I’ve been listening off and on to C-Span 2 today, which political junkies know covers the U.S. Senate. According to the chiron, Senators have been giving “General Speeches” this morning and into the afternoon. For Republicans the topics are random – I heard Senator Bond of Missouri speaking on economic policy, and Senator Johannes of Nebraska spoke out regarding one of his constituents who had tragically lost his life serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington just spoke about the DREAM Act, which I understand to have something to do with immigration.
But for most Democrats in the Senate, today apparently is the day to push the DISCLOSE Act in their general speeches, presumably a lead-up to tomorrow’s expected vote.
Listening to them speak, it’s become even more clear than ever that not only are the Senate advocates of the DISCLOSE Act wrong (a subjective opinion, of course, although one we can amply defend) but they are almost completely ignorant of what this legislation would do, what current law on the subject is, and what the court ruled in Citizens United.
All of the things being said that are simply factually incorrect, at least all that I heard, have been covered by us here at CCP repeatedly in the past. The plainly false statements include:
- Foreign corporations are now free to fund election ads (they aren’t)
- Citizens United overturned a 100-year old law (it didn’t)
- The DISCLOSE Act is “just” disclosure (it’s much more)
This is just a brief sampling of the transparently inaccurate statements made by Democratic Senators on the floor so far today regarding the DISCLOSE Act, and doesn’t even begin to address things like the claim that a bill that prohibits more than half the largest companies in the country from speaking without limiting a single union somehow represents a fair and even-handed treatment of the business and labor communities.
It has been suggested that Members of Congress should be required to read legislation before they vote on it. But that doesn’t seem like it would be enough in this case, where Senators are not just woefully ignorant of what is actually in the legislation, but also seem to have little idea of what current law in this area is. Maybe instead we could just have a general expectation that our elected officials actually understand the issues they vote on?
To the ever expanding list of reasons to vote against the DISCLOSE Act should now be added the seemingly irrefutable fact that the Senators advocating for it clearly do not understand what they are talking about.