it's simple. it says what has already been described. anybody -- you know, the fellow who wants to donate $100, even $1,000, if they're going through a super pac, they don't have to disclose that. but if they're donating $10,000 or more, then that ought to be disclosed and we ought to know where that money is coming froms their agenda by virtue of us knowing where the money's coming from. so this legislation will stop the special treatment for the super pacs by making sure that they play by the rules that everybody else has to. mr. president, there's going to be a lot of commentary here tonight. i thank you for the opportunity, and i yield the floor.

mr. merkley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico. mr. udall: thank you, mr. president. let me, first of all, just thank senator whitehouse for heading up this campaign finance task force. i think this has been a real solid effort by a number of senators, and senator whitehouse, whether it's at netroots or here on the senate floor, has been participating this evening, and we really appreciate all of his help. the presiding officer, senator merkley, has also been a key member of the task force. senator bennet, who is going to be speaking after me, another member of the task force. and we so appreciate all of us getting together. and one of the things we need to be reminded of this evening is where we are. we just took a vote to try to

get on to the disclose act bill. 51 democrats said let's get on to the bill, and 44 republicans, not a single republican voted to allow us to get on the bill. basically what we're in in the senate, as senator bennet and senator whitehouse and senator merkley know, we're in the mode of a full filibuster now. we're on a motion to proceed. we're not allowed to get on to the bill. and so people should just recognize that's the posture we're in right now, and yet we're going to be down here, we're going to be talking about this issue. and i join my colleagues today to talk about about this serious problem of campaign finance reform, one that threatens the very nature of our democracy. and that threat is the unprecedented flow of money into our elections. we need to look at this

dangerous torrent of money and consider how to stop it. and i believe a step in the right direction is the disclose act. in january 2010, the supreme court issued its disastrous opinion in citizens united versus f.e.c. two months later the d.c. circuit court of appeals decided speech now vs. f.e.c. which the supreme court upheld. these two cases gave rise to super pacs. they opened the floodgates of secret cash. super pacs have poured millions of dollars into negative and misleading campaign ads, and they often do so under the cover of darkness. quiet, stealthy, without disclosing the true source of the donations. it's ironic, they make all the sound and fury on the airwaves,

but they are silent on who is paying for it. why? why the silence? why the cat and mouse? the american people are blessed with common sense. they know that usually when someone will not admit to something, it's because there is something to hide. and they have seen where all that shadowy campaign money can take us: to corruption, to scandal, to places like watergate, dark days where we have been before. and believe me, i don't think the american people want to go back to the era when we had big suitcases of cash and the president was keeping in his white house safe, cash. we don't want, the american people don't want to return there. the citizens united and speech now decisions sparked a renewed focus on the need for campaign finance reform. but let's be clear, the court laid the groundwork for this

broken system many years ago. in 1976, the court held in buckley vs. valeo that restricting independent campaign expenditures violates the first amendment right to free speech. that ruling established the flawed precedent that money and speech are the same thing. another nail in the coffin of common sense. and the result? elections based too much on the ability to raise money and too little on the quality of ideas. too much on the dedication to fund-raising and too little on the public good. money and free speech are not the same thing. and it is a tortured logic to say they are. they may seem he comparable in the rarefied hallways of the supreme court, but not in the

rough-and-tumble streets of political campaigns. we know this, and the super pacs writing these huge checks know it too. and they must be chuck -lg all the way to the bank, but the american people do not find this funny. infuriating perhaps, but definitely not funny. i don't think we can truly fix this broken system until we undo the false premise, the premise that spending money on elections is the same thing as the constitutional right of free speech. that can only be achieved if the court overturns buckley or we amend the constitution. until then, we will fall short of the real reform that is needed. but we still should do all we can in the meantime to make a bad situation better. and that's what we've been trying to do with the disclose act. that's what we must do with the disclose act. it's not the comprehensive

reform that i would like to see, but the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. and the disclose act is the good that we can do now. it's a step forward, a vital step forward, even with this flawed supreme court precedence that can strain us. the disclose act is a step out of the shadows, and that is exactly where we need to be headed. the disclose act of 2012 asks a simple question, an important and eminently fair question: where does the money come from and where is it going? and let me just say if we don't start asking that question, we may soon be asking another one, one that we heard when scandals shook this country in years past. what did he know and when did he know it? so a simple question that follows the money, that says the

american people have a right to know who is writing the checks. under the bill, any covered organization, including corporations, labor unions, nonprofit organizations and super pacs that spend $10,000 or more on campaign-related disbursements during an election cycle would have to file a report with the federal election commission that discloses all donations above $10,000. it also requires the disclosure of any transfer made to a third party for the purposes of campaign-related expenditures. this addresses the growing problem of using so-called social welfare organizations to funnel anonymous money to super pacs. this is a practical, sensible measure. it doesn't get money out of our elections but it does shine a light into the dark corners of the campaign finance system. a similar bill in the last

congress had broad support, broad bipartisan support, with 59 votes in the senate and passing the house. but since then we have all watched the flood of money raining down during this election year. we are seeing the real impact of citizens united and speech now decisions on our elections. the need for this legislation has become even more apparent. i serve on the senate rules committee, and in march chairman schumer held a hearing on the disclose act, and we heard several concerns about the bill both from our republican colleagues on the committee and their witness. at the hearing the majority witness claimed that there are many provisions in the bill that he disliked, and he said, "i think perhaps the most radical is the government-mandated disclaimer." while i disagree with this assertion that standing by your

ad is a radical idea, that's no longer an issue in this bill. we've taken it out, the disclaimer position. i still believe it is an important position but we listened to the minority's concerns and revised the bill. another concern raised at the hearing was the effective date of the legislation. senator alexander is our ranking member on the committee, and i think a great deal of him and appreciate the work that he and chairman schumer have done on many issues. at the hearing on disclose, senator alexander said the following: "this hearing is as predictable as the spring flowers in the middle of an election. my friends on the other side of the aisle are trying to change the campaign finance laws to discourage contributions from people with whom they disagree, all to take effect on july 1, 2012. well, guess what, senator alexander, we've also addressed this concern. the bill has been changed so

that the disclosure requirements go into effect at the beginning of next year. so the shadow groups can still do everything in their power to buy this election. they can still hide their faces from the voters. but they would have to step up to the plate the next time around. they could still write the checks. they can still try to buy future elections. but they would finally have to say who they are at the checkout stand. the bill we are considering is s simple and straightforward as it gets. if you're making large donations to influence an election, the voters in that election should know who you are. and that is not a radical concept. what's really disappointing is that this type of disclosure and campaign finance reform more generally used to have broad bipartisan support. now the conservative super pacs are raising huge sums of cash

and hiding many of their donors. disclosure has suddenly become another partisan issue. if you look at past reform efforts, they have always been bipartisan. in 1972, the federal election campaign act passed with strong bipartisan support from both parties. after watergate, democrats and republicans came together, again, to strengthen the act and set limits on independent expenditures. more recently, in 2002, we passed the bipartisan campaign reform act, also known as mccain-feingold. that bill passed in the senate with brought support. five of our current republican colleagues voted for it. and the constitutional amendment that senator bennet and i introduced this congress, that also used to be bipartisan. senator fritz hollings was the lead sponsor for many years, but the amendment was always

bipartisan. it had the support of respected republican senators like ted stevens, arlen specter -- the presiding officer: the senator utilized ten minutes. mr. udall: john danforth, thad cochran and john mccain. i would ask the chair for an additional two minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. udall: you can see why i'm disappointed with the partisanship that has taken over this important issue. it's not like the problem of money influencing our elections has been solved. the recent supreme court decision struck down laws that my republican colleagues voted for. i hope that they would be willing to work with us now to pass disclosure laws that will withstand judicial scrutiny. and, mr. president, i would ask that my full statement be put in the record as if spoken. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. udall: and with that, i would yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: mr. president, thank you. i'd like to thank my neighbor, the senator from new mexico, for his kind words and his leadership on this issue. i've been privileged to have the chance to cosponsor a constitutional amendment that would, i think, respond very nicely to the things that he hears from his constituents as i hear from mine, whether they are republicans, democrats or independent voters. i also want to thank the senator from rhode island, senator whitehouse, tonight for organizing this for his leadership over these many months. it is a quarter past 8:00 p.m. tonight in washington, d.c., as we debate this bill. actually we're not debating the bill because we weren't even allowed to move to a debate on the bill. i can't tell you the number of times we haven't been able to do that. i'm often struck by the fact

that i think the founding fathers would have wanted us to debate all these bills and to vote up or down on all these bills and to go home and explain to our constituents why we voted one way and why we voted another way. here we are not technically debating a bill once again because we haven't been able to move on to a piece of legislation that historically, and i hope again will become bipartisan. as as i mentioned, mr. president, it's quarter past 8:00 here at home, in colorado, it's quarter past 6:00. it's dinner time in colorado. families are sitting at home, i hope they are, in fact, i know they are, having dinner with loved ones, much as i did when i was a boy. i know my parents who followed public affairs closely, they would turn on the evening news about this time and walter cronkite would be on the television. i remember the ads, as you probably do, senator from new mexico, were ads for things like

geritol, for things that cleaned your dentures. i remember one ad in particular, every single night it would come on. i never could believe they could get the cherry stains out of those pearls, but every single night, they were able to do it. and if there was a political ad on television, the candidate had to get on that ad at the end and say my name is michael bennet, my name is jeff merkley, my name is tom udall or dick durbin or harry reid or sheldon whitehouse and i approved that message. that's what we saw when i was a child. tonight, families all over my state, which is a swing state in this country, are going to have to endure advertisement after advertisement after advertisement that are not advertising those consumers products i described earlier, but are advocating for candidates and political ideas, and they are all going to have or many of them will have phony

names. committee for a strong america or tall children or strong teeth is what they're going to see. but now because of what the supreme court ruling did, they can't even find out if they wanted to who has donated to those fake committees in many cases. now, i wanted to start out tonight, mr. president, by making clear what's not at issue with this bill. this is not a constitutional question that we're debating here tonight. there is not a question that disclosure and disclaimer, which this bill doesn't even do, i will come back to that, disclosure is constitutional. eight of night supreme court justices have said not only that it's constitutional -- well, they have said it's constitutional but some have said that's a desired result. here is justice scalia.

-- quote -- "requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. for my part, i do not look forward to a society which, thanks to the supreme court, campaigns anonymously and even exercises the direct democracy of initiative and referendum hidden from public scrutiny and protected from the accountability of criticism." the accountability of criticism, in the justice's words." this does not resemble the home of the brave." this does not resemble the home of the brave. it takes courage to put your name on something. it takes courage to stand for something that's unpopular. it doesn't take a lot of courage to let somebody use your money in a way that keeps you completely anonymous and imposes something on families in our states who are trying to make a fundamental american decision to

vote in a democracy. that doesn't take courage. that's the point justice scalia was making because justice scalia, i believe, thought that congress would do its job and enact what's constitutional. required dis-- require disclosure, require disclaimer. this issue is one that has been well understood in this country since its founding. here is patrick henry in 1788. the liberties of a people never were, never were nor ever will be secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. accountability and transparency. that's what this legislation is about, and it is emphatically constitutional. so if somebody comes and tells you that this is about the constitution, tell them that eight of nine supreme court justices have already ruled on this question. they have already ruled that what's in the content of this act is constitutional. now, what's happening out there

as a consequence of a decision that was made by the supreme court on the one hand and the failure of the congress to act in a timely manner on the other? well, these super pac's have come into being, these anonymous folks are able to give money. there is one that owns a casino in las vegas. he's actually given more money to super pac's in 2012 than anybody else in the country. at least that's what my understanding is. but to him this is chump change. so far, he has given $35 million. that's a lot of money to most people but it's not a lot of money to this guy because he has a net worth of $24.9 billion. so we did some math at home and what we figured out was that in colorado -- in america, i guess, in the u.s., the average family's net worth is roughly $77,000. that's their net worth.

so if they were to spend the same percentage of their net worth that this one casino owner in las vegas has spent of his net worth, that would be about $108, which is about what people spend a week on groceries who are making this kind of money. to them, that would be a little bit of a sacrifice, i guess, $108, but if they knew they could control the outcome of elections in state after state after state, if they could influence the election of the very president of the united states by spending .0001 of their net worth, $108, they might do it. this is pocket change for him. these numbers get so big, it's hard sometimes to think about what it means. that net worth, just one person's net worth is 332,000 times the net worth of our average family.

332,000 times. think about it this way, mr. president. and forget about this for a second. think about this. the median household income in colorado is roughly $56,000. that's what it is. it's roughly $56,000. a family earning $56,000 in colorado every year, year in and year out, who never paid any taxes, they are probably paying a higher rate, by the way, than this guy in las vegas, but who never paid any taxes, who never spent one penny of their salary. $56,000 a year, year in and year out and didn't spend a nickel of it. they would have to do that for 441,000 years before it added up

to what this guy has. just to give you a sense of perspective, human beings made their appearance on this planet 200,000 years ago. half, less than half of what it would take for this diligent and prudent family to raise what has been -- what this fellow is worth. it gives you a sense of the order of magnitude. as some of my colleagues have said, one of the things that's really interesting about this super pac phenomena is it's a very small group of very wealthy people that are contributing to it. it's not most corporations. it's not most people that have some means. this is a tiny, tiny group of people that are committed to a set of political outcomes and their economic interests that i'm not sure are in the same interests of most of the folks that live in my state. again, we're not saying they

can't do it. this bill doesn't say they can't do it. this bill just says if you're going to do it, you need to tell us who you are. we want to know who you are. step up and say why it is you're doing what you're doing. it's not surprising, by the way, that this problem has become enormous since this decision was made. in 2006, 1% of donors were undisclosed. that was it. that was it. 1%. 99% were disclosed. 1% was not disclosed. today -- it's actually even worse today. this is 2010. a year i was running and a year when coloradans saw my ugly mug more on the television than anyone deserve to see, more outside money than any state in the united states of america. 44% of the money that was spent was not disclosed. the identity of the people that

gave the money was not disclosed. that's half virtually of what was spent, and it's going to be worse this year. it's not surprising, and everybody who has been a parent would know this intuitively. i have three daughters that are 12, 11 and 7, and believe me, there is nothing mysterious about this. not surprisingly, as the spending has become more anonymous, the advertising has become more negative. one of my kids thinks they can get away with doing something negative to one of their sisters -- which is not often but it happens and they think they can get away with it without anybody catching them, they are more likely to do it than if they know somebody is watching. the presiding officer: the senator has utilized ten minutes. mr. bennet: i ask for an additional two minutes, mr. president. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: thank you, mr. president. so you can see here, spending on positive advertising here, much, much higher than negative. today, it's almost entirely

negative. between the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. tonight in the state of colorado and across the united states of america, those graphs are going to be borne out by negative ad after negative ad after negative ad. and listen -- i'll close with this, mr. president, i'll close with this. we face enormous structural issues in the economy in this country. we faced them for a while and we're facing them again, because as you can see from this chart, g.d.p. growth, our economic output, has decoupled from wage growth and job growth. that's what's happening in the united states, and the job of this congress, the job of this administration and our generation's job is to recouple those so that we have a rising middle class in this country, and that's what we should be spending our time on as we think about reforming our tax code and our regulatory code and our statute books, but there are some folks around that aren't necessarily all that interested in that because the current

system works pretty well for them. i can't tell you the number of times i've heard people say in this chamber that the government shouldn't pick winners and losers, and that's really easy when you're on the winning side to see. we ought to have a set of rules in this country that are responsive to the needs of the vast majority of the american people, whether they are republicans, democrats, independents, who together, no matter where they are in the economic spectrum, all want essentially the same thing, which is to make sure that we are not the first generation of americans to leave less opportunity, not more, to the people that are coming after us. i believe that anybody that wants to come to that debate, anybody that wants to play in that game is welcome, but they ought to tell us who they are. with that, mr. president, i will yield the floor, and i see the senator from illinois is here and look forward to his remarks. mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois.

mr. durbin: mr. president, i thank the senator from colorado for his remarks. they were spot on. special thanks to my colleague from rhode island, sheldon whitehouse, for gathering us here this evening. it's almost 8:30 washington time. the chamber is otherwise empty. a few members, senator stabenow of michigan, preparing to speak. this is not really a senate debate. that happens almost never in this body, which is unfortunate. i had hoped that perhaps some members on the other side would come and defend their position, but they haven't. it's their right to go home, and they've done it. we think it's worth a few minutes of our time to come even this late at night to talk about this issue. mr. president, lyndon johnson was a pretty famous senator and president, and he used to say back in the day that when he was looking for advisors, he wishes that he had someone near him who would run for sheriff. what lyndon was saying,

president johnson was saying was that the practical experience of politics is somehow a lot different than what many people imagined. i thought of that when i reflected on this supreme court currently sitting, the same court that decided citizens united, and the fact that not one of them has ever stood for election. none of them have gone through a campaign. when they addressed citizens united, it was strictly from a legalistic academic viewpoint, and the decision reflected it because it was such a gross departure from where we had been as a nation. a presidential candidate may argue that corporations are people. our supreme court in citizens united said that the views of corporations should be treated like the views of people, like the free speech that every american is guaranteed under our constitution. and with that just twist of a phrase, they have literally changed the face of politics in