A new campaign finance bill, introduced on April 29 in the House, April 30 in the Senate, and sponsored by Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Chris Van Hollen, would impose new spending restrictions and disclosure requirements.  The bill is the Democrats’ first response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down certain restrictions on corporate and union political expenditures encompassed in the McCain-Feingold Act. 

The new burdens contained in the Schumer-Van Hollen bill include:

• Expanding the scope of an existing ban on political commercials paid for by foreign corporations;
  
  
• Prohibiting independent expenditures and electioneering communications by government contractors or TARP fund recipients;
  
  
• Strengthening rules on “coordination,” defined as communications made “in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of” a candidate or a political committee of a political party;
  
  
• Adding disclosure rules requiring CEOs to “approve this message” of corporations, the way that politicians do;
  
  
• Requiring some groups to identify their donors (the bill contains an exception for organizations that have existed for more than 10 years, have more than a million members, and receive less than 15 percent of their funding from corporate donors);
  
  
• Increasing disclosure requirements by, for example, requiring disclosure of corporate and interest-group contributions to advocacy groups that buy political commercials; and
  
  
• Enhancing requirements for disclosure of political expenditures.

For more information please visit the Public Law Practice Group page of the Haynes and Boone, LLP Web site, or contact any of the lawyers listed below:

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