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Justice

Senate Democrats File New Bill To Require Disclosure Of Independent Expenditure Funders

By Josh Israel on Mar 21, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s controversial 5-4 majority opinion in the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case specifically endorsed the idea of campaign finance disclosure. “Disclosure is the less-restrictive alternative to more comprehensive speech regulations,” he wrote, adding that they ensure voters are informed enough about who is speaking to fully assess the content of the political message. But with a bitterly divided Federal Election Commission unable to issue regulations to enforce those principles, many political organizations have kept secret the names of the individuals and corporations funding their advertisements.

In 2010, a bill to expand disclosure passed the Democratic-controlled house of representatives, but failed by a single vote in the Senate as Republicans unified to filibuster the measure. That bill — the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act also contained provisions restricting
government contractors and foreign companies from political advertising.

Today, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and some of his Democratic colleagues unveiled a new attempt — the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 — focusing just on disclosure provisions. According to a fact sheet provided by Whitehouse’s office, the bill would require the following:

Any covered organization that spends $10,000 or more on campaign-related disbursements during an election cycle [must] file a disclosure report with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours, and [must] file a new report for each additional $10,000 or more that is spent, detailing the amount and nature of each expenditure over $1,000 and the names of all of its donors who gave $10,000 or more.

Covered organizations include super PACs and tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organizations. Additionally, the ads would have to list the top donors behind the message.

With outside groups spending millions and hugely unpopular, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says Democrats are hopeful that even in a more Republican congress, the bill might attract bipartisan support. The Senate’s rules committee, which Schumer chairs, will begin considering the bill at a hearing next week.

Like many of his Republican colleagues, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has indicated many times that he believes campaign finance disclosure — not limits — is the best way to ensure a just political system. With this new DISCLOSE Act, they will once again be forced to show whether they actually believe it.

Climate Progress

Senate Dems Tell House GOP To Stop Polluting Middle-Class Tax Bill With Poison Pills

By Brad Johnson on Feb 8, 2012 at 2:30 pm

In December, House Republicans attached poisonous riders on the Keystone XL pipeline and mercury-pollution rules to a tax-cut bill for working families. Senate Democrats killed the mercury rider, which would have blocked the so-called Boiler MACT rules, and President Obama rejected the tar sands pipeline after that rider was signed into law. Now the House GOP has new versions of the same poison pills, but Senate Democrats are fighting back. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters in the Capitol Tuesday that he opposes both poison pills:

Instead of finding commonsense solutions, the Republicans are talking about things that have nothing to do with middle-income taxes — like the Keystone pipeline, rolling back regulations to keep our air safe and our water clean and pure. These tactics are stalling — more evidence the Republicans don’t want to extend this tax cut. They talk about extending it but simply are unwilling to do anything to make it a reality.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) agreed. “So we say to Speaker Boehner, instruct your conferees to drop the issue of Boiler MACT.”

Related Posts

NEWS FLASH

Schumer Blasts House GOP For Using Violent Movie Clip To Rally GOP Caucus | Yesterday, the House GOP leadership played a clip from the Ben Affleck movie The Town to rally their caucus around Boehner’s debt plan. The Ben Affleck character says, “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we’re going to hurt some people.” His friend replies “Whose car are we going to take?” In the movie, the characters then put on hockey masks and bludgeon two men with sticks, then shoot one man in the leg. A few minutes ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took the House GOP to task over the incident. Watch it:

LGBT

Schumer: Same-Sex Couples In New York Will Face Inequality, Despite Same-Sex Marriage Law

By Igor Volsky on Jul 20, 2011 at 2:10 pm

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) placed the question of repealing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act within the context of New York’s landmark marriage-equality law, noting that when New York begins issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbians this Sunday, they still won’t have access to the over 1,000 federal benefits and protections to which opposite-sex couples are entitled. “In the eyes of the federal government, these couples will remain strangers,” Schumer noted at this morning’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “with none of the responsibilities or privileges or matrimony. The same is true of course of couples in five other states and the District of Columbia.”

As an example, Schumer pointed to the burden same-sex couples face in securing health benefits for their partners:

SCHUMER: I want to draw your attention to one particular way in which DOMA adversely impacts gay couples, the federal tax exemption for health benefits…Because of DOMA, gay couples must include the costs of insurance — and we all know that health care isn’t cheap — in their taxable income. That means that even though they’re married in the eyes of their state, their company is being fair and generous, the federal government hits them with a heaping tax burden every April 15. Or the employer is required to pay FICA taxes on the benefit. That’s right, because of DOMA, major employers are forced to pay…extra taxes.

Watch it:

The taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health benefits costs couples $1,069 per year more in taxes than a married employee with the same coverage. Employers also pay a total of $57 million per year in additional payroll taxes because of the unequal tax treatment. A separate 2010 study also concluded that “the federal income tax burden on dependent employer-sponsored coverage for same-sex couples (as well as other factors) results in lower levels of insurance for partnered gay and lesbian men as compared to their heterosexual counterparts.”

Schumer closed the hearing with what he called his favorite quote, “I would say to many in the audience who have waited for a very long time for many different things that, one of my favorite expressions is what Martin Luther King said…and that is the arc of history is long,but it bends in the direction of justice.”

Special Topic

Democrats Highlight Possible Perils Of Default: No Border Patrol Agents, Student Loans, Food Inspectors

By Marie Diamond on Jul 14, 2011 at 2:50 pm

This morning, a group of Democratic senators came together to warn the country about the disastrous consequences of defaulting on our debt for the first time in U.S. history. Their Republican counterparts are still denying the country would default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by Aug. 2, and insist the Treasury has plenty of money to pay all of our bills. Several GOP leaders have suggested we “pay China first” and fund the military, but leave all other government programs and services on the chopping block.

Sens. Chuck Schumer (NY), Ben Cardin (MD), Mark Begich (AK), and Chris Coons (DE) illustrated the catastrophic effects of the Republican strategy:

“A default would pull the rug out from each and every family in this country for no good reason,” Schumer said.

He pointed out that if Treasury chooses to pay Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, military troops and interest on the debt, there would be no money for anything else.

“We don’t have a dime for student loans. We don’t have money for the FBI,” he said. “You don’t have anyone at the border. No one inspecting food.”

The $172 billion the government will have on hand on Aug. 3 is insufficient to meet all of our national needs and will leave us facing impossible choices. Paying for Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, for instance, will take up $100 billion. That would leave a mere $72 billion to do everything else — including pay the interest on our debt and fund the military. As a result, many essential government services will be immediately shut down:

“We wouldn’t have a dime for Student loans, the FBI, Cancer Research, IRS refunds, or border patrol agents,” Schumer noted. “What from this list are you going to remove to fund these jobs that keep America safe?”

On Aug. 3, the government’s savings account will be nearly empty and President Obama would be relying on daily tax revenue to pay the nation’s bills. But there won’t be enough — in fact, there would be a $134 billion shortfall in August alone, according to an independent analysis confirmed by a former senior Treasury Department official in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Sen. Coons summed up the situation: “This is the most predictable financial disaster in our history. Let’s avoid it.”

NEWS FLASH

Schumer rips Eric Cantor for being a destructive force in debt talks | At a press conference this morning, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor to task for his role in the debt negotiations. “There’s really only one person that has not made any concessions — of all the eight or nine in that room. And that is Majority Leader Cantor. He’s basically standing in the way. And it’s a shame. It’s a shame,” Schumer said. “All of the other Republicans around that table have tried to be a constructive force from time to time. I haven’t seen Congressman Cantor be a constructive force thus far.” Watch it:

By Faiz Shakir on Jul 14, 2011 at 12:07 pm

Health

Republicans Offer A False Choice On Medicare

By Igor Volsky on May 31, 2011 at 9:00 am

Republicans appeared on the Sunday morning political talk shows with a unified message: lawmakers can either pass the GOP budget or they can opt to do what the Democrats are proposing, which is nothing at all, allowing the program to go bankrupt and the deficit to skyrocket. During an interview with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Meet The Press host David Gregory bought into this canard by asking, “Is there a danger for Democrats in not seriously engaging on Medicare as being seen as abdicating responsibility on really fighting the deficit writ large?”

Schumer’s response — which emphasized that Democrats already seriously engaged on Medicare by extending the solvency of the program in the Affordable Care Act and that Republicans would literally end traditional Medicare as an option to seniors — should serve as a guide to any Democrats who are asked to respond to that kind premise:

SCHUMER: The bottom line is very simple. We already proved our bona fides in last year’s bill, where we, where we extended Medicare’s life by 12 years by doing some of the things that I talked about there on delivery system reform. And we’re going to continue to do that. There’s a choice here–there are three choices. One is to do nothing. One is to preserve the benefits but change the delivery systems and not let some of the providers, like the drug companies, get away with so much. And one is to end Medicare as we know it. Democrats are in the second one, Republicans are on the third one. Until Mitch McConnell abandons the third one, we are not going to get a budget deficit agreement. It’s that simple. [...]

The difference is between us and Republicans. They want to end Medicare as we know it. If you turn it over to a pure system where the–where the insurance companies govern, here’s what happens according to CBO, nonpartisan: the beneficiaries, instead of paying 25 percent, pay 68 percent. But at the same time, the costs don’t go down, they continue to rise because the insurance companies pass the costs to the beneficiaries. That is wrong. That is not politics, I would say to my dear friend Senator McConnell. That is what America’s all about. And we will, we will oppose them in the budget negotiations if they don’t abandon Ryan, and it will legitimately be one of the major issues of the election year in 2012.

Watch it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One could go even further and argue that, while health care costs are in fact out of control, the possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. But the “time bomb” argument is now being used by opportunistic opponents of the program — the same party that at one point argued that it should whither on the vine — to end it and transfer future enrollees into the hands of private insurers that have historically done a worse job of controlling health care spending and charge more for similar benefits.

It’s also worth pointing out that as Republicans — particularly the contenders for the presidential nomination — grow weary of the public rejection of the Ryan plan and begin forming their own, more moderate proposals, they’ll be offering the very same kind of delivery system reforms that Schumer is describing as choice two. (Only they would want to repeal them first).

Economy

Schumer’s Deficit Reduction Steps: Millionaires Tax, Prevent Corporate Tax Dodging, Cut Wasteful Subsidies

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 9, 2011 at 11:55 am

The Senate will vote today on H.R. 1, the House Republican spending plan for the remainder of 2011 that guts vital funding for education, job creation, infrastructure, anti-poverty programs, housing assistance, and more. The plan is not expected to pass the Senate, but neither is a version supported by Senate Democrats.

So the question of federal spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year will remain unanswered. But today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) presented an alternative to the House Republicans’ slash-and-burn approach to budgeting in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Noting that “today, we have to solve both our growth problem and our deficit problem together,” Schumer laid out a progressive plan to reduce the deficit.

First, Schumer revived his proposal from last year to institute a surtax on millionaires and billionaires. “I must say I noted with interest that in last week’s Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, the most popular proposal to reduce the deficit — out of 23 options surveyed — was a surtax on millionaires and billionaires,” he said.

Schumer also promoted closing the tax gap by cracking down on tax dodging and income sheltering by big corporations. “There is much we can do in the tax code to crack down on cheaters and vastly improve compliance,” he said. “Any credible deficit plan should tackle the so-called ‘tax gap’ — the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid — which has gotten as high as over $300 billion a year this past decade.”

He also advocated cutting the wasteful subsidies that are handed out every year to industries, including the oil and gas industries, that don’t need them. Schumer expanded on these ideas in an interview today with ThinkProgress:

All these kinds of subsidies should be on the table, but the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is oil and gas because the entire rationale for it is gone. It was passed, I think, when the price of oil was $17 a barrel, we had low production, and now of course, the price of oil is $100 a barrel. The subsidy, in economic terms, doesn’t mean anything other than to make some people wealthy who are already wealthy.

Watch it:

Schumer also pushed back hard on the notion that Social Security cuts should be a part of deficit reduction. In response to a reporter’s question, he said “Social Security doesn’t have any problems until 20 years from now,” adding that the deficit needs to be reduced long before then.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Security

Will The $600 Million Border Bill Make A Difference?

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Aug 9, 2010 at 3:00 pm

borderLast week, Democrats introduced a $600 million border security bill that was passed under unanimous consent — reportedly, much to their surprise. The legislation includes $176 million for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents, $89 million for 500 additional customs and immigration personnel, $32 million to deploy drones, and $196 million for the Justice Department’s work along the border. Given that the House of Representatives may take up the proposal when it reconvenes from recess tomorrow, it begs the question of whether throwing another $600 million at the border will make a difference, practically or politically.

In practical terms, many experts have argued that focusing on the border may have some grave unintended consequences. Princeton University sociologist Douglas Massey and his colleagues, Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone, have carefully studied the effects of border security measures over the past ten years. What they found is that “border enforcement may have increased the size of the permanent Mexican population in the United States by a factor of nearly four.” That’s because a tighter border also constricts the movement of labor. In other words, undocumented workers who may have previously entered the U.S. on a seasonal basis chose to stay put as it became harder and more dangerous to leave and come back. Another effect that the experts don’t mention is the increasing profitability of human smuggling. The harder it is to cross the border, the more dependent migrants become on paying criminal smugglers to get them across the border and the more lucrative the human smuggling business becomes. And, as Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) points out, “[a]s we have done more to secure our borders, alien smuggling organizations have increasingly become more bold, violent and dangerous.”

Apparently, the Democrats’ introduction of the border bill was also guided by political motivations. In the past, Republicans have rejected similar bills, arguing for much larger bills paid for with unused economic stimulus funds. Roll Call reports that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) initially proposed last week’s legislation and asked for unanimous consent, anticipating the Republicans would oppose it. Schumer intended “[to] expose whether people want to secure the borders or just want an issue” for this fall’s elections. According to Roll Call, most Democrats didn’t think Republicans would approve the bill and expected to prove a political point. However, not only did Republicans vote for the bill, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) added themselves as co-sponsors. At that point, Schumer pivoted, stating, “This bipartisan effort shows we are serious about making the border more secure than ever…Now our attention must turn to comprehensive reform, which is the only way to fully address the problem of illegal immigration.” However, as immigration advocates note, those opposed to comprehensive immigration reform will endlessly continue to demand more border security as a way to permanently stall actual solutions. They claim that “passing a stand-alone border bill eliminated a bargaining chip for Democrats.”

Ultimately, more enforcement without reform is a waste of limited resources and money. The border is already supposedly “safer than its ever been” and the best way to make it even safer is to provide economic migrants with the legal channels to enter the U.S. so border patrol can focus more on actual threats to public safety. While it’s true that it will be harder for Republicans to argue that Democrats are turning a blind eye on border security, they’ll continue to raise the benchmarks and generate more unintended consequences. If lawmakers really want to chip away at the problem in absence of immigration reform, experts suggest their best bet is to promote workers’ rights and the vigorous enforcement labor laws — an action which may actually succeed in catching the Republicans off-message and off-guard.

Yglesias

Senator Chuck Schumer Wants to “Strangle” Gaza Residents “Economically” as Collective Punishment

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 11, 2010 at 2:28 pm

Speaking to the Orthodox Union earlier this week, Chuck Schumer offered a revealing policy rationale for the Gaza blockade—it’s collective economic punishment of the local population:

“The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Torah, in David, in a Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. The fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them OUR lad – this is Palestinian thinking .. You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”

“The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re gonna get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go makes sense. “

I find these sentiments disgusting, but I don’t want to jump all over Schumer with the condemnations too quickly. The important thing in the first instance is to say that it’s good to debate this issue honestly. The Gaza blockade isn’t a security measure designed to prevent Hamas from getting rockets. It’s a collective punishment aimed at making civilians’ lives miserable, while avoiding mass starvation. You can make a case for that if you like, but that’s what you’re making the case for. I’ll note for the dozenth time that the majority of the residents of the Gaza Strip are children, so the moral logic here seems to be particularly grizzly. A policy undertaken with this rationale also seems to be clearly in violation of international humanitarian law.

In contrast to his proposed remedies, Schumer’s critique of Hamas policy is sound. At the same time, the political party currently governing Israel is also opposed to a two-state solution and the current Prime Minister of Israel is seeking settlements and land-seizures rather than peace. To the best of my knowledge, Schumer’s view is that the correct U.S. policy response to Likud governance is for America to make Israel our largest recipient of foreign aid.

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