Daily Caller: What about the jobs?
Unholy crusaders against the freedom of speech by David N. Bossie
As Senate Democrats come back from another long hot summer, one would think that their main focus would be our struggling economy and job creation. With the unemployment rate remaining at a stagnant 9.6 percent, Senate Democrats main focus is not on jobs; but President Obama and Senator Schumer’s crusade against the First Amendment. Senator Schumer and other anti-First Amendment Democrats have floated the idea of resurrecting the DISCLOSE Act during this work period. Senator Schumer failed back in July when he brought this ill-conceived legislation to the Senate floor, and now he is going to try again while Americans are still looking for work.
The deceptively named DISCLOSE Act is not about meaningful campaign finance reform. In drafting the bill, the Democratic Party’s leadership played politics with the First Amendment by providing unfair carve-outs to special interest groups that could have marshaled support against incumbent Democrats this November. This is why people outside the Beltway are fed up with Washington. Democrats are again just looking out for themselves and are conniving with special interests so they can hold onto power.
Don’t Miss Out
Subscribe to our free email newsletter and get all the latest sent directly to your inbox.
America’s campaign finance laws are already far too complicated. As the Supreme Court noted in Citizens United v. FEC, the “FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations, 1,278 pages of explanations and justifications for those regulations, and 1,771 advisory opinions since 1975.” It is nearly impossible to navigate this draconian system without the aid of an attorney. The DISCLOSE Act would only add to this problem. Senator Schumer wants to limit free speech, because he does not want the American public to know what really is going on in Democrat-controlled Washington, DC.
Now we’ve learned that Senator Schumer is so desperate to pass the incumbent protecting DISCLOSE Act, that he is willing to negotiate away the provisions that he and President Obama have argued are most essential. Yet again, in backroom deals, lacking the openness and transparency that had been promised to the American public, Schumer is seeking to rewrite his legislation in hopes of attracting the support of moderate Republican Senators like Collins, Snowe, and Brown. Even Senator John McCain, one of the Senate’s most vocal proponents of overbroad campaign finance restrictions, has refused to support this flawed legislation.