One of the more disingenuous aspects of the Democrats’ 2010 campaign is their claim that they’re battling the special interests by pushing the DISCLOSE Act. President Obama has a shown a pattern of being misleading on this bill and the Supreme Court case to which this bill is purportedly a reaction, but his latest false claim, in reaction to the bill’s defeat, is particularly egregious:
But this is the opposite of the truth, as Bert Gall at the Institute for Justice explains. The bill didn’t restrict companies’ ability to communicate to Congress — which is called lobbying — but it would restrict companies’ ability to communicate to the public. As I put it in a past column, Congress is upset that non-profits and companies might be going over Congress’s head.
More political speech to voters, as Citizens United would allow, could mean less of a need for lobbyists. And that would be bad for Congressmen who benefit from forcing companies who want their voices heard to run the K Street-Capitol Hill gauntlet.
Gall at IJ put it well:
