WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell delivered the following remarks before the Senate Rules Committee regarding the DISCLOSE Act:

“Thank you for the opportunity to be here and to share my views on the DISCLOSE Act.

“I’ll get right to it.

“This proposal is not new. This is the third time we’ve seen it. But it is precisely because of the doggedness of the proponents of this bill that I have come here before you today.

“For more than two centuries, we’ve had a regularly scheduled election in this country. 

“Every two years, the major parties present a vision for the future with confidence in the people, with confidence that in the marketplace of ideas, the best arguments will win out. And yet every two years now, with near metronomic regularity, our friends on the other side can now be expected to propose some new attempt to silence their critics.

“Or, in the case of the DISCLOSE Act, an old one.

“Sadly, it has now come to the point where you can set your clock to the Democrats’ attempts to stifle the free speech rights of the American people.

“To me, this means they have either lost confidence in the centuries-old bargain that said the best political argument will prevail. Or they’ve lost faith in the First Amendment itself.

“But either way, it’s now fairly clear that our friends on the other side have given up on the power of their governing vision alone to carry the day electorally.

“And that’s not just a shame. It’s not just a commentary on the tactics of the Left.

“And it is not simply some political stunt aimed at exciting the base in an election year.

“Because if that’s all this was, we could just dismiss it and move on.

“It’s far worse than all that.

“Collectively and individually, these continual efforts to weaken voter participation in our elections poses a real threat to the right of free speech in this country, something which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights and which has ensured the integrity of the political process in this country for more than two centuries.

“We have not always lived up to the promise of the First Amendment as a nation.

“But we have always had recourse to it in correcting past mistakes.

“And no one should be tampering with it.

“Yet again and again, in recent years, that’s just what we’ve seen.

“We saw it on shameful display at the IRS, as detailed in the IG report on the agency’s activities leading up to the 2012 election — and in the administration’s subsequent efforts to codify through regulation the kind of targeting that took place there.

“We saw it in the recent efforts by Democrats to empower Congress through constitutional amendment to limit the free speech rights of individuals and groups — a truly radical proposal that should end all arguments about what little regard our friends on the other side have for the rights of free citizens to set the direction of our country.

“And we’ve seen it, three times now, in the biennial revival of the DISCLOSE Act.

“Let me be blunt.

“This proposal is little more than a crude intimidation tactic masquerading as good government. And the fact that we’re being forced to consider it once again is the clearest proof yet that our friends on the other side are fixated on suppressing speech.

“It’s no secret that the First Amendment has been a consuming passion of mine for many years. I have fought hard to defend it on the Senate floor and in the highest court of the land. It has pitted me at times against members of my own party, including a President.

“And in its defense I have occasionally formed alliances with some unlikely allies. Among them is the American Civil Liberties Union, which, to its great credit, has once again subordinated the standard imperatives of election-year partisanship to join me in defense of free speech and in strong public condemnation of the DISCLOSE Act.

“I’m grateful for their efforts on this issue yet again.

“Some might say that the arguments on both sides of this proposal hardly need repeating, since Democrats have now proposed it on three separate occasions.

“I see it differently.

“In my view, it is precisely when we stop speaking out against proposals like this that we’re in the greatest danger of ceding our rights to those who would deprive us of them.

“Whenever our friends spring from behind closed doors with a bill like this one, we need to be ready to respond in kind. And in this case, the first part of that response should be to point out the obvious: at a time when millions of Americans are struggling to find work, small businesses are sputtering under the weight of an increasingly brazen regulatory state, our VA system is failing our veterans, and tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors have been flowing across the border without any clear policy solution from either the White House or Democrat Leaders in Congress, Democrat leaders should not be focused on a bill the primary purpose of which is to silence their critics.
“Their persistence at this particular moment is eloquent testimony of where their priorities lie.

“The second thing I would say about this proposal is that the entire premise for it is baseless. The supposed justification of this bill is the need to, quote, “do something” about certain people and voluntary associations participating in the political process.

“But this gets it exactly backwards.

“We shouldn’t be trying to think of ways to keep people from participating in the political process. We should be encouraging more of it. As veteran columnist George Will has noted, the political process is not some private club in which the parties and candidates control membership. And yet that’s precisely what the DISCLOSE Act aims to do.

“I know Democrats are frustrated. Prior attempts to pass a constitutional amendment limiting political speech have failed spectacularly — hitting a high water mark of 40 votes in 2001. The Supreme Court has also spoken clearly and emphatically that, under the Constitution, free speech isn’t limited to corporations that own liberal media outlets.

“The purpose of the DISCLOSE Act is to get around all this.

“If the supporters of this proposal can’t suppress individuals or groups, the thinking on the Left goes, then they should just go after the funding that amplifies the message. And they’ll do it the old fashioned way: through donor harassment and intimidation. 

“We’ve seen this kind of thing before — perhaps most vividly in the 1950s, when the State of Alabama tried to get its hands on the donor list of the NAACP.

“The Supreme Court knew what that was about, which is why they ruled against forced disclosure then. They knew that the forced disclosure of donors militated against the rights of free association, because if people have reason to fear that their names and reputations will be attacked because of the causes they support, well, then they’ll be less likely to support them. And that’s the last thing we want in a free society.

“The FEC has applied this same principle, by the way, in protecting the donor lists of the Socialist Worker’s Party since 1979.

“So we’ve seen what the loudest proponents of disclosure have intended in the past, and it’s not good government. The President likes to say that the only people who oppose disclosure are people who have something to hide. History tells us otherwise.

“The sad fact is, this kind of government-led intimidation is part of a much broader effort that’s been underway within the Obama administration for years. We’ve seen parallel efforts at suppressing speech at the FCC, the SEC, the IRS, DOJ, and at HHS.

“And the tactics we saw during the 2012 campaign speak for themselves — from the enemies list of conservative donors on the Obama campaign’s Web site, to the strategic name-dropping of conservative targets by the President’s political advisors.

“And that’s what this proposal is about. It’s about harvesting the names of donors in the hopes of driving them off the playing field. We’ve seen it before. We’re seeing it now.

“So let me just repeat today what I have said elsewhere on this entire effort.

“No individual or group in this country should have to face harassment or intimidation, or incur crippling expenses, defending themselves against their own government, simply because that government doesn’t like the message they’re advocating.

“It’s pretty simple, really: if you can’t convince people of the wisdom of your policies, it’s time to come up with better arguments. But tampering with our First Amendment rights is a dangerous business. And that’s what the legislation before us aims to do.

“It is an unprecedented requirement for groups to publicly disclose their donors, stripping a protection recognized and solidified by the courts. From the NAACP to the Sierra Club to the Chamber of Commerce: every one of them would now be forced to subject their members to the kind of public intimidation we’ve seen at other moments in our history. 

“The authors of this bill have sought bipartisan cover for this latest effort by claiming that labor unions would also be required to disclose their donors under this bill. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that through a cynical and elaborate scheme of thresholds and triggers, these unions are given a free pass. And that just underscores who the true targets of this legislation are — anyone who criticizes Democrats.

“Which brings me to a final point.

“For four years now, we’ve heard how the Supreme Court unleashed a torrent of corporate money into the political process through its 2004 ruling in Citizens United.

“Here’s the truth.

“Yes, individuals from New York to California have given tens of millions dollars to candidates and causes, as is their First Amendment right. But corporations have largely stayed out of it. The big money, it turns out, is coming from the same unions that are exempted from this bill, which by one count have spent nearly four and a half billion dollars over the past nine years on politics, including nearly $800 million in 2008 alone.

“So for those who want to ‘do something,’ allow me to make a humble suggestion.

“Instead of suppressing free speech, let’s look to state models for guidance.

“The endless web of campaign finance laws we’ve seen at the federal level have done nothing but sow confusion. But they have been good for one group — election lawyers.

“A simpler, more reasoned approach would be for us to adopt the Virginia plan.

“Remove the limits, allow candidates to accept and report all contributions and let the citizens decide what is proper or not. Money will never be removed from politics, and trying to do so is sort of like putting a rock on Jello. It just moves somewhere else.

“The intellectually honest approach is to just remove the rock.

“So in closing I will continue to do everything in my power to protect the First Amendment rights from this latest iteration of the DISCLOSE Act, and every other effort to suppress the free speech rights of the American people.

“And I sincerely hope that my colleagues, all of whom swore the same oath to support and defend the Constitution that I did, will stand with me.

“The First Amendment undergirds all other rights.

“We need to defend it with everything we’ve got.”