Eliminating Taxpayer Financing of Presidential Elections

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my colleague and thank him for offering this motion because it's very simple. What this does is allow the American public to finally know who is funding the political ads that they're watching financed by a lot of these shadowy groups.

Mr. Speaker, earlier today our Republican colleagues rejected the idea of having broad transparency by adopting the DISCLOSE Act. What this does is target it in one very important area, an area that the American public deserves to know, and that is when commercials, TV commercials, are paid for by special interests, Big Money special interests, including foreign corporations, and corporations that are owned or controlled by foreign governments, whether they be China, Iran, Venezuela, whoever it may be, that the American public has a right to know who is paying for those ads.

It's simple, it's transparent, and in fact our Republican colleagues even recently said they were in favor of more transparency. Speaker Boehner said on Meet the Press, and I quote: ``I think what we ought to do is we ought to have full disclosure, full disclosure of all the money we raise and how it is spent. I think sunlight is the best disinfectant.'' I would hope that would also be true about foreign-controlled corporations trying to secretly finance ads in this country.

Majority Leader Cantor told Newsweek, and I quote: ``Anything that moves us back toward the notion of transparency, real-time reporting of donations and contributions would be helpful toward restoring confidence of the voters.''

Mr. Speaker, this motion is very simple. Let's let the American public know when you have these Big Money special interests, including foreign-controlled corporations, spending this money to influence their vote. Eighty percent of the American people, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, say they want to know. A vote against this motion is a vote to keep the American public in the dark, to continue to allow those shadowy groups, including those controlled by foreign interests, to continue to try and influence the elections in this country without telling a single person. That's wrong. It violates the kind of pledge towards transparency and greater accountability that we heard a lot in this last election.

So I urge my colleagues to act on a bipartisan basis to simply give the public the right to know when those kinds of organizations, including foreign-controlled corporations, are spending gobs of money on TV and not telling the American people who they are or who is financing them.

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