foundation talked about the influence of super pacs. a reporter for roll call served as one of the panelists and argued that super pacs won't determine who became president. this discussion is an hour and 40 minutes. >> >> we've spent over $33.2 million at least as of noon today in raising a larger unknown amount of money. so the focus of today's event is on what the public knows and should know about super pac activities. we're going to look into the policies flowing and into presidential and congressional elections with particular

attention to other more transparencies needed. today's event is hosted by the advisory committee of foundation and you can find more and i'd like to thank the co-chairs for helping us today. if you'd like to join in the conversation, if you're not in this room but on tv, go to twitter super act. i should disclose there has been a draft bill the public has commented and you can see the sunlight foundation reporting on super pacs.

so moving on to our panel of experts. the first one all the way to my right who has been stuck in today's horrible traffic is mimi marziani. to my right is eliza garney. you can correct me if i'm wrong, you also coined the term super pac? >> that's correct. >> to my immediate left -- >> that's pretty cool, by the way. >> thank you. >> to my immediate left is paul ryan, associate legal counsel at the campaign legal center and the intern director for politics. more information about our panelists is available in case you want to learn their full biographies. sunlight foundation and director on transparency.

i've asked each panelist to speak about super pac and what is available in the public record, what is absent and how the information available affects stories that reporters can tell. >> thank you. thank you to the sunlight foundation for having this event. in the movie, the character known as deep throat tells bob woodward to follow the money. even though that was not actually a line from the book, that was something that a screen writer wrote. it became kind of a rallying cry for generations of people who care about transparency and accountability. but i think it's fair to say that it's more difficult now to follow the money than it once might have been and there are number of reasons for that. the truth is, transparency has been eroding for some time now. it's not just because of the citizens united ruling. my own view is that the greatest threat to transparency, if you can be call it a threat, is the increased activism and political

engagement of nonprofit groups, as i'm sure you guys know. the internal revenue does not require nonprofits to discover the source of their spending. there are minimal reporting requirements and that's probably for very good reason. it dates all the way back to the civil rights era when the irs wanted to protect groups active in issues like civil rights and protect the anonymity of their donors. but nonetheless, beginning with the 527 organizations in 2004, we've seen millions of dollars flow through nonprofit groups of different types to be spent in arguably campaign-oriented fashion. now, 527 groups disclose everything to the irs. so eventually you saw the money and where it has come from. i would argue that there are a number of transparency

challenges that have been presented. super pacs present special tran r transparency problems for three reasons. one is that the s.e.c. disclosure regulations are often incomplete. to some degree the fcc has said unless a donor earmarks a contribution for a particular campaign expenditure, the organization, the super pac doesn't have an obligation to report that. so you could theoretically have a donor give money to a group for overhead and say, well, this wasn't really for a specific ad and so we the members of the public wouldn't necessarily know who funded that group if that money went to a particular campaign ad. and the latest crop of super pacs have found ways to report junctures and a great number of them -- excuse me. i want to say hi to mimi. >> hello. how are you?

>> i'm very well. >> we jumped in so i'm going to keep talking for a few minutes. >> as a civil rights attorney, i had a first amendment slow me down. >> there you go. >> so the super pacs, many of them have decided instead of reporting on a quarterly basis they are going to go to a monthly reporting which has meant less disclosure. so by going to monthly they know we will disclose on the 31st of january and lo and behold, a great many primaries and established affiliated nonprofits. the leading example right now is the crossroads operation. there's a super pac known as

american cross roads which has an affiliated nonprofit of social welfare group called crossroads gps. these two groups together predict to raise and spend on the order of $240 million in this election, which is actually as twice as they predicted they would be spending originally and my guess is that a pretty good chunk of that, half of it, maybe even more, is going to go through the nonprofit which means we'll never know where the money came from. i shouldn't say never because journalists have been pretty good at finding out the source of a lot of these donors and donations but nonetheless there's another trend that has to do with nonprofits and super pacs which is that they have been accepting donors and we still don't know who funded the

nonprofit. so that is one of the third ksh that's really the third transparency challenge for super pacs. so it's not as though following the money isn't possible but it is a lot more challenging than it used to be and i want to slightly rebut some of the election lawyers i speak to on the eve of citizens united, i was frequently told super pacs disclose everything and i'm here to say, a conventional political action committee, every dollar in, every dollar out, if you're a journalist, you can go and look at and that's just not the case with super pacs, at least not now. so with that i'll pass it on to mimi. >> hello. again, apologies for being late. and so obviously most of our conversation today is forward looking as we grapple with the very important questions that super pacs have raised about how

they should -- whether they should be regulated, how they should be regulated and in fact whether basic assumptions underlining our campaign system makes any sense. but before we can fully grapple with these questions, i'm here to push us back a little bit and look behind us and make sure that we all understand where these super pacs came from and the legal theories and assumptions underlying them. so i'm going to give you a little bit of a creation tale. it won't be too long, though, i promise. although things started in 1976 with the supreme court's decision and even though it's now somewhat dated, the main pillars remain the law today and there are three points particularly important for the instant discussion.

first, the buckley court found that because money is needed for most forms of mass communication, restrictions on political spending should be scrutinized just like restrictions on pure speech. it's important to note that this is not actually the same thing assaying that money is speech, although that's the shorthand that has come from the decision, but it has the same practical effect, meaning that the government must have a very, very good reason to regulate political spending the court in buckley then went on to decide that preventing corruption is basically the only very, very, very good reason the government can put forward to limit political spending. and then finally the court decided without citing to any evidence or talking much about the reality of political campaigns, the buckley court

decided that direct contributions to candidates pose a much greater risk of political corruption than independent spending that is meant to benefit the candidate. and the court specifically said -- and i'm going to quote the buckley decision for a second -- that the absence of prearrangement and coordination of an expenditure with the candidate, not only undermines the value of the expenditure to the candidate but alleviates the improper commitments from the candidate. and so with that reasoning, the buckley court upheld contribution limits, limits on direct contributions to candidates, but struck down limits on how much an individual could spend to benefit a candidate. so fast forward to 2010 and the citizens united decision.

so this decision as everyone surely knows is best known for it is holding, mainly that it unconstitutional to prohibit corporations from using general treasury funds for election year. the court, however, also discussed independent spending in an aspect of the decision that is more frequently overlooked. in the citizens united court in fact expanded the logic of buckly significantly and it proclaimed -- again, without looking at any factual evidence -- that truly noncoordinated expenditures, quote unquote, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. and so, in other words, to give a concrete example, this is the same assaying that a million -- multimillion dollar campaign ad blitz funded by, let's say, bp oil to benefit members of the energy and commerce committee does not pose any sort of threat

of political corruption. so long as bp decides to spend that money without consulting with the candidates. with, this however, the court assumed that there was robust transparency that would also act as a mechanism. two months after citizens united was decided, the d.c. court of appeals speech now and i promise i'm getting to the point. here the big question was decided. i'm a political action committee. i only want to spend money on independent expenditures. i'm not going to coordinate under the campaign rules with any particular candidate. therefore, it is unconstitutional for the

government to still restrict the money coming into my organization. there's absolutely no answer -- so the argument goes, there's no anti-corruption benefit to restrict the money coming in if the money coming out is per se noncorrupting. the court agreed and tossed the limits on contributions to these types of pacs aside. and so from this decision the fcc created a new category of entity and it's a mouthful and i believe it was recoined here by our friend here as the super pac. >> i know why i came up with that term. >> the other name was so catchy. so let us move on to our other

panelists. but from that creation story as it is, i just want to underscore three particularly troubling assumptions that super pacs are based upon. one is this idea that independent expenditures are noncorrupting. i mean, this notion is, quite frankly, ludicrous here and i know all about it and that infusion of money is, let's say, given to me at a critical moment in my campaign and necessary for me to achieve a key win. it is crazy to think that i would not feel indebted to that

individual in some way. the second fallacy is this notion that the coordination rules are sufficient to prevent true coordination the way that you and i talk about coordination and there is political money and i'm going to end illustrating that the best to steven colbert. have you guys talked to him yet? >> as many of you probably know, comedian and genius, steven colbert, has been illustrating some of ridiculous aspect of the current regime by creating a super pac and and created the colbert super pac for the purpose, of course, of accepting donations that never have to be

disclosed and then can be shifted to the super pac. so with that rather sad tail, lee turn it to somebody else who can offer a ray of hope. >> so hopefully you can -- i don't know if it can be a ray of hope but colbert no longer has a super pac. >> paul in. >> i'm going to talk about the broader legal concerns at play when you're talking about disclosure and transparency. as mimi and eliza both explained, the major thing coming out of citizens united was a declaration by supreme court that independent expenditures don't corrupt or can't corrupt but one of the promises made by the court, promise might be too strong of a

word, but one of the suggestions strongly made by eight of the court's nine members was disclosure and transparency will be ann dote to any potential flood of corporate and by extension union money that will be cominging into our election system. so eight of the courts nine justices signed on to the opinion that stated, for example, with the prompt expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens and elected officials accountable for their positions and reporters. and concluded the political speech and disclosure permits citizens and entities in a proper way. this enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give

proper weight to speakers and messages. so eight of the nine justices and eight of the nine court justices in the mcconnell decision that upheld the decision and stood firmly behind disclosure and has not supported disclosure as justice thomas and in a case out of washington which was not pertaining to money in election t. was pertaining to the identity of those who signed petitions to get measures on the ballot. and it's perhaps the most

strongly worded endorsement and there are laws against intimidation and short of unlawful action without which our democracy is doomed. even exercising the direct democracy of referendum from public scrutiny and accountability of krut sichl. this does not resemble the home of the brave. so that's the legal backdrop. we have a very consistent eight-justice majority behind transparency and disclosure. but very accurately we have a major deficit of disclosure in this year's election. why is that the case? eliza touched on the main points. one is that while indeed it is

true that super pacs have to disclose the money coming into the super pacs, it changes with citizens united and speech now, more specifically so for the first time in decades it became legal for entities, for groups, for corporations to make unlimited contributions to these super pacs. what we may see is filing of reports that state that a particular super pac received a million dollars for americans for apple pie. corporate entities, would have been illegal for a contribute and now they can and that's all that will have to be disclosed

by a super pac and they themselves do not have to disclose where they get their money unless the donor is foolish enough to contribute for independent expenditures or communications. this and that is a creation of the very, very dysfunctional and completely gridlock election commission. there are a couple players that have gotten us to this point. the fcc has played a big role and the supreme court despite its promises that we have disclosure and that will prevent corporations to be held accountable. i don't think we're going to have that much information in this coming election about the

true sources of money and before doing so, i'll mention that there's a counter veiling interest here, public interest, government interest that i'm confident alan will talk more about. it's true that over the decades and the context of the disclosure cases that if a particular donor to a particular cause would suffer threats, harassment, or reprisals of a result of them being disclosed, they should be exempt. but this is an ex sem shun and we're talking about victims of extreme violence and discrimination in threats and reprisals at the hands of

government themselves. so a brief mention of some of the ways that the new super pac act that the sunlight foundation has just announced last week very similar to those that and we don't know where the money came from that went into that group. in this new model super pac disclosure act there were some new concepts embedded into the law and that is to say build into presumptions that if someone gives money to the spender and either that spender solace sited the money specifically telling the donor

that they would use it to make independent expenditures or communications, that donor should be disclosed. if there was substantial discussion between the spender, that would be and should be disclosed. if the donor had knowledge that the money was going to be used by the spender for political ads, that donor should be disclosed, and finally if a recipient had made substantial expenditures that would be used for expenditures and pitting into our disclosure laws and i'll stop there. >> well, thank you so much.

>> this is why i went to law school. i'll use this one. i'll be playing the role of the loyal opposition. you're right. socialist workers are corrupt government than anyone else does and i think we also have a particular disclosure and the difference is that there is so much of it. thankfully my co-panelists have already identified that they have the same reporting requirements as do normal pacs which, in my view, is fairly substantial.

there is hundreds and millions of dollars floating out there. a c-4 can spend money but it can't be for a major purpose. they can't spend more than 50% of what they are actually taking in on ads. second of all, any of that money spent is taxed. generally the money that goes -- handled by a c-4 is a contribution income f you're spending 49%, let's say the worst case scenario, that's all taxable and, again, it's another haircut coming off the top of your contribution.

so it's an extraordinary influential way and there's a lot of groups. it's the nra, sierra club, most of the people would you think of as major advocacy as c-4 and they are obviously interested in politics. but i think you have to keep in mind that a -- a couple things. one, a lot of the people who you have heard of don't make fortunes off of the contributions and they reflect a reasonable grassroots approach. i think painting a c-4 is a mistake. i may be proved wrong, as i said, because there is so much disclosure but sitting here today i think it's going to be

unlikely so let me give you my overall view. i think this is what the supreme court had in mind and here's our ruling on a first amendment case. we don't know what we're talking about about disclosure. citizens united had amicus briefs. it was ridiculous. they didn't suggest that future cases would turn and i'm not sure that impacts the legislation. i would tend to think and i'm sure you would agree with me, most of the disclosed suggestions that have been brought to congress would