House Passes Campaign Finance Bill Over Bipartisan Opposition

By Matt Cover
CNSNews.com
Jun. 28, 2010

(CNSNews.com) – The House passed new campaign finance restrictions last week, despite complaints from Republicans and some Democrats that the bill is an unconstitutional violation of Americans’ fundamental free-speech rights.

The Senate has not yet taken up its version of the legislation, despite some urgency on the part of Democrats who want the new campaign finance restrictions to apply to the upcoming midterm election.

In the House, 36 Democrats joined 168 Republicans in opposing the bill, which Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) described as a violation of Congress’ oath to uphold and protect the Constitution.

“The purpose of this bill, plain and simple, is to allow Democrats to use their majority in this house to silence their political opponents,” Boehner said last Thursday. “This is a backroom deal to shred our Constitution for raw, ugly, partisan gain.”

The bill – known as the DISCLOSE Act – eventually passed the House 219-206, with Republicans Mike Castle (R-De.) and Joseph Cao (R-La.) joining the majority of Democrats in supporting the legislation. Castle was an original cosponsor of the bill along with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

The bill would impose a host of new restrictions and requirements on groups that wish to participate in federal elections, including:

-- Bans any election spending by companies or unions with federal contracts worth more than $7 million;

-- Bans any corporation that received funds from the TARP bank bailout program from spending money on political advertisements;

-- Bans corporations that are at least 20 percent foreign-owned from spending money on political advertisements (a company could be based in the U.S. but still be banned if 20 percent of its shareholders are foreign nationals or foreign entities such as hedge funds);

-- Requires corporations to report to the Federal Election Commission all sources of income over $600 used to pay for political advertisements;

-- Requires corporations to include lengthy disclaimers from CEOs or top financial contributors in any political advertisement. Corporations also must name their top five financial contributors in any political ad they run.

Labor unions, traditional allies of the Democratic Party, are largely exempt from the bill’s disclosure and spending requirements. They are not covered under the federal contract ban because the ban exempts collective bargaining agreements.

Unions also are exempt from the financial reporting requirements because their members’ average dues are less than $600 a year and those dues are counted as individual contributions. A similar caveat exempts unions from the disclaimer requirements because only donors who contributed at least $100,000 must be identified. Since no single union member’s dues would ever top $100,000, unions do not have to name their top five financial contributors.

In a last-minute union exemption, House Administration Committee Chairman Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) inserted a provision exempting unions from a requirement that corporations disclose to the FEC when they transferred more than $50,000 to other affiliated organizations. Brady’s eleventh-hour amendment said that organizations whose funds come from membership dues – as union funds do – do not have to report anything to the FEC, because their money will be treated as separate, individual contributions from their members.

Conservatives blasted the legislation, saying it was a direct attack on the First Amendment.

“This legislation is nothing more than an attempt to bring confusion to the political process and to discourage millions of Americans and thousands of organizations from becoming involved in the political debate,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said Thursday. “Unfortunately, this bill is a naked attempt to cloud the free speech rights of millions of Americans -- rights that were clearly affirmed in January by the Supreme Court.”

“The House passage of the DISCLOSE Act is nothing short of legislative trespassing on the constitutionally protected rights of American citizens. And what’s worse is that it’s intentional,” House Administration Committee ranking Republican Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) said in a statement. “House Democrats have intentionally designed this bill to selectively stifle free speech for their own political gain.”

“We in this House take an oath to ‘preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution,’” Boehner said. “A vote for this bill violates that oath.”

Conservative talk show host Mark Levin said Democrats passed a bill they knew violated the Constitution, and he accused them of intentionally infringing on Americans’ fundamental rights for their own political gain.

“They [Democrats] know this is unconstitutional [but] they want this in place now because they figure by the time it gets to the Supreme Court – in three or four or five years – they’ll get through a few campaign election cycles,” Levin charged on his Thursday radio show.

His contention was backed up by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who said Thursday that if the restrictions were not passed, more Republicans would get elected. “Let’s get right down to it,” Johnson said. “With all of these unlimited dollars flowing through, we’ll see more Republicans getting elected both local, state, and federal.”

Unions, including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and SEIU, reportedly have pledged to spend nearly $100 million this year in what AFSCME President Gerry McEntee described as “a massive incumbent-protection program.”

“We have got to protect the incumbency in the House. We have got to protect the incumbency in the Senate,” McEntee told The Hill. “It is going to be hard. Those tea-baggers are out there. There is an anti-incumbency mood out there.”