Warren said in an April speech that the DISCLOSE Act would expose the "billionaires [who] have been pouring unlimited, secret money into the hands of carefully picked candidates who will do their bidding.
The Institute for Free Speech IFS , for example, is funded by conservative donors -- such as Richard Uihlein and the Koch brothers -- who support Republican candidates and may not want their donations made public. Cicilline argues that the lack of disclosure after Citizens United has led to more business-friendly legislation and that dark money in politics leads to "bad public policy. It will ensure the American people know who is really fighting for them. It will restore public faith in our government.
Of these four categories, the U. As discussed more below, H. It cannot be applied with any consistency and would regulate speech that has nothing to do with elections. This analysis addresses the application of the PASO standard to judicial nomination communications in H. Suppose that President Biden or another future president files for and begins fundraising for re-election soon after winning election, as former President Trump did. The first two examples could be said to implicitly oppose Biden because they advocate policies that he did not support during the campaign and presumably still does not support as president.
They could also be said to oppose Biden by perpetuating rifts within the Democratic coalition and make it more difficult for Biden to govern. But this attempt at narrowing the scope of regulation only to supposedly election-related communications is misleading. This will vary from person to person based on his or her subjective interpretation and perception.
If these concerns seem speculative and alarmist, consider how courts have, in practice, upheld regulation of pure issue speech as election campaign activity. In Independence Institute v.
FEC , a Section c 3 think tank prohibited by federal tax law from political campaign activity wished to run the following ad that focused entirely on advocating for a criminal justice reform bill pending in Congress:. Let the punishment fit the crime.
Unfair laws tie the hands of judges, with huge increases in prison costs that help drive up the debt. And for what purpose? In fact, the soaring costs from these laws make it harder to prosecute and lock up violent felons. Fortunately, there is a bipartisan bill to help fix the problem — the Justice Safety Valve Act, bill number S.
It would allow judges to keep the public safe, provide rehabilitation, and deter others from committing crimes. Tell them to support S. Under this reasoning, any issue ad that merely urges an elected official to change their position e. Ironically, under the reasoning the court articulated in Independence Institute , the ads that groups ran beginning in February urging various members of Congress to support H. However, H. Everyone knows why a political party speaks about candidates — its purpose is to support its candidates.
Many groups raise money, identify supporters of a cause, and build their brand through such communications and are not attempting to elect or defeat a candidate. As IFS explains in a separate analysis, that part of H. Given H. As an initial matter, H.
Additionally, H. Moreover, while sources of business revenues are exempt from reporting, dues-paying members are not. These reporting scenarios likely would result from the passage and enactment of H. Faced with the prospect of these public reporting consequences, many donors will simply choose not to give. And many advocacy groups would choose silence or ads that are far less effective. Importantly, H. The types of investigations donor organizations would have to conduct on donees may go far beyond the standard due diligence that is currently performed in the grant-making community, especially among charities.
While attorneys will certainly benefit from the thousands of dollars in additional fees that it will cost to vet any donation or grant to a nonprofit organization, there is little other apparent upside to this reporting burden. Lastly, H. Existing law already requires lengthy disclaimers for independent expenditures and electioneering communications.
In addition to expanding the scope of speech covered by the disclaimer requirements, H. The bill purports to shield certain donors from being identified in the disclaimers, [43] but the exemption in the disclaimer provision is illogical. It also fails to track the donor identification requirement in the reporting provisions.
This mismatch will cause enormous confusion for organizations seeking to comply with the law and those trying to understand who supposedly paid for the regulated communications.
Part of the confusion stems from H. Donors whose funds are not deposited in this account would not be reported. As if that were not confusing enough, H. That means a communication paid for by one set of donors and only those donors will often list donors in a disclaimer who did not give any funds to distribute the communication. In other words, the law would often require advertising disclaimers with false information.
That will, in turn, lead to news stories that have false information about who paid for the communications. The following diagram illustrates this donor identification paradox in H.
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