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Senate GOP Blocks Disclose Act; Democrats' Priorities In Question | Missouri Political News Service

Senate GOP Blocks Disclose Act; Democrats’ Priorities In Question

July 28th, 2010 by mopns · No Comments

Yesterday, Senate Republicans stood united to filibuster the Democrats’ “Disclose Act,” a partisan assault on the First Amendment, designed to rig the fall elections in Democrats’ favor. The bill was written by the man in charge of electing Democrats in the House, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and the man who just recently had the equivalent job in the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and would have gone into effect immediately in order to restrict the ability to criticize Democrat incumbents prior to this November’s elections.

 The Wall Street Journal elaborated on the partisan nature of the Disclose Act in its editorial today: “House and Senate Democrats, egged on by President Obama, want to limit what corporations can spend on political campaigns, while not imposing similar limits on their union friends. Previous campaign finance reforms, however misguided, have at least waited an election cycle to take effect. But Democrats want to give unions a leg up this year, as they scramble to maintain their majorities in the face of rising voter anger against liberal policies.” And in her syndicated column today, Michelle Malkin writes, “Drafted out of public view with left-wing lobbyists and rammed through Congress after bypassing committee hearings, this bum bill would have been better named the CLOSEDDOOR Act.” The bill is so bad, The Washington Times reported yesterday, “One Democratic senator literally held her nose as she voted with her colleagues to advance the bill.”

Senate Republicans stood together to reject this outrageous attempt to injure the First Amendment for partisan advantage, despite Democrats’ mischaracterizations of the bill and President Obama’s decision to advocate for the bill this week. The Washington Post writes today, “The vote — in which Democrats fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to avoid a GOP filibuster — marks a major setback for President Obama . . . . The development also represents a significant victory for Senate Republicans and business groups, which portrayed the measure as a Democratic attempt to tilt the playing field by discouraging corporations and other likely critics from spending money on political ads. The measure is the latest in a series of Democratic initiatives that have been approved by the House only to die in the Senate, including comprehensive climate-change legislation abandoned last week.”

But at a time of 9.5% unemployment and with President Obama blaming Republicans for a lack of movement of Democrats’ small business bill, the fact that Democrats preferred to move the Disclose Act instead is a powerful indicator of where their priorities really lie. Obama is travelling to New Jersey today to visit a sub shop and push for small business legislation, but earlier this week, he was demanding the Senate take up the Disclose Act, which would have pushed the small business bill off the floor again.

Americans are looking for leadership in fostering an environment for job creation, but instead Democrats yesterday demonstrated that the jobs they care the most about saving or creating are their own.

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