Return Of The Speech Police

Only in the Through the Looking-Glass world inside the Beltway could the DISCLOSE Act — a piece of legislation meticulously crafted to protect Washington’s two most powerful special-interest groups — be presented to the public as a courageous stand against special-interest groups. A vote on the bill was canceled after the Blue Dog Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus objected, for very different reasons, but the bill’s backers promise to bring it back. They shouldn’t: Though it is cloaked in populist rhetoric, the DISCLOSE Act is, like every other piece of campaign-finance legislation, a cynical bid to secure the interests of those two powerful constituencies — incumbents and the media.

The DISCLOSE Act is a project of Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), the most reliably anti-corporate Democrat that Wall Street money can buy. The bill is the Democrats’ response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that the First Amendment protects the right of an activist group to distribute a film critical of Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign, even though some of the money for the project had come from businesses and non-profit corporations, the free-speech rights of which previously had been restricted by the McCain-Feingold Act. Citizens United restored the right of citizens to raise their voices — and money — for or against the candidate or cause of their choice, regardless of whether those citizens happen to be organized as a business or a group of businesses, a nonprofit corporation, etc. One would think that such a decision would be cause for general rejoicing in a country where free speech is the first item on the Bill of Rights. In reality, the decision sent incumbents into a panic; as it happens, most of the incumbents are Democrats this time around, but bear in mind that this mess was started by a piece of legislation named for the Republicans’ last presidential nominee.

The DISCLOSE Act is, among other things, a petty piece of corruption. It selectively applies rules about how political communications are designed and financed, and does so in such a way as to restrict the ability of independent citizens’ groups to bring their grievances to the public square. For instance, if a coalition of small banks wanted to put together an advertising campaign to go after the bipartisan architects of the bailouts, their efforts would be hobbled by onerous rules about what appears in the ads and how they are paid for. Worse, DISCLOSE goes far beyond McCain-Feingold, restricting political speech that was perfectly legal even before the Citizens United decision. By redefining thousands of businesses and non-profits as “government contractors,” it bans them from so much as mentioning an incumbent or candidate from three months before the primaries all the way through the general election — four months before the primaries in the case of presidential elections. That’s a six-month media blackout for congressional elections and more than a year in presidential races.

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