Holding A Gun Lobby To Their Heads

The Dems are trying to fix the ragged, gaping hole in campaign finance reform left by the Roberts Court, and the only way the DISCLOSE Act will get the political coalition to pass is if the Dems in turn exclude one of the biggest campaign lobbying groups out there:  the NRA.

While calling it distasteful, some open-government advocates said that the NRA exemption was the only way that Democrats could remove NRA opposition to the so-called DISCLOSE Act and get the bill to the floor of the House for a vote as early as this week.

"The reality is that NRA controls a goodly number of members of Congress and they're not going to vote for a bill it's against," said Sarah Dufendach, the vice president for legislative affairs for Common Cause, a non-profit government watchdog group. "You have to balance what you get in the disclosure bill versus what the NRA gets. You don't want to kill a good bill because of one provision."

The NRA, in a statement, endorsed the deal.

"One June 14, 2010, Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives pledged that (the DISCLOSE Act) would be amended to exempt groups like the NRA that meet certain criteria, from its onerous restrictions on free political speech," the statement said. "As a result, and as long as that remains the case, the NRA will not be involved in final consideration of the House bill."

The NRA initially opposed the bill largely because it doesn't want to reveal its donor list.

Under the deal, organizations that have more than a million dues-paying members, are active in all 50 states, derive no more than 15 percent of their funds from corporations, and have existed for more than 10 years would be exempt from the disclosure requirements.

It's an ugly, ugly piece of work and that simply means these grandfathered groups like the NRA will have even more clout on the Hill.  I would automatically want to know what other advocacy groups would fall under this exception as well.  Fifteen percent from corporations still means all they have to do is shuffle the money around, and all of a sudden the NRA is just a cutout for unlimited corporate donations.

I don't like it one bit.  I understand that it's better than no DISCLOSE Act at all, but not by much.  Corporations will find ways around it, or simply challenge the act in court and tie up enforcing the laws for years.