Udall Calls Vote Against Shedding Light on Shadowy Political Groups ‘Discouraging’
Mark Udall issued the following statement after the Senate failed to overcome a U.S. Senate filibuster blocking blocked debate of the DISCLOSE Act, a proposal to bring transparency to secretive political organizations created in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
“Transparency is crucial to ensuring that average citizens understand who is trying to influence their votes. The DISCLOSE Act is an important proposal to ensure that candidates are focused on courting regular voters and not special interests,” Udall said. “This was a sensible proposal designed to combat the growing influence of corporate and super PAC money in our elections. Today’s Senate filibuster The Senate’s vote today is discouraging because wealthy special interests will now continue their secretive practice of crowding out the voices of individual Americans.”
The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 requires that corporations, labor groups, political 501(c) organizations, 527 organizations and super PACs file disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours of expenditures and file a new report for every $10,000 they spend.
Udall has been an advocate of strengthening existing campaign finance laws, reforming broken policies and bringing greater transparency to political donors. Udall introduced legislation one month ago to reform and strengthen the presidential public financing system. The Senate recently approved a proposal Udall brought with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to end taxpayer subsidies for presidential nominating conventions.