Jack Reed: “first, I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their persistence in negotiating a Section 527 disclosure…”

“first, I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their persistence in negotiating a Section 527 disclosure bill that has passed both chambers of Congress. The overwhelming vote in both the House and Senate in support of H.R. 4762, a bill mirroring a successful amendment we made to the Defense Authorization bill several weeks ago, is an important step in fixing our broken campaign finance reform system. Both parties have now acknowledged that some change in our campaign finance laws is warranted, the first such legislative consensus on this issue since technical changes were made in 1979 to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974. A majority has agreed that Section 527 organizations need to both follow federal campaign law and to file tax returns. H.R. 4762, like our amendment to the Defense Authorization bill, requires Section 527s to disclose any contributors who give more than $200, and report any expenditures of more than $500. Unlike our original amendment, it requires a Section 527 organization that fails to disclose contributions and expenditures to the IRS to pay a penalty tax on the amounts it failed to disclose. The amendment we made to the Defense Authorization bill would have removed a Section 527's tax exempt status for the same violation. Although not as severe a penalty, I believe that this change in the House version of this legislation does reflect the spirit of the original Senate amendment.”