Mr. President, I am here today to introduce the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, and we are informally closing DISCLOSE 2.0 in recognition of the original bill that Senator Schumer worked so hard to get passed a few years ago. The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and special interest money in elections, bringing about an era where corporations and other wealthy interests can drown out the voices of voters in our political system. Worse still, much of this spending is anonymous so the public does not even know who is spending millions to influence our elections. Here is how my home State newspaper, the Providence Journal, explained the Citizens United decision: The ruling will mean that, more than ever, big-spending economic interests will determine who gets elected. More money will especially pour into relentless attack campaigns. Free speech for most individuals will suffer because their voices will count for even less than they do now. They will simply be drowned out by the big money. I think events have proven the Providence Journal correct. Senator John McCain recently described these events. He said: I predicted when the United States Supreme Court, with their absolute ignorance of what happens in politics, struck down [the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law], that there would be a flood of money into campaigns, not transparency, unaccounted for, and this is exactly what is happening.…
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Mr. President, let me thank our Democratic leader for that very kind intro. I will confess that I come to the Senate floor today with a pretty heavy heart. The effort that we are engaged in right now is going to be extremely damaging to…
If you're always meeting voters where they are or were, they'll begin to notice that you never have anything new to say, that they never learn anything from you, that you're not a leader but a follower.
How do you have an issue that you win 74 to 12 [percent] and you don’t ride that horse as hard as you can?
Once this comes home to roost in people’s homes, in their family finances, in really harmful ways, that [will be] motivating in a way that we haven’t seen before around this issue.





