{"id":928749,"date":"2022-12-21T14:27:52","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T14:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/12\/democrats-congress-dark-money-donors-citizens-united-democracy\/"},"modified":"2022-12-21T16:31:21","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T16:31:21","slug":"democrats-have-given-up-on-fighting-dark-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/12\/21\/democrats-have-given-up-on-fighting-dark-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Have Given Up on Fighting Dark Money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

With Republicans taking over the House in January, Democratic lawmakers have given up on efforts to end the political dark money era. Congress\u2019s year-end omnibus spending bill will once again help dark money donors hide their identities from the public.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n With Republicans set to take over the House in January, Democratic lawmakers are throwing in the towel on efforts to end the political dark money era. (Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

As part of its year-end omnibus spending bill, Congress will once again help \u201cdark money\u201d donors hide their identities from the public and ensure the government cannot crack down on dark money nonprofits that spend the bulk of their revenue on politics.<\/p>\n

With Republicans set to take over the House in January, Democratic lawmakers are throwing in the towel on efforts to end the political dark money era. Provisions in the $1.7 trillion spending bill, which is often used as a vehicle to enact controversial measures because it funds critical government operations, will prohibit Biden administration officials from doing much, if anything, to regulate dark money groups on their own for the rest of Joe Biden’s first term.<\/p>\n

Democrats\u2019 surrender on dark money comes after several failed legislative efforts to compel politically active nonprofits to disclose their donors \u2014 and as dark money becomes increasingly enmeshed within our political system. Ever since the Supreme Court\u2019s 2010\u00a0Citizens United<\/em> decision allowed anonymous donations to flow into elections, both parties have become increasingly reliant on dark pools of cash to fund TV ad wars over presidential elections, congressional races, and even judicial confirmation campaigns. The situation allows ultrawealthy, mystery donors to exert unprecedented influence in Washington.<\/p>\n

The dark money arms race recently culminated in\u00a0a historic $1.6 billion donation<\/a> raised by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. As former president Donald Trump\u2019s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three new Supreme Court justices, while his dark money network spent tens of millions boosting their confirmations. Leo\u2019s network<\/a>\u00a0also funds<\/a>\u00a0politicians and nonprofits bringing and boosting precedent-setting cases before the high court, like the decision overturning federal protections for abortion rights.<\/p>\n

Democratic lawmakers made several attempts during President Joe Biden\u2019s first term to pass campaign finance reform bills targeting dark money groups \u2014 including as recently as this fall. The most recent effort failed due to the party\u2019s refusal to eliminate or reform filibuster rules requiring sixty votes to advance most legislation in the Senate.<\/p>\n

As a result, Democrats have now twice failed to utilize the only two governing trifectas they\u2019ve had since the\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>\u00a0decision to limit the impact of the ruling.<\/p>\n

There are several provisions, or so-called riders, attached to the omnibus bill that are designed to protect dark money nonprofits that spend on politics.<\/p>\n

One rider once again bars the Securities and Exchange Commission from spending any funds to establish or implement any rules requiring companies to disclose their donations to political groups and politically active nonprofits, as well as payments to lobbying groups.<\/p>\n

GOP lawmakers have included this provision in government spending bills\u00a0since 2015<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 with Democrats repeatedly accepting the measure as the cost of keeping government operations funded.<\/p>\n

Democrats pushed to do away with this ban in one of their failed campaign finance and democracy reform\u00a0bills<\/a>. A standalone measure has\u00a0sat<\/a>\u00a0in committee since early 2021.<\/p>\n

Another long-standing rider included in the omnibus bill prohibits the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from issuing any new regulations regarding whether \u201csocial welfare\u201d nonprofits, commonly known as dark money groups, qualify for their tax exemptions.<\/p>\n

Under IRS guidelines, dark money groups are\u00a0not supposed<\/a>\u00a0to devote<\/a> more than half of their expenditures toward politics. This rider means the IRS cannot even enforce its existing\u00a0weak<\/a>\u00a0regulations on the matter.<\/p>\n

A third rider bars officials in the executive office of the president from requesting a determination into whether a nonprofit qualifies for its tax exemption, except in cases involving matters of national security.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese damaging dark money poison pills are a long-time cancer on our democracy, and unfortunately they have yet to be cured,\u201d Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president at Public Citizen, told the\u00a0Lever<\/em>. \u201cWe will continue the fight to remove them and enable agencies to act to grapple with the secret money surge we have seen play out ever since the overreaching\u00a0Citizens United\u00a0<\/em>decision came down 13 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n

You can subscribe to David Sirota\u2019s investigative journalism project, the\u00a0Lever<\/i>, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of its year-end omnibus spending bill, Congress will once again help \u201cdark money\u201d donors hide their identities from the public and ensure the government cannot crack down on dark money nonprofits that spend the bulk of their revenue on politics. With Republicans set to take over the House in January, Democratic lawmakers are [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":929161,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928749\/revisions\/929161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}