Senators Propose Campaign Finance Reform

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) proposed campaign finance reform on Thursday that will seek to walk back the funding possibilities opened up by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections.

Under their proposal, any organization engaging in federal political activity of any kind, from candidacy to advocacy, would be required to disclose their donors in real time. The law would apply to every candidate running for office and every billionaire hoping to influence an election. The same rules would apply equally to corporations, nonprofits and every type of organization in between, so long as they are using money to try to influence elections, as well as to labor union political funds and “right to work” organizations.

Here is the structure of their proposals:

PRINCIPLES

1.The public has the right to know who is contributing meaningful sums of money to any attempt to influence the selection, nomination, or election of a candidate to any federal office whether that money runs through a candidate committee or any other entity involved in Election Related Activity.

2.Given that candidate committees are already covered by an existing and thorough disclosure regime the only part of this proposal that applies to those entities is the change to real-time disclosure and the minimum contribution those committees must disclose. To the maximum extent feasible, the regime for disclosure by all other entities will be identical to that required of political candidates and PACs with respect to both receipts and expenditures.

3.Existing regulatory definitions including “independent expenditure,” “electioneering communication” and “express advocacy” create ambiguity which allows loopholes for political money on the one hand and threatens to chill non-political issue advocacy on the other. This proposal requires a clear, comprehensive definition of what activities fall under the disclosure regime and a process to proactively determine what is or is not Election Related Activity when questions arise.

4.Organizations involved in Election Related Activity will be required to register a legally responsible individual executive who will remain responsible for the actions of the organization if it closes its doors during or following an election cycle.

5.Another consequence of Citizens United is that dues-supported organizations, ranging from local chambers of commerce to national membership groups have the opportunity to make unlimited political expenditures utilizing the dues paid by their members. These organizations (and their members) may have a reasonable and legitimate interest in the nondisclosure of their rank and file membership. A limited safe harbor is necessary to ensure this interest is protected.

6.Citizens have a right to support political candidates through donations but they do not have a right to have their anonymous political donations subsidized through the Tax Code. Tax-exempt and taxpaying organizations that make Election Related Activity expenditures must be answerable both to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for compliance with applicable law and regulations.

7.The default punishment for tax-exempt entities who fail to register or to fully disclose their receipts and expenditures as required under this proposal is the loss of that exemption from the date of the first failure to report, along with any and all other appropriate penalties and interest. Tax paying entities must certify that they are not taking a tax deduction for political expenditures, as prohibited by current law.

8.There is a public interest in raising the minimum contribution that must be disclosed by all entities in the federal election regulatory process from its current “more than $200” level to a new “more than $500” level and in making contribution information available to the public much more quickly than the current system affords.

Use this LINK to view the entire Proposal.










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Michael H. Drucker
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