Providing For Consideration of H.R. 5175, Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Madam Speaker, I am sorry the Speaker is no longer here because she, frankly, hopefully inadvertently, misstated the law. She said that with the decision by the Supreme Court, it would allow companies, even those that are controlled by foreign countries or foreign governments, to affect our elections. That is absolutely dead wrong. It did nothing with the prohibition that remains that does not allow and has not allowed for decades foreign governments or foreign nationals to affect our campaigns. This decision by the Supreme Court does not.

The problem with this is I haven't found a single person on the other side of the aisle that read the opinion. If they did, they would know what they are saying is absolutely wrong. They call it the DISCLOSE Act. It is, in fact, the disguise act. It was designed in secret. No effort to bring those of us on the committee on the Republican side into it. I asked for copies of it. They refused to give it to us. We, in fact, got their last manager's amendment 2 hours, yesterday, before we had to go to the Rules Committee to talk about our amendments. They disallow, in this rule, a single amendment brought forward by any of us on the committee that held the hearings.

I had five amendments I asked to present. Several of them would require the unions to be treated the same as corporations. That was denied. They don't want you to have a chance to level the playing field. Look, in ``Alice in Wonderland,'' it is said, ``If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrarywise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?'' That basically sums up the Speaker's statement.

If I had the chance under the House rules to speak to the public, this is what I would say. This is your First Amendment. It's not my First Amendment. It's not the Democratic leadership's First Amendment. And yet they are auctioning off parts of this First Amendment by this bill. Why do I say that? Some people are more equal than others.

If you happen to be a special interest that's existed for 10 years, if you happen to have a certain amount of money in your coffers that come from corporations, if you happen to have a certain number of members--it was a million, but some special interest said, We don't have a million; let's bring it down to 500,000. Okay. Now it's 500,000. So those people, those interests are exempted from all of the disclosure requirements in here.

And here is the other thing they do under this rule. This bill allows the law to go into effect within 30 days without any regulations being promulgated. In fact, it's impossible for regulations to be promulgated. So those who have a true exemption don't have to worry about the law. Those who are trying to figure out how to comply with the law have to worry about if they make a mistake because, if they do, what happens?

They are subject to criminal penalties. We're talking about the First Amendment to the Constitution, the First Amendment. That's talking about robust political speech, and you heard what my friends on the other side said: oh, my God, we've had these ads against us; oh, we don't like that; oh, my gosh, we've got to do something about it.

There is nothing this bill does about the suppression ads that were run against me in the last campaign 3 hours before we closed, ``robocalls'' to my district, including to my house, in which they say, this is a news alert, news alert, President Obama's won the election. It doesn't matter what happens in California. It's already decided. This has been a news alert.

Now, no one specified an individual. No one specified a party. Very, very clever. The idea was to suppress those who were supporting the Republicans from coming out. It does nothing with that. I mean, people ought to understand this is a precious gift given to us by God, then recognized by our Founding Fathers, and we're fooling around with it here.

Let me just tell you this. This bill allows us 1 hour to talk about this, 1 hour. Guess what we have spent 10 hours doing in this Congress. Naming post offices. We've named 61 post offices in this Congress. We are ridding the world of unnamed post offices. We can spend 10 hours on post offices, but we can't spend more than an hour talking about the Constitution, talking about the First Amendment.

And they're auctioning pieces of the First Amendment in this bill. If you happen to be one of those lucky enough to win the auction, you don't have these disclosure rules, and you can continue to talk and you can continue to make your political statement; but if you didn't win the lottery----

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Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. If you didn't win the lottery, you're left out.

This is an affront to the Constitution. This is an affront to the proceedings of this House, and just because someone says it is doesn't make it so.

This is a DISCLOSE Act that was designed in secret, giving unions and interests special exemptions. If you happen to be on the lucky side of the draw, you may like it, but you ought to read it because this is a destruction of the First Amendment in the name of partisanship.

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Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Madam Speaker, I am sure it is not intentional, but falsehoods are being spread on this floor.

There is no poll that shows the American people support the DISCLOSE Act. It would be amazing if they did since we didn't get the last version of it until 2 hours before we went to the Rules Committee yesterday. The poll they are referring to took place back in February or March, which was before they had their backroom deals coming up with this particular bill.

We now have 438 organizations which oppose this. Among them are the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Right to Life Committee, and the Sierra Club. Why would those people be getting together to oppose this bill? Because they believe in the First Amendment, and they understand that the First Amendment says all should be treated the same.

That is not the cornerstone of this bill. They are specifically not treated the same. The bigger you are, the stronger you are, the less disclosure you have. The smaller you are, the newer you are, the more disclosure that is required. They even have put something in this bill that will make it impossible for certain ads to play on television. They have increased the number of names that have to appear, such that, in some cases, it will take 17 seconds to say all of those names and all of those organizations. There are things known as 15 second ads now. I guess you have minus time on TV.

They say that unions have to be exempt, but corporations have to be affected. Now, remember, corporations are not just for profit. They keep talking about oil companies. They forget about the National Right to Life. They forget about all of these other organizations that actually have a corporate structure. Most political organizations do. That's what we are talking about.

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Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Then they say, Well, we don't want to be controlled by foreign entities. We offered an amendment in the Rules Committee to cover that. It was defeated on a party-line vote by the majority party.

So, please, let's at least be honest. If you're going to disclose, disclose your motivations. Disclose the words in here. Disclose the deals that you've made. Disclose who has won the auction for their piece of the First Amendment.

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Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. I'm shocked that my friend from the other side of the aisle would criticize the President's relationship with BP in terms of the massive contributions that he received while he was running for office. I don't think that ought to be part of this debate.

But you ask about treatment. I have here just an example of one, two, three, four, five sections of the bill in which there's a specific exemption given to unions versus corporations. That is the kind of favored versus disfavored status created by the government that is, on its face, unconstitutional. People ought to understand that when you start making these distinctions, you are creating an unconstitutional act, because we do not want government saying that certain groups are okay and certain groups are not okay, that certain language is okay and other language is not okay, depending on who happens to be in office. This is an attack on the First Amendment. And here you have one, two, three, four, five sections of the bill made in order.

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