A bill to require Senate candidates to join the 21st Century and file campaign finance reports electronically is stalled again because of a “poison pill” amendment, which would require nonprofits to disclose their donors if they file an ethics complaint against a Senator.
CCP last wrote about this issue in February, when The Hill reported the bill would likely pass after Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) dropped a similar amendment demand. Guess not… Now, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) is taking up the mantle, ostensibly in the name of transparency and accountability.
Our concern isn’t with the method of how ethics complaints are filed in the Senate. The problem is that certain Senators are using this amendment as a way to intimidate nonprofit groups that might file complaints by requiring them to disclose their donors — a significant regulatory burden that chills independent speech and advocacy.
Electronic disclosure of campaign finance reports is a sensible measure, and CCP has long said that while we may disagree about the threshold necessary for disclosure, large contributions to candidates should be reported. It’s unfortunate that Sen. Roberts is continuing this misguided battle over Senate ethics procedures at the expense of reasonable campaign finance improvements.
(To see the entire update from Judicial Watch, and a letter from a coalition it joined on the issue, click this link):
According to Judicial Watch’s weekly e-mail by its president, Tom Fitton:
On June 8, in a letter to every member of the U.S. Senate, Judicial Watch joined ten other groups in support of a simple bill (S.482) that would require Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically, just as is required for candidates for the House and President of the United States. The letter shows your conservative Judicial Watch is willing to reach out and work with liberals to fight government corruption.
Here’s why this piece of legislation is important.
First, the current process used by the Senate candidates, where data is manually inputted into FEC databases, is a waste of money. The cost to the taxpayers: $250,000 per year. Second, it’s also a waste of time. As the group said in our letter:
The cumbersome process delays public access to campaign finance data. By doing so, it undercuts one of the key purposes of disclosure by delaying online access to information in many third-quarter and pre-election reports until after Election Day. By virtue of the fact that this is “public information,” it should be made available immediately. There is no rationale for delaying disclosure of the information.
Of course the Senate is up to its old tricks to stop passage of the bill. Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) has announced that he will attach an outrageous amendment to the bill when it comes up for a vote that would require nonprofit organizations like Judicial Watch to disclose the names of their donors every time they file a complaint against a sitting Senator. (This same “poison pill” approach was employed successfully by Senator John Ensign (R-NV)to stop the bill [last Congress].)
This corrupt amendment has nothing to do with the legislation and is intended to intimidate nonprofit organizations from filing ethics complaints. (It also is a clear-cut violation of our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association.)
Again, click here to read the letter.
