Will IRS Mess Undercut Campaign Finance Reform?

The scandal over IRS targeting of conservative and Tea Party nonprofits has at least one consequence so far: It has thrown the charge for campaign finance reform into disarray. Democrats in the Senate had planned on pushing for a new round of campaign finance reporting reforms aimed at limiting the impact of Super PACs and 501(c)4 "social welfare" groups, such as Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, which proliferated after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010. Now Senate subcommittee hearings planned for June are on hold, so that, as Subcommittee Chair Carl Levin, D-Mich., explained, senators can prepare to investigate the IRS issue as well. Officially, Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insist that the IRS bias against conservative groups only underscores the need for campaign finance reform to clarify tax-exempt rules. But that is a position unlikely to win bipartisan support in Congress now. For more quotes from the politicos, check out the BuzzFeed article at http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/irs-scandal-could-blunt-potency-of-campaign-finance-reform

SEC Pressed to Require Political Donation Disclosure

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is being pressed by a coalition of Democratic officials, shareholder activists and pension funds to require publicly traded companies to disclose to shareholders all their political donations, according to a New York Times story. Per the report, SEC officials indicated that they may respond with a rule proposal very soon, while powerful business and conservative groups have already begun to fight a move they see as regulatory overreach. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable have all joined in a stand against requiring businesses to disclose political spending. House Republicans have hurriedly put together a bill to make it illegal for the SEC to regulate company political disclosure. Even the SEC is divided along political lines. The SEC has three Democratic and two Republican commissioners, and the Republican commissioners have publicly voiced their opposition to a disclosure requirement. But it will be hard for the SEC to ignore the issue; the petition for an SEC ruling on political donation disclosure has already received almost half a million comments, mostly pro, which is more than any petition in the agency's history, noted the news report. For more, see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/us/politics/sec-is-asked-to-make-companies-disclose-donations.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Campaign Finance Reform Just Doesn't Rouse Public

The majority of Americans support campaign finance reform -- but not ardently enough to pressure politicians into doing anything about it, according to a recent article in The Washington Post's The Fix blog. A March 2012 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 69% of those surveyed, across political affiliations, supported banning Super PACs, for example. A CBS News-New York Times poll in January also found that 67% of respondents thought groups unaffiliated with a candidate should not be able to spend unlimited funds on advertisements. Yet voters don't seem to care deeply enough to put pressure on politicians. Campaign finance was ranked 21st in priority out of 22 political issues in a January Pew Research Center poll, edging out only global warming, the blog article points out. Without a sense of urgency on Capitol Hill, the chances for passage of campaign finance reform bills were seen as "slim" by experts interviewed. As a clear sign of the back-burner status of campaign regulation, the article notes that, as of its publication date, all the members of the Federal Election Commission were serving on expired terms. For more, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/04/30/why-dont-americans-care-more-about-campaign-finance-reform/?wprss=rss_national