Date: 2014-02-26
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I thank my friend and colleague. I have listened all afternoon as my Republican colleagues have held forth about the importance of the First Amendment. No one is debating that. That is not what this bill is about. despite your best efforts to suggest it is. What this bill is about is letting organizations spend millions of dollars of secret money. secret money. to try to buy elections to serve their special interests. That is what this bill is about. Now. our Republican colleagues have talked repeatedly about the Treasury inspector generals report. I dont know if they have read the report. but one of the recommendations was for the IRS to revise its regulations and guidelines to clarify this particular area. I would have hoped that all of us would want the IRS out of the business of determining whether or not a 501(c)(4) is primarily involved in political activity or primarily involved in social welfare activity. I dont want them under the nose of every organization trying to figure it out. and that is why the IRS is trying to reform this area of the law. So why isnt that what our Republican colleagues want? Because this isnt about allowing those groups to exercise free speech. It is allowing those organizations to be used to channel secret money without disclosing those expenditures to the voters. That is what this is all about. because you can spend as much money as you want on political advocacy and campaigns. All you have to do is organize as a 527. which is another organization under the Tax Code which. by the way. is also tax exempt. So why isnt that good enough? You can say as much as you want. spend millions of dollars. I will tell you why. Because under 527s. people are spending all that money to influence elections. they have to disclose. They have to tell voters who they are spending millions of dollars to try and influence those votes. That is not good enough for our Republican colleagues. They want to preserve this messy situation because it allows all that secret money to flow into these campaigns. We believe voters have a right to know who is trying to spend millions of dollars to influence these votes. and by the way. eight of the nine Justices on the Supreme Court in Citizens United. a case which I had lots of problems with lots of parts of it. but eight of the nine Justices agree with us that transparency is important. Here is what Justice Kennedy said. These transparency laws "impose no ceiling on campaignrelated activities" and "do not prevent anyone from speaking." but they have "a governmental interest in providing the electorate with information about the sources of electionrelated spending." Eight out of nine Supreme Court Justices agree with what every poll shows. that the American people overwhelmingly want transparency in our elections. Because why? Transparency brings accountability. I think every American has an interest in knowing who is spending millions of dollars to try and get them elected to Congress. to serve particular special interests. So. Mr. Speaker. for goodness sakes. this isnt about the First Amendment. Everyone is in favor of the First Amendment. This is about allowing secret money in campaigns. and we should not allow that. It is against the public interest.