Senate Dems Intro Constitutional Amendment To Combat Campaign Financing

In the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case of 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited the censorship of political broadcasts when funded by unions or corporations. 

On Tuesday, Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Michael Bennett (D-Colo.) introduced a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the authority to regulate that practice. 

“[We] refuse to stand by idly and watch our elections be fundamentally degraded by the flood of corporate and special interest money,” Udall said. “Campaigns should be about the best ideas not the biggest checkbooks. It’s time to put elections back in the hands of American voters.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a co-sponsor of the amendment, argued that the problem with campaign financing did not originate with the Citizens United case, but rather is rooted in the Buckley v Valeo case of 1976. The 1976 decision set limits on campaign contributions but ruled that spending money to influence elections was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.

“Buckley v. Valeo was one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court has rendered in the past 100 years,” Schumer said. “Then, making matters worse, cam Citizens United - Buckley on steroids - which really took the First Amendment to an illogical, almost anti-democratic extreme.” 

The constitutional amendment the gang of Democrats introduced authorizes Congress to regulate and limit the amount of money raised and spent on federal campaigns, including independent expenditures. It would also extend this authority to the states.  

“Time and again I have chided my colleagues who would amend the Constitution every other day,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “But i think this one gets to the heart of our future as a nation and the heart of whether or not congressional reform can actually take place.”

Senate Beats Deadline, Approves Stopgap Measure

UPDATE: By a vote of 79-12, the Senate on Monday approved a stopgap measure to keep the government funded through November 18.

Click here for more…

This story was updated for a second time at 7:38 pm EST

UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will hold a vote Monday night on a bill to keep the government funded through November 19 and provide the Federal Emergency Management Agency with nearly $3.7 billion in funding. 

The Senate bill mirrors a House-passed bill that was shot down by the upper chamber Friday. The only difference is that proposed spending cuts aimed at offsetting FEMA’s funding are excluded from the Senate’s version. 

Though FEMA is running short on time and was previously expected to exhaust the little funding it has left by Tuesday, Senate aides have indicated that the disaster aide agency actually has enough money to keep it operational through Thursday. 

If Congress fails to act before Friday, Sept. 30, the United States government will face the threat of a government shutdown for the third time in 2011.

This story was updated at 11:24a.m. EST…

Washington, D.C. - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called on House GOP leadership to “cool off” and requested they meet with him over the weekend to hash out an agreement on funding the government and keeping FEMA afloat.

The move, which puts next week’s prospects of a congressional recess on hold, comes on the heels of the upper chamber’s rejection of a spending measure the House passed early Friday that would keep the government funded through November 19.  

The Senate voted 59 to 36 Friday in favor of tabling the House’s proposal.  

“If [House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)] thought he could just send us this bill… and leave town, I think he ought to take a look at the roll call we just had,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters, referring to the 7 Republican senators who crossed party lines to table the House’s bill.  

A Senate bill that Democratic leaders now say matches the $3.65 billion in FEMA funding proposed by the House is scheduled to be considered Monday evening, but does not include the GOP’s spending cuts offsetting emergency funding. 

In fact, Reid shot down the notion of adding offsets to the Senate’s bill when asked by reporters if he would consider the move should the Senate bill fail Monday.

Prior to Reid’s request to meet with Speaker Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) over the weekend, the House GOP leaders indicated at an earlier press conference that the House planned to adjourn as scheduled following Friday votes. 

With FEMA expected to exhaust its current budget by early next week, Cantor said regarding the possibility of returning next week, “If we are back, that means Harry Reid has shut down FEMA.”

Click here to see photos from today’s press conference. 

Schumer: Dems Have "Upper Hand" In Deficit Talks

By Philip Bunnell

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that Democrats now have “the upper hand” in the deficit reduction talks with Republicans. 

“Senator McConnell has walked out on a long limb…by insisting that he will not accept any deal if it includes revenues,” said Schumer during a speech at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

Schumer said that there are not enough Republicans in the House who will vote for “a debt limit increase under any circumstances at all,” which he said means that “Speaker Boehner…is going to need Democrats.”

This leverage, Schumer says, will allow Democrats to insist upon their priorities: “no cuts to Medicare beneficiaries, balanced use of cuts and revenue to reduce the deficit, and a focus on jobs.”

The New York Democrat accused Republicans of “bluffing” on their pledge to vote against raising the country’s debt limit unless Democrats agree to take tax increases off the table. GOP lawmakers, Schumer said, are “perfectly willing to cause us to default on our obligations rather than give a single inch in the negotiations.” 

“If the public comes to believe that Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy, it will backfire [on them] politically,” he added.

Senate To Vote On Disclose Act Tomorrow

Despite losing key battles yesterday on repealing ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ and the DREAM Act, the Senate will attempt one more major vote on Thursday.

That’s the day Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to bring the DISCLOSE Act to the floor. The bill, which the House passed in June, would require organizations involved in political campaigning to disclose the identity of their large donors and to reveal their identities in political ads they fund. It would also prohibit foreign corporations, government contractors and TARP recipients from making political donations.

The legislation was crafted in response to a Supreme Court decision in January that allowed corporations and unions to pay for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a staunch proponent of the bill, told reporters on Wednesday that unless the Disclose Act is passed, “the winner of every upcoming election this November won’t be Democrats or Republicans; It will be special interests.”

“Passing [the bill] would be a huge win for restoring transparency to our elections,” he added.

Addressing concerns that Democrats are attempting to rush the bill through to help preserve their majority in Congress, Schumer said the legislation would not go into effect until January, two months after the midterms take place. Earlier today, a story that appeared on Politico noted that Democrats are being outspent badly by groups supporting Republican candidates.

Interestingly, Reid decided to schedule the vote on Thursday instead of today partly because a number of Senate Democrats were expected to attend a big-ticket fundraiser this evening in Manhattan, at which the president would be speaking.

Disclose will probably be the last big vote taken in the Senate before members return home in two weeks to campaign for reelection. When asked whether the upper chamber would hold a vote on whether to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, Schumer replied, “It’s being discussed within our caucus now.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters yesterday that his chamber would wait for the Senate to act on the tax cuts.

Diagnosis Pending On Undercover Patients

One the few bipartisan moments from Thursday’s health care summit came from a proposal by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to deploy undercover patients to detect waste and fraud in the medical system. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) voiced his enthusiastic support and called it a “great idea ... that we can come together on.”

Despite apparent bipartisan support, the proposal has yet to receive the backing from a key group: the American Medical Association. In 2008, the organization tabled an endorsement for undercover patients.

Critics within the medical community have cited concerns that asking doctors to spend time with patient’s feigning ailments was essentially a misuse of resources that could be better spent on individuals with pressing medical issues.

Brooke Billingsley, the co-founder of Perception Strategies, an Indiana-based company that deploys secret patients, downplayed these fears.

“A lot of the studies that we do involve the patient and shopper aligning together as family members to go through the whole interaction so they’re not taking up an actual patient bed,” Billingsley told Talk Radio News Service.

Billingsley added that the use of undercover patients is an important tool in providing effective medical care.

“It’s the only true way to get an unbiased assessment of what the process is and what’s really occurring,” said Billingsley. “When you’re sending somebody in, they have no vested interest in the outcome.”