Donor disclosure law thwarted

Senate Republicans this week blocked a bill that would require outside political groups to disclose the names and contributions of campaign donors who give more than $10,000. Two separate votes on the DISCLOSE Act received unanimous support from majority Democrats, but failed to muster the 60 votes necessary to head off a Republican filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has argued for full disclosure of donations in the past, called the DISCLOSE Act “un-American” and “an attempt to identify and punish political enemies, or at the very least, intimidate others from participating in the process.”

With this bill, Democrats are out to “silence their opponents,” said Bradley A. Smith in NationalReview.com. Forcing the disclosure of donor lists would allow the Obama campaign and its supporters to “harass and publicly vilify” anyone who disagreed with their agenda; spending by pro-Democratic labor unions, meanwhile, would remain largely unreported. This is all about Obama losing the money war, said Peter Roff in USNews.com. Only now that Mitt Romney is “raking in the cash” have campaign contributions suddenly become a problem. Democrats “don’t want fairness.” They just want “the GOP’s money out of the political process.”

Republicans were for transparency before they were against it, said Bloomberg.com in an editorial. For years, GOP lawmakers called for disclosure rules, but they’ve conveniently changed their minds since the Citizens United ruling allowed their corporate backers to spend with abandon. In fact, said John Avlon in TheDailyBeast.com, the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision promised to “balance unlimited money with unprecedented transparency.” Instead, we’re getting all the hidden cash with none of the sunlight.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Enough already with protecting fat cats, said The Washington Post. Don’t Republicans see that it is “corrosive for democracy” for writers of $10 million campaign checks—and their motives—to remain hidden? Politicians need to curb “their lust for contributions” and salvage their credibility. We need greater disclosure now, before we find ourselves “haunted by the secret money of the 2012 campaign.”