WASHINGTON — Republicans in the Senate blocked attempts by Democrats to restrict corporate and union involvement in political advertising in a party-line vote Tuesday.
In pushing for the bill, Democrats said they wanted to give voters a full understanding of the political process. Republicans said Democrats, facing a difficult midterm election in a few months, simply wanted to tilt the playing field to their advantage.
The vote was 57-41, short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster and proceed to a vote. Arkansas’ two Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor voted yes.
Lincoln said the bill, which would have required increased on-air disclosure and federal reporting of political contributors “would bring unprecedented transparency to elections in the United States.”
The bill “would prevent organizations from hiding behind shadow groups and masking their campaign expenditures from the voting public,” Lincoln said in a statement.
Republicans countered that the bill targeted corporate donors but was soft on labor unions - traditional Democratic allies. And unlike previous changes to campaign-finance laws, such as the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, the bill considered Tuesday would have taken effect before the midterm elections and would not have allowed for an expedited judicial review of its constitutionality.
“They’re desperate to get anything passed,” said Rep. John Boozman, a Republican who is challenging Lincoln on the ballot in November. “They’ll do anything they can to get an advantage.”
Boozman was the only member of the Arkansas House delegation to vote against similar legislation when it was considered last month. The other three - all Democrats - supported it.
Sen. Charles Schumer, DN.Y., introduced the legislation - called the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections, or DISCLOSE Act - after the U.S. Supreme Court’s January decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. A 5-4 majority of the court ruled that an existing federal ban on corporations and unions using their general treasury funds in political ads was an unconstitutional violation of free speech.
Among other things, the bill would have restricted donations to third-party groups by corporations and unions. The bill, however, would have exempted the National Rifle Association and the Sierra Club, groups key lawmakers did not want to antagonize.
Instead of funneling money to intermediaries, corporations should make clear their political positions “instead of sneaking around,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democrats’ whip in the Senate.
“Why are they against disclosure,” he asked about his Republican colleagues on the Senate floor. “They’re betting that most of these ads will be on behalf of their candidates and against Democrats.”
Noting the exemptions for certain groups, Republicans said Democrats were being disingenuous.
“This is a transparent effort to rig the fall elections for the Democrats,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.
On Monday, in a speech in the White House’s Rose Garden, President Barack Obama tried to rally support for the bill.
“A group can hide behind a name like ‘Citizens for a Better Future,’ even if a more accurate name would be ‘Companies for Weaker Oversight,’” he said. “These shadow groups are forming and building war chests of tens of millions of dollars to influence the fall elections.”
Schumer’s bill differed from the bill that passed in the House in that it wouldhave required unions that transfer $50,000 or more to local affiliates to publicly disclose the transactions, which are done to pour money into competitive races, so that voters could determine which candidates are getting help from large national unions.
Unions said the change concerned them.
Josh Goldstein, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO, said the measure “could hamper working families’ ability to have a voice in the political process.”
Hours before the vote, the Service Employees International Union had not taken a position on the Senate bill, according to the union’s spokesman Teddy Davis.
Republicans and members of business groups said the bill treated corporations more harshly than it did unions because it would have required corporations to reveal all donors of $600 or more. It would have required that political commercials disclose, on air, donors who had given $10,000 or more to pay for the ads. It would also bar government contractors and U.S. companies with at least 20 percent foreign ownership or a board consisting of a majority of foreign nationals from contributing to elections.
Critics, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, said those proposals gave unions an advantage because the membership dues that pay for advertising are often less than $600 and union organizations don’t have the same international reach that corporations do.
“This is an attempt by the administration and the Democratic leadership to take care of an important constituent to them,” Boozman said, referring to unions.
Pryor said that if it had been in effect during this year’s Democratic senatorial primary, in which Lincoln won in a runoff against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, voters would have been more knowledgeable about which groups outside the state were behind advertisements that dominated the airwaves for weeks that were critical of each candidate.
“You have millions of dollars spent every election cycle, and you have no idea where it is coming from,” he said.
Tom McClusky, senior vice president of FRC Action, a lobbying group associated with the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, said the effect of the legislation would be to chill political speech, rather than shine light on who is funding which candidate.
Because groups would have to disclose major donors in each television ad, there would be little time to actually say anything of substance, he said, adding, “They are trying to dilute our message.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/28/2010