DISCLOSE Act Vote Tonight

The full name is Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. It is meant to rebalance the books that have been utterly upended by Citizen’s United, allowing unlimited spending by corporations. As specifically allowed for in Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion for Citizen’s United, nothing stops Congress from asking for greater transparency for those donations.

Except Congress itself is stopping it. There was a vote to demand more disclosure — one that specifically exempted the NRA (stupid) — in 2010 that failed by one vote. There is a new Disclosure Act (sponsored by Chris Coons among others), that would (according to Coons’ site):

The DISCLOSE Act requires companies and other organizations to tell the Federal Elections Commission each time they spend more than $10,000 to influence an election directly or donating to another organization.

DISCLOSE doesn’t bar donations or restrict spending, it takes the mystery out of the corporate political money game, and asks organizations to conduct political business in front of America’s voters.

Sheldon Whitehouse introduced this new DISCLOSURE act Chris is asking people to be a citizen co-sponsor of this bill here.

Republicans have promised to filibuster this bill and apparently the Dem plan is to let the Republicans block debate on the motion to proceed to the bill. Democrats will then hold the floor in an all-nighter session in an attempt to get another vote on Tuesday.

Chris is clearly on board, but definitely call his office to support him and call Carper’s office to be sure he supports this. Republicans somehow think that disclosing big donors subjects them to some undue scrutiny and inconvenience. Remind these guys that while they may have free speech rights, they’ve no entitlement to secret speech.