Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act, known as the DISCLOSE Act. This legislation, quite simply, is about giving voters information on who is trying to influence an election and how much money they are spending to do so. The American people deserve the benefit of this information as they decide how to vote. Unfortunately, the trend in recent years has been toward less transparency in election spending. Organizations hiding behind generic or even misleading names have spent millions of dollars in political advertising, often not to promote their own ideas but to attack a candidate or cause. Posing as grassroots citizens groups, too often advertisements turn out to be astroturf campaigns funded by corporations, industry trade associations, and political interests. Their purposes may be to confuse or even deceive voters and, without the ability to know an advertisement's sponsors, the voters are missing vital information that would help them arrive at their own conclusions. This trend in political advertisements was already on an unsustainable path when the Supreme Court overturned the prohibition on direct corporate and union spending on elections. This decision opened the floodgates to a wave of new money, all of which could be spent from behind a curtain of secrecy. The DISCLOSE Act pulls back the curtain.…”