A letter, signed by 309 organizations, was sent today to all members of the United States Senate. Read the whole thing here -- one section below. Send your message to the Senate here.

We write about the Schumer – Van Hollen campaign finance bill, also known as the DISCLOSE Act. In particular, we write to address recent claims made by the bill’s supporters that are either misleading or incorrect...

Unequal treatment of speakers. The DISCLOSE Act’s supporters do not deny that, to the extent the bill favored union speech over corporate speech, it would seriously depart from past campaign-finance legislation and would be unconstitutionally discriminatory. They claim, however, that the bill treats corporate and union speech evenhandedly. That is incorrect.

As an initial matter, the bill contains several provisions that expressly target corporate speech while exempting the same type of speech when it emanates from unions.  These include a blanket prohibition on election-related speech by many government contractors, by TARP recipients (mostly small banks), and by domestic corporations that are minority-owned by foreign citizens (§§ 101, 102). These one-sided restrictions mean that if there were a significant political issue on which a covered company and its union disagreed, the union could speak about the matter unfettered, while the company would operate under the burdens of Schumer – Van Hollen. To be sure, unions rarely hold government contracts, but they are heavily dependent on the government in other ways, including through federal grants, collective bargaining agreements, and spending programs like Davis–Bacon. There are now more union members employed by the public sector than by the private sector (Steven Greenhouse, Most U.S. Union Members Are Working for the Government, New Data Shows, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 22, 2010), and union LM-2 forms show that many unions spend a substantial portion of their funds on lobbying and campaign expenditures. Unions’ interests in who government leaders are, and what policies they pursue, are at least as great as corporations’, yet Schumer – Van Hollen leaves them essentially untouched.

Provisions of the bill that purportedly apply evenhandedly—such as the disclosure and  disclaimer requirements (§§ 211, 214)—would also burden corporations while leaving unions largely unaffected. For example, the bill requires reporting of donations above $600. § 211(a). Because an average union member pays annual dues beneath that threshold—the average dues of the fifteen largest U.S. labor unions were $377 in 2004 (see Mark Brenner Give Your Union a Dues Checkup, May 27, 2007) unions would seldom be required to disclose donors’ identities. Union donors would also routinely be exempted from the "stand by your ad" requirements, due to a $10,000 threshold added by the House. § 214. It is estimated that these new on-air disclaimers would take up to half of a 30-second ad—making it too costly for many to speak. It is provisions such as these that Senator Schumer and others have said will not merely disclose corporate speech but will "deter[ ]" it. Remarks by Senator Schumer at Press Conference Announcing Campaign Finance Bill (Feb. 11, 2010).

Unions are among the most active participants in the political process. They spent more than $450 million in the 2008 elections, will spend more than $150 million this Fall, account for 40% of the campaign-related spending so far this year (corporations account for less than 15%), and recently spent $10 million in Arkansas attempting to defeat a single Senator. See, e.g., T.W. Farnam, Unions Outspending Corporations on Campaign Ads Despite Court Ruling, WASH. POST, July 7, 2010. Any bona fide attempt at campaign-finance reform would address unions and corporations equally, as campaign-finance legislation has in the past. Schumer – Van Hollen does not. Speaker Pelosi and the President have praised the bill’s regulation of corporate speech while omitting reference to purported effects on unions. Statement by the President on the DISCLOSE Act ("[T]his legislation will shine an unprecedented light on corporate spending in political campaigns."); Pelosi Statement on Passage of DISCLOSE Act by House Administration Committee ("This bill requires corporations to stand by their ads in the same way candidates do[.]").

The bill’s discriminatory approach is further reflected in the special last-minute exemption for the National Rifle Association (§ 211(c)). Added to secure the NRA’s support for the bill in the House, the exemption was expanded in response to widespread criticism to include a small number of additional groups, including the Sierra Club. Thus, the NRA would be able to engage in election-related speech unencumbered by the bill’s new requirements, whereas the Brady Campaign or other gun-control—or pro gun-ownership—groups would be saddled with the bill’s requirements. This Nation’s voters understand that a bill loaded with special favors for powerful lobbying interests is not true campaign-finance reform. It is a bad bill designed to attract a majority by advantaging some groups at the expense of others.