Latest News

There’s a new act going through committee in Congress: H.R. 4010, the DISCLOSE Act.

As you may get from the name, it is in fact about disclosure. Disclosure of what, you may ask? Secret money. The act would require disclosure of the corporate and special interest money in politics.

Congressmen David Cicilline (D – RI), Chris Van Hollen (D – MD), and Robert Brady (D – PA) are the sponsors of the bill. Cicilline has previously shown support for the average Joe in elections; in his first year of Congress, he introduced H.R. 3491, a bill that would impose a lifetime ban on former members of Congress from lobbying contacts with executive branch officials, or any member, officer, or employee of either branch of Congress. Van Hollen also deserves a nod of appreciation; he’s filed a lawsuit to force the FEC to implement federal disclosure law without all their loopholes they’ve created.

Cicilline was quoted in a Providence paper saying, "Washington is broken. In order to fix what’s wrong with our economy and put middle class families back to work, we first need to fix what’s wrong with Washington and shine a light on the link between money and politics."

I think he has a pretty good point there.

Cicilline also says that, "middle class families deserve a government that works for them and not for the special interests."

Again, can’t argue with the man there. When you’re right, you’re right.

So what exactly would the DISCLOSE Act do? Well, let me tell you:

- require public reporting by corporations, unions, Super PACs, and other outside groups to the FEC within 24 hours of making a campaign expenditure or transferring funds to other groups for campaign-related activity of $10,000 or more,

- require corporations and other outside groups to stand by their campaign ads – with their leader and top financial contributors disclosed in the ads,

- require corporations and other outside groups to disclose campaign-related spending to shareholders and organization members, AND

- require lobbyists to disclose campaign-related expenditures in conjunction with their lobbying activities.

Sounds pretty good, right? I thought so as soon as I found out more about the bill. After the Citizens United ruling, this kind of act is just what the public needs in order to see just how corrupt our political system is. I mean, 6 of the 10 Super PACs that raised the most money last year got their money from groups that won’t disclose any information about their donors. This act would require them to reveal that information, which could revolutionize the political process.

The bill is supported by many organizations that advocate government reform; a few being Common Cause, Democracy 21, and Public Citizen.

So far the bill has gone through introduction and referred to committee on Feb. 16. It next has to be reported by the committee, passed through the house and senate, and then be signed by the President. It currently has 117 co-sponsors in Congress.

Just in case you want to see where I got all this information and maybe so you can look into it some more, here are the sites I used:

http://www.golocalprov.com/news/new-cicilline-pushing-for-more-campaign-finance-disclosure/

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/campaign/210817-adopting-the-disclose-act-will-help-voters

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-4010