TruthNews Commentary, August 21, 2010

President Barack Hussein Obama has called on Republicans to end their opposition to a bill that he says would limit the influence of corporations on U.S. elections. But Obama is misrepresenting the issue.

In his weekly address, Obama claimed that a January Supreme Court decision allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on negative political advertisements without revealing who is behind them. But the corporation in question was not a massive multinational oil company or defense contractor. It was Citizens United, a conservative political organization.

Obama's complaint refers to the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court struck down part of the McCain Feingold bill that prohibited corporations and unions from paying for campaign ads. The court ruled such restrictions violated constitutionally-guaranteed free speech rights.

Citizens United is a conservative non-profit organization. The case revolved around the documentary Hillary: The Movie which was produced by Citizens United. Under the McCain-Feingold law, a federal court in Washington D.C. ruled that Citizens United would be barred from advertising its film. The case was heard in the United States Supreme Court on March 24, 2009. During oral argument, then solicitor general Elena Kagan made the incredible argument that the government had the power under the constitution to prohibit the publication of books and movies if they were made or sold by corporations. On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court overturned the provision of McCain-Feingold barring corporations and unions from paying for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns.

Obama previously attacked the Supreme Court decision in his State of the Union address. Obama also falsely claimed that the Supreme Court decision would allow foreign organizations to fund campaigns, although the Supreme Court decision left those parts of the law intact. Obama later appointed Kagan to the Supreme Court.

The Obama administration's view represents an extreme position in which many forms of political speech would be outlawed. Citizens United is not a huge multinational corporation like Exxon or General Motors. The group is a political organization engaged in political speech. It is this type of speech that the First Amendment was intended to protect. Left-wing judges have gone to extremes to protect pornography, and First Amendment activists have argued that such freedom is necessary to prevent a "slippery slope" of press regulation. However, the judges have not been so quick to protect political speech such as the Citizens United film about Hillary Clinton.

Kagan's argument about the government having the power to ban books and movies is of particular concern since books, newspapers, and films are primarily made by corporations. But Kagan envisions selective enforcement in which Citizens United is brutally struck down for having the gall to make a movie critical of Hillary Clinton while Michael Moore goes on merrily peddling his political propaganda to facilitate the passage of the health care bill.

Obama's criticism of the Supreme Court also stinks of rank hypocrisy since he chose not to forego government financing of his presidential campaign so that he could collect $741 million in campaign contributions from as yet undisclosed sources.

However, Obama wants third party ads to disclose their sources of funding. The so-called "Disclose Act" would require organizations involved in political campaigning to disclose the identity of the large donors, and to reveal their identities in any political ads they fund. It would also bar government contractors and TARP recipients from making political expenditures. Of course, this requirement doesn't apply to Obama's friends. The bill exempts all long-standing, non-profit organizations with more than 500,000 members from having to disclose their donor lists. In particular, this provision would exempt unions, the AARP, and other organizations friendly to Democrats.

Opponents of the "Disclose Act" believe this exemptions would undermine the point of the bill and grant the exempted groups an advantage over other organizations and corporations.

The House passed the Disclose Act, but in the Senate, the Democrats have been unable to get the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month that the bill is a political tool. "This bill is about protecting incumbent Democrats from criticism ahead of November." he said. He pointed out that the Democratic leadership brought the bill straight to the Senate floor "without hearings, without testimony, without studies, [and] without a [committee] markup." Any student of government knows that a bill usually goes through committee review prior to being brought to a floor vote. But the Democrats are so desperate to get the bill in place for the November elections that they bypassed this legislative nicety.

McConnell also criticized the Democratics’ prioritization of the bill over the small business lending legislation also under consideration. "Here we are in the middle of the worst recession in memory, and Democrat leaders decided to pull us off a bill that's meant to create jobs in an effort to pass this election-year ploy to hold onto their own."

Maybe the president should spend less time trying to silence his critics and spend more time addressing their criticism. Or, in the words of Bill Clinton, "It's the Economy, Stupid."