While they still have the chance, Senate Democrats are ramping up efforts to trample the First Amendment rights of nonprofits and their donors through the DISCLOSE Act. As RNLA highlighted last week, the DISCLOSE Act would cause many more problems than it solves. A letter submitted to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on Monday by People United for Privacy (PUFP) serves to debunk many of the misleading arguments made by proponents of the legislation during a hearing held by the Committee last week. PUFP's main points are as follows:

In typical fashion during yesterday's Senate Rules Committee hearing on "dark money" and the DISCLOSE Act (S.B. 443), Democrats tried to tie Republicans to dark money while turning a blind eye to the millions of dollars annually given to Democrats by liberal dark money groups.  

But unfortunately for Senator Whitehouse (who brings this bill up each session), one of the Democrat witnesses, Director of the Brennan Center for Justice Elections and Government Program Daniel Weiner, admitted that "Democratic and other left-leaning groups had swamp[ed] Republican and conservative spenders by a more than 2-1 ratio" in 2020.  

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has jurisdiction to issue regulations and enforce federal campaign finance laws; in other words, to interpret and enforce the regulation of Americans' political speech, which is protected by the First Amendment.  

For years, Democrats have attempted to expand regulation of political speech through onerous disclaimer, disclosure, and reporting requirements; low contribution limits; making the FEC a partisan body controlled by the President's party (such as in H.R. 1 and the perennial DISCLOSE Act); outright speech prohibitions; and even through spending limits (which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional back in Buckley v. Valeo).  

With the resignation of Republican FEC Commissioner Matt Petersen, the FEC is back in the news.