Testimony of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act
Prepared for Delivery Before the Senate Rules Committee
March 14, 2007
Madam Chairman, Ranking Member Bennett, thank you for holding this
hearing and for inviting me to testify. I am very pleased, Madam Chairman,
that you are an original cosponsor of the Senate Campaign Disclosure
Parity Act this year, and I appreciate very much that you have decided
to try to move the bill through the committee.
I would like to also of course acknowledge the other cosponsors on
the committee, especially Senator Cochran, who is now the lead Republican
cosponsor of the bill, and Senator Durbin, who has supported every version
of this bill since it was first introduced in the 108th Congress, Sen.
Hutchison, who has long been an advocate of improved disclosure legislation,
dating back to our work together on the 527 disclosure bill in 2000,
and Sen. Dodd, who I will always be grateful to for his expert managing
of the McCain-Feingold bill when it was on the floor in 2001.
The Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act fixes the anomaly in the
elections law that makes it nearly impossible for the public to get
timely access to Senate campaign finance reports, even though most other
reports are available on the Internet within 24 hours of their filing
with the FEC. This bill will finally bring Senate campaigns into the
21st century by amending the section of the election laws dealing with
electronic filing to require reports filed with the Secretary of the
Senate to be filed electronically and forwarded to the FEC within 24
hours.
The FEC is required to make available on the Internet within 24 hours
any filing it receives electronically. So if this bill is enacted, electronic
versions of Senate reports should be available to the public within
48 hours of their filing. Now that will be a vast improvement over the
current situation, which requires journalists and interested members
of the public to review computer images of paper-filed copies of reports,
and involves a completely wasteful expenditure by the FEC of hundreds
of thousands of dollars each year to re-enter information into databases,
even though every Senate campaign has the information available in electronic
an format.
This step is long overdue. There is no excuse for keeping our own campaign
finance information inaccessible to the public when the information
filed by House and Presidential candidates, PACs, parties, and even
527 organizations is readily available almost immediately. The Washington
Post has called the outmoded Senate campaign reporting system ``obviously
unjustified,” and Roll Call has called it “indefensible.”
I couldn't agree more. Why has the Senate required electronic filing
of everyone else, but refused to get rid of its own exemption?
The current system means that the FEC’s detailed coding, which
allows the press and the public to do more sophisticated searches and
analysis, is completed over a week later for Senate reports than for
House reports. It means that the final disclosure reports covering the
first two weeks of October are often not available for detailed scrutiny
until after the election. Indeed, according to the Campaign Finance
Institute, prior to the 2006 election, “[i]n all ten of the most
closely followed Senate races, voters were unable to search through
any candidate reports for information on [donations made after September].”
And a September 2006 column by Jeffery Birnbaum in the Washington Post
noted that “When the polls opened in November 2004, voters were
in the dark about $53 million in individual Senate contributions of
$200 or more dating all the way back to July.” That’s really
kind of scandalous Madam Chairman, and there is no good reason for it.
Madam Chairman, let me just say that I know that the election laws have
a big impact on campaigns and all Senators want to scrutinize them very
carefully for partisan or personal implications. I am very familiar
with controversial and contested campaign finance legislation. This
isn’t that kind of bill. This bill is as close to a no-brainer
as you can get in this area.
We now have 29 cosponsors for the bill, 18 Democrats and 11 Republicans.
Important major media outlets have endorsed it, as have bloggers on
the left and the right. No one that I know actually opposes it. And
yet, it has now been nearly 3 and a half years since I first introduced
it. Now that’s nearly half as long as it took us to pass McCain-Feingold.
I know McCain-Feingold. You might say that McCain-Feingold is a friend
of mine. Madam Chairman, this bill is no McCain-Feingold. So I sincerely
hope that this Committee will act expeditiously, and will report the
bill without amendment so that we can quickly pass it on to the floor,
and get it into place for the beginning of next year, well in advance
of the next elections.
I know that you have a big agenda in the Committee this year. I have
strong views on many of those issues, and I hope to get invited to testify
again. But as you said Madam Chairman this bill can and should be passed
quickly. Let’s not have the other difficult and complex issues
you will face in this Committee prevent this bill from becoming law
very soon. Thank you.
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