The Hill, is reporting that the Rules Committee will meet today and put the bill on the schedule for tomorrow.
The legislation is backed by some Republicans and most Democrats, though reservations among centrist Democrats had forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to pull the bill from the floor last week before a scheduled vote on Friday.
The White House has weighed in on behalf of the legislation this week, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wrote House Democrats to assure them that he would work to secure a vote in the Senate. Some Blue Dog Democrats had been afraid of a tough vote on the legislation, only to see it stall, like a number of other House priorities, in the Senate.
A boost to Van Hollen's efforts, beyond the letter from Reid promising that the Senate would act on the bill, is recent polling. On Monday, the bill's backers circulated a polling memo from Obama pollster Joel Benenson, in which he said that voters "overwhelmingly oppose the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case and show extremely strong support for measures contained in the DISCLOSE Act."
More concretely, People for the American Way released their latest poll yesterday, showing continued deep opposition to the Citizens United decision, and support for efforts for a Congressional fix.
[M]ore than three-quarters of voters said that they support a Constitutional Amendment if one is necessary to limit the amount that corporations can spend in elections. A similar majority are inclined to support a candidate who has spoken out in favor of an amendment. The support cuts across party and ideology, with majorities of Democrats, Republicans and Independents in support of the measure.
The poll reveals:
- 85% of voters say that corporations have too much influence over the political system today while 93% say that average citizens have too little influence.
- 95% agree that “Corporations spend money on politics mainly to buy influence in government and elect people who are favorable to their financial interests.” (74% strongly agree)
- 85% disagree that “Corporations should be able to spend as much as they want to influence the outcome of elections because the Constitution protects freedom of speech.” (63% strongly disagree)
- 93% agree that “There should be clear limits on how much money corporations can spend to influence the outcome of an election.” (74% strongly agree)
- 77% think Congress should support an amendment to limit the amount U.S. corporations can spend to influence elections.
- 74% say that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate for Congress who pledged to support a Constitutional Amendment limiting corporate spending in elections.
The DISCLOSE Act, compromised as it is with the NRA carve out, is not as strong a remedy as those polled would seem to be looking for, but it's the best that we're going to get between now and November 2.
(Note: in previous posts I included the Humane Society as one of few organizations that could benefit by the NRA exemption. It would not. An e-mail from their PR department says: "The HSUS is registered as a 501(c)(3) organization, and the reporting requirements are moot since The HSUS does not engage in candidate campaigns. Our political affiliate, the Humane Society Legislative Fund, is a relatively new 501(c)(4) organization that would not meet the tests to be excluded under the current proposal because it does not yet have one million members.")