WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats proposed a plan Thursday to place new restrictions on spending for political campaigns, a move intended to blunt the impact of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it easier for corporations, unions and other groups to spend heavily on campaign advertisements.
A legislative framework, unveiled by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., calls for a series of small steps.
Among them: banning spending by foreign corporations, requiring company executives to disclose fully their campaign spending and providing candidates with lower ad rates so they could respond to any barrage of new ads.
Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that if nothing is done to mitigate the impact of the Supreme Court ruling, “the floodgates to big corporate money that can drown out the voices of American citizens” will open wide.
“We have to move quickly,” said Schumer, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee. “If not, the court ruling will have a disastrous, immediate effect (on) the 2010 elections.”
To soften the court’s ruling, the Democratic proposal, among other things, seeks to prevent government contractors from making political expenditures; ban corporations from U.S. campaign spending if they have foreign ownership of 20 percent or more or if a majority of a corporate board is composed of foreign nationals; and ban corporations that took federal bailout money from making political expenditures.
Whether the modest plan would pass Congress — or be effective, if passed — is questionable, according to some campaign-finance experts.
“This is a solution in search of a problem,” said Paul Sherman, a staff attorney for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm. “I don’t think there’s any evidence foreign corporations are a problem in American elections. We have no evidence that’s corrupted democracy.”
Kenneth Gross, a lawyer and campaign-finance expert at the Washington law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, said the proposal would be effective in counteracting the Supreme Court’s ruling — perhaps too effective.
“The implications of these proposals would significantly curtail the effects of the (Supreme Court) opinion and would restrict many, if not most, (corporations) from making independent expenditures and may cut too deeply to survive a court challenge,” Gross said.
Still, Democrats say something must be done to prevent a potential deluge of money from unions, businesses and interest groups into the 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential election.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision last month in essence struck down a key portion of the 2003 Bipartisan Reform Act, commonly called the McCain-Feingold law after its Senate authors, John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. The portion in question banned corporate-funded “electioneering communications” close to an election. These are messages that essentially urge a vote for or against a candidate.
The court declared that limits on independent expenditures by corporations and unions violated First Amendment free-speech rights. The ruling means more money can be spent by independent groups on federal campaigns. Democrats fear that corporations — which have large treasuries — would wield excessive power over elections, eroding the equality principle of democracy.
Colorado justices agree to review contribution limits
The Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to settle the question of how the state’s campaign-contribution limits fit with a federal ruling striking down campaign-finance limits on corporations and unions.
Gov. Bill Ritter’s office had asked the state’s high court to take up the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that federal campaign-contribution laws barring spending by corporations on the election of individual candidates was unconstitutional.
Republicans in Colorado had threatened to sue to overturn Colorado’s limits, but Ritter, a Democrat, said he would ask the state’s high court to weigh in on the matter.
Trey Rogers, Ritter’s chief legal counsel, said briefs will be filed in the case before the end of March.
“We would hope the court would resolve the issue pretty quickly after all of the briefing is in,” Rogers said.
Tim Hoover, The Denver Post
