by Just as a bad meal keeps repeating on you due to indigestion, so do the Democrats in the Senate keep bringing forth the DISCLOSE Act. After passing the House in the last Congress, it died in the Senate. It has been resurrected by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). He introduced S.3369 this past Tuesday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has scheduled it for a vote today. That is mighty fast action for a Senate that hasn’t bothered to pass a budget for the past three years.
Unlike in 2009, the NRA is opposing this bill. In fact, they are making a record vote for future candidate evaluations.
Next week, the United States Senate will once again take up the latest version of the DISCLOSE Act, in yet another attempt to curtail the First Amendment rights of Americans. The bill, S. 3369, has been fast-tracked on the Senate calendar and is set for a vote on Monday, July 16.
NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), as well as all members of the Senate, expressing the NRA’s steadfast opposition to the legislation.
“Due to the importance of the fundamental speech and associational rights of the National Rifle Association’s four million members,” Cox wrote, “and considering the blatant attack on those rights that S. 3369 represents, we strongly oppose the DISCLOSE Act and will consider votes on this legislation in future candidate evaluations.”
You may read the full text of the letter here.
Provisions of the DISCLOSE Act that violate First Amendment rights include disclosure provisions that require organizations to turn membership and donor lists over to the government. In recent weeks, we have seen media attacks on political donors that illustrate the danger this legislation poses, and that expose its true intent: to stifle free speech.Also, the bill would create complicated regulation of political spending and campaign activity, creating immense costs to comply with the law and cause a severe chilling effect on free speech.While the act would have minimal impact on some institutions, such as labor unions, its biggest impact would be limiting the ability of the American people to join together to make their voices heard on issues of every sort. It would also magnify the power of the mainstream media, severely limiting the information available to the American people and threatening the integrity of our electoral process.
Please contact your United States Senator before the Monday vote and urge him or her to vote against this assault on our First Amendment rights. You can find contact information for your U.S. Senators by using the “Write Your Representatives” tool at http://www.nraila.org/. You may also contact your Senators by phone at (202) 224-3121.
GOA or Gun Owners of America is also in strong opposition this bill. Leave it to the Democrats to find a way to unite the NRA and GOA. The GOA release is below:
Anti-gun Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) really does not want gun owners’ voices to be heard in Washington, D.C.
Democrat leaders have scheduled a vote for Monday, July 16, on the so-called DISCLOSE Act.
You may recall that the DISCLOSE Act passed the House in 2010 but died in the Senate after an intense lobbying effort by Gun Owners of America and other groups.
The bill coming to the floor on Monday, S. 3369, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, puts severe and unconstitutional limits on GOA’s ability to hold individual congressmen accountable in the months leading up to an election.
Instead of protecting the most important type of speech protected by the First Amendment — political speech — this bill would force groups like GOA to “disclose” the names of donors in certain political advertisements.
Since Gun Owners of America is not willing to disclose its membership lists to the Federal Election Commission, we could be prohibited from running radio or TV ads exposing a federal candidate’s voting record during the election season.
This is just another attempt by pathetic, anti-gun politicians like Harry Reid to save their jobs before the political earthquake in November strikes. Indeed, if GOA candidates are victorious in Senate races in November, Harry Reid will no longer be the Majority Leader.
And, as has been the case so often with Reid, there have been no committee hearings to debate the merits of the bill, thus the American people have no opportunity to see just how egregiously DISCLOSE violates the Constitution. In fact, the bill was introduces less than a week ago.
Please urge your Senators to protect ALL of the Bill of Rights. Remind them that your ability to protect the Second Amendment relies on the safeguards of the First Amendment.
UPDATE: The Republicans actually hung together for once and prevented the Democrats from invoking cloture on the debate of the DISCLOSE Act. The vote was 51-44 and it needed 60 to pass. As to why the Democrats brought the bill forward at this time, the Daily Caller has this explanation.
Democrats revived the act during a presidential election campaign in which political action committees and nonprofit organizations, funded by deep-pocketed and largely anonymous contributors, are dominating the airwaves with largely negative political ads.
