An unsigned piece at the Center of Competitive Politics site questions compelled disclosure of political spending.  It concedes some case for disclosure of contributions to candidates.  It is wholly unimpressed with forced reporting to the government of independent activity. 

     Two reasons are given for wariness about compelled disclosure:  the danger of reprisal against those whose political affiliations are made known to all, on the public record, and the distortion of debate when attention is turned to the authorship of positions rather than their merits.

     CCP suggests that the regulation of “independent” speech is moving to the forefront of the reform agenda, in what it terms a “radical” departure.  It does not identify the agenda.  But the agenda clearly includes the current fight over whether issue advocacy exempt from the McCain Feingold’s broadcast advertising restrictions remains subject, as “electioneering communications,” to disclosure requirements.  The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to take up this question of reporting, in a case brought by Citizens United.

     The question of control over “independent” activity—by corporations, or unions, or by individuals coordinating their expenditures through a “527” or other entities that are not federally registered “political committees”— figures centrally in the lively argument, largely provoked by McCain Feingold’s enactment, about the permissible scope of government regulation of political activity.  It is an argument that has come to include a major challenge to assumptions about the privileged role assigned to disclosure, treated for some considerable period of time as the most benign form of regulation. 

     Will observers look back years from now on McCain-Feingold and conclude that, though designed to patch up weaknesses in campaign finance regulation and to extend its dominion, this reform instead prompted the reconsideration of long standing “first principles”?  The recent emergence of disclosure as a point of active contention suggests that this is a real possibility. 

Bob Bauer