Now that the Citizen’s United decision opened up the floodgates so corporate money can be poured into political campaigns, Democrats have been trying to require that political ads disclose their funding sources, but they have been blocked by Republican filibusters.
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OK, here is the issue, again. For political gain Democrats put a poison pill to set up repubs knowing they won’t vote. They could care less about the legislation, it’s all politics. With current ethics events unfolding they need all the cover they can get.
Dems amended the house bill with an exemption for big unions and other organizations. That means the AFL-CIO, SEIU, NRA, AARP, etc (1 mill members or more) are exempt from the legislation. Kucinich put an amendment to include off shore energy companies like BP to disclose. The Dem Senate took only that requirement out, but left the unions and activist orgs in there.
Here is the actual seante bill, if anyone is interested in the truth.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30711024/Disclose-Act-Senate-Version
Please inform me if I’m wrong, and give some facts not spin.
The Kucinich amendment was to not about disclosure, it was prohibiting companies that were taking advantage of off-shore oil leases to run political ads. It was in response to Republican amendments to exempt the NRA. It wasn’t Dems who amended the bill in the house to exempt big organizations, it was both sides (which is why the NRA and AARP got exempted). Your statement that the Dems purposely put in a poison pill doesn’t even make sense. It is more accurate to say that the GOP put in a poison pill so they could get away with voting against the bill. Since the GOP benefits more from corporate money, they have no interest in slowing it down. Yes, the law could have been less aggressive, but it is likely that the Republicans would have blocked it anyway.
This bill was worthless to begin with. All of the large organizations (500,000 members or larger) were going to be exempt. That meant the restrictions only applied to the little ones, giving even more power and influence to the NRA, AARP, etc. The whole point of any disclosure act should have been to increase “transparency” in campaign finance. So some small local organization with 800 members, donating $1,000 for a political ad would have had to disclose who they were, but the NRA could donate $1 million and not have to? That’s preposterous on its face.
We agree. No organization should be exempt from disclosing their funding.