Republicans will have one more chance to put up or shut up on "transparency" tomorrow when the Senate votes again on the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that counters the Citizens United ruling. While corporations have no more spending limits on political advertising, this act would at least require them to disclose their funding of the advertisements.
So, as with yesterday's DADT/DREAM drama, all eyes are on the Maine twins.
The vote is designed to crank up the pressure on Maine GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, two longtime champions of greater limits on campaign finance.
Watchdog groups, including U.S. PIRG, are planning an event in Maine Wednesday morning with representatives of the state’s small business community who support the bill.
Collins came out against the Disclose Act just before the previous vote on the bill, citing what she viewed as imbalances in the way corporations and unions are treated in the disclosure requirements and complaining that the measure was designed to provide Democrats an advantage in the November election. She also complained that the bill did not go through the normal committee process and was introduced and voted on without a single hearing.
Snowe, meanwhile, said she was focused solely on measures aimed at creating jobs and bolstering the economy."
Neither of these two is likely to buck their party at this late stage. When they brought the bill up in July, it got 58 votes. Lieberman was absent for that vote, so it does need just one Republican to flip, one Republican to prove that the entire party isn't just an arm of the Chamber of Commerce.
Passing this bill before the elections would be a very good thing for democracy. Voters need to know just who is bankrolling the onslaught of attack ads that will soon subsume us, which in turn would let us know precisely who has bought which candidate. That's the last thing Republicans want to happen between now and November, so unless someone has an attack of conscience (Voinovich?), they'll squash us in the name of their corporate overlords once again.