Senate Democrats unveiled their version of the DISCLOSE Act today. (We wrote about the House bill, introduced last month, here.) Senator Whitehouse was joined by approximately 35 of his Democratic colleagues on legislation that has been described as a pure disclosure and disclaimer bill, with none of the controversial provisions that caused the DISCLOSE Act to fail in the Senate by one vote in 2010. The Senate’s laser-like focus on disclosure and disclaimer provisions mirrors Sunlight’s recommendations in our draft Stop Undisclosed Payments in Elections from Ruining Public Accountability Act (the SUPERPAC Act). By focusing on disclosure and disclaimer provisions only, with no carve outs for select groups or bans on certain types of contributions, the 2012 version of the DISCLOSE leaves opponents of the previous bill with little or nothing to object to--unless they believe our elections should continue to be paid for by dark money.

Specifically, the bill will create robust reporting requirements for Super PACs, corporations, unions and nonprofit organizations that decide to make campaign expenditures. It will also require ads to contain disclaimers by the top officials of such groups, similar to the stand by your ad mandates required of candidates.

Voters have been bombarded with campaign ads largely paid for by outside groups, with much of that money totally undisclosed. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, while touting the importance of disclosure, created a system in which money laundering could be used to funnel unlimited secret money into our political system. The DISCLOSE Act is a crucial step to address the corrupting influence of that money on our elections and our elected officials.

Senator Schumer has promised to hold a hearing on the bill in the Rules Committee next week. It will be interesting to see how his colleagues, including John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Lisa Murkowski and others who have expressed concern about the impact of the Citizens United decision, will react to this leaner version of DISCLOSE. We hope they recognize that the bill does nothing more, and nothing less, than lift the cloud that has been obscuring money in politics so that all citizens can know who is paying for our elections.

The New York Times looked at this week’s Super PAC filings with the FEC and demonstrated—again—what we knew would be the result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision: The specter of hundreds of thousands of dollars of hidden money influencing our elections and those who will be elected.

The times notes that, “some checks came from sources obscured from public view, like a $250,000 contribution to a super PAC backing Mr. Romney from a company with a post office box for a headquarters and no known employees.” But, while the public remains in the dark, it would be naïve to think that the identity of the donor (or donors) of that generous contribution is unknown to Mr. Romney. So, what does he or she want? Favorable tax treatment? Fewer regulations for a pet industry? A bailout? An ambassadorship? It is possible that the money came from a generous citizen who simply believes Romney would be the best man for the job. But the system of secret dark money now in place means the voters will never know.

The Supreme court relied heavily on the theory that transparency would cleanse the unlimited money that would shape our elections as a result of their decision in the Citizens United case, noting, “A campaign finance system that pairs corporate independent expenditures with effective disclosure has not existed before today.” Unfortunately, the Court failed to realize that such a system of disclosure does not yet exist.

There is a solution. Sunlight proposed the SUPERPAC Act as one way to shine more light on the dark money infecting our elections. It would impose a regime of disclosure and disclaimers that would lift the veil of secrecy under which large donors may hide. But Congress needs to act. So far, we’ve heard talk. House Democrats say they will re-introduce a slightly paired down version of the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that failed to be enacted last year. And on the other side of the Capitol, Senator Schumer has promised hearings on disclosure by Super PACs.

These are important steps. (Although, arguably they should have happened well before the election season got under way.) Disclosure legislation is a critical tool in the fight against the undue influence secret money has on our campaigns and our elected officials. Unless Congress acts, we can be sure that we have only seen the tip of the dark money iceberg that is undermining the fundamentals of our democracy.

As the 2010 election cycle heats up, voters will be exposed to the usual bombardment of campaign ads—many of them negative, and many engaging in deception, distortion or half-truths—that have become a staple during election years.  What is likely to be new this year, thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case, is that a great many of those ads will be funded by corporate and union interests.  And, if Congress doesn’t act to ensure that there is a centralized government database disclosing information about who is paying for these ads, there is a significant risk that voters will have no idea who is shaping the debate and even influencing the outcome of the elections.

As I noted here, the Congressional response to the decision has been the introduction of the DISCLOSE Act. The provisions of that bill that aim to uncover the real money behind political ads are crucial to ensure that those who pay for the ads are accountable for what they say, and that voters have the ability to evaluate the messages they hear.

But, for those disclosures to be of the most value to the public, Congress should amend the DISCLOSE Act to require that the Federal Election Commission make that information available to the public online, in a searchable, sortable format, within 24 hours of receipt. Moreover, the FEC should be mandated to ensure that all of the disclosure information is available no later than this fall—when the 2010 election cycle will begin in earnest.

As it is written, the DISCLOSE Act would require the entities that make electioneering communications to disclose information about who is paying for those ads on their own websites.  That’s important, especially for shareholders or members of an organization who have a specific interest in an organization and want to know what type of political activity it is engaging in.  But, that system means that if someone wants to know how much money a particular industry sector is spending on independent political ads, they will have to engage in an ad hoc search of myriad websites to come up with a likely incomplete and unreliable result.

The DISCLOSE Act is missing a requirement for a single place that reporters, public interest groups, bloggers and every day citizens can go to find out the big picture about who is shaping the debate in elections. Right now, the FEC provides one-stop shopping so voters can find out about other election-related contributions and expenditures.  Congress should amend the DISCLOSE Act to similarly require that the FEC be home to timely, detailed and easily accessible political spending by corporations and unions.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC opened the door to a torrent of new political spending that, with the legislative framework they announced today, Senator Schumer and Representative Van Hollen are trying to stem. Sunlight released its own “legislative framework” in response to Citizens United some weeks ago, and we are pleased that many of our disclosure-related recommendations appear to have been embraced by Sen. Schumer and Rep. Van Hollen.

The “stand by your ad” provisions that will require corporate CEOs to approve of the ads they run in the same way candidates do is clearly necessary to increase accountability. The disclaimers on ads run by shell organizations should also shine some light on the generally shadowy practices of many of these groups and is welcome and vitally important in light of Citizens United.

Disclaimers on ads run by third party groups, however, only get part of the way to full transparency. To be meaningful, disclaimers must be coupled with real disclosure of who is funding the ads. The Schumer/Van Hollen framework addresses this concern with the new reporting of “political broadcast spending” for all corporations, labor unions, nonprofits and 527s. Disclosures outlined seem to cover most of the relevant bases including who controls the political broadcast spending account, the name of donors to the account, and amounts and purposes of expenditures from the account.

We would respectfully offer two words of advice to the legislative drafters as they flesh out these provisions. First, the framework released today does not specify the how or when these disclosures must be made. To be effective, the legislation must provide that disclosures be electronically filed and publicly available online within 24 hours. It’s too easy to game the system and hide expenditures from public view if there is not a hard and fast requirement for real-time online disclosure. Second, the framework suggests reliance on the FEC to make the information publicly available. If the FEC’s cumbersome, clunky, complicated campaign finance disclosures are any indication, the FEC needs a clear mandate to make sure its new disclosures of political broadcast spending are searchable, sortable, and meaningful to the general public.

Sunlight strongly supports the requirement that political expenditures made by a corporation be disclosed within 24 hours on the corporate Web site. We think the framework shortchanges shareholders, however, by requiring only quarterly reporting. It is, after all, their money being spent – they should be alerted immediately to any political spending on the SEC Web site and through the SEC’s comprehensive disclosure database.

The enhanced disclosures of lobbyists’ campaign expenditures is a good start, though again we would note that to be meaningful, the disclosures must be in real time, online and publicly available and a user-friendly, searchable database. But, in order to address the real threat to the balance of political power that is a result of Citizens United, lobbying disclosure should go much further. As I wrote here, the Citizens United case opened the door to coordination and possible coercion by putting in the hands of corporations, unions and their lobbyists the ability to threaten or imply that if a member of Congress doesn’t support their agenda, he will be faced with a barrage of ads opposing him (or supporting his opponent) in the next election. And, while the Schumer/Van Hollen framework rightly strengthens the ban on coordination to prevent such anti-democratic behavior, without a new disclosure requirement mandating that lobbyists report who they met with, there is no effective way to discern the possibility that such coordination took place.

We hope that when the legislation comes to the House or Senate floor, someone will offer an amendment that requires that within 24 hours of a lobbying contact, lobbyists be required to electronically report the name of the official being lobbied, a summary of the action requested, and the name of the lobbyist’s client or employer. (We’d also like to see the 20 percent exemption for lobbyist reporting eliminated so that all corporate and union heads along with anyone who bundles campaign contributions be required to report their meetings with government officials.) This is a vital way to demonstrate that the new expenditures now permitted because of Citizens United are truly independent.

A “legislative framework” is, of course, just the beginning. As the Members of Congress draft the actual legislation, we hope our suggestions will be incorporated so that the strongest possible disclosures will be in place to help shine a light on who is funding our elections.

In today's edition, The New York Times reports on legislation that's meant to close a loophole lobbyists use to cloak their work for foreign clients. U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Claire McCaskill introduced changes to the Foreign Agents Registration Act earlier today, according to The Hill.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act, enacted in the 1930s, governs foreign lobbying.The law is outdated and needs to be updated to meet the needs of the current global nature of lobbying, according to The Times. The legislation would require lobbyists who represent foreign businesses, politicians and other entities to disclose more information about their relationships.

For instance, current law does not require lobbyists to register with the Justice Department if their meetings with American officials on behalf of foreign clients take place outside the United States. The Schumer-McCaskill bill would close the foreign soil loophole. As both The Times and The Hill report, the issue of foreign lobbyists has become an early skirmish in the general election battle.

While these are certainly welcome fixes, they might want to address the woefully inadequate public disclosure system as well. The FARA database is one of the most user-unfriendly sites ever devised by government, and that's say something. Why not require digital submissions of FARA disclosure forms (bringing it into line with the Lobbyist Disclosure Act) and provide some money for a better Web site, complete with downloadable data. Closing loopholes in disclosure is useful, but if the public can't get to the data, it doesn't do much good.