On the recordJanuary 25, 2011
If the Senator will yield, the Senator is absolutely right. I will give another example. As the Senator knows, the Supreme Court decided a case last year that allows certain entities to contribute money to political campaigns, and they do not even have to disclose who they are or how much they give. It is a Supreme Court decision. Well, the House passed a bill, and public opinion polls show that 80 percent of the American people were in favor of what we called the DISCLOSE Act. We did not say they could not give the money. We just said they ought to file: Who are you, and how much money are you giving, and where are you getting that money from? It passed the House. It came to the Senate. I believe we had 57 votes for that, if I am not mistaken. I could be corrected, but I think it was over 55 votes for that. But it did not pass. The average American out there would say: Wait a minute. I thought if you got 51 votes, you won. No, no, no. Again, we had to have 60 votes in order to pass the DISCLOSE Act. The President would have signed it into law. The House passed it. Eighty percent of the American people were for it. But because there was this 60-vote threshold, we did not get it passed.
