“They’re wanting to go back to the good ol’ days,” said Rep. Jeff Steinborn (D-Las Cruces), sponsor of the 2009 House version of the bill that passed on a 49-17 vote . “They want to go back to being able to funnel as much money as possible through the state’s Republican Party.”

The law restricts individuals or entities from donating more than $2,300 to a non-statewide candidate in an election or $5,000 to a statewide candidate, a political party or political action committee.

The suit was filed with the support of James Bopp Jr., an attorney who claims to specialize in free speech cases out of his Indiana-based law firm Bopp, Coleson and Bostromin Terre Haute, and with the James Madison Center for Free Speech. The plaintiffs have cited Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in their suit.

Sen. Rod Adair (R—Roswell), the sole dissenting vote in the Senate during the law’s passing, is also one of the plaintiffs in the suit. “As long as there’s transparency in the process, I don’t see the need for the limits law,” he said, adding, “I’m glad there are people on the center-right who are willing to take on these issues. That it’s not just the ACLU or the George Soros empire filing lawsuit after lawsuit.”

It’s those other people on the center-right who have Representative Steinborn worried. “New Mexicans need to decide who’s elected,” he said. “Not the Koch brothers [Charles and David, the billionaire brothers who have vehemently campaigned against President Obama and funded various right-wing groups and causes, as well as the Tea Party] or Karl Rove or these outside interests, like the ones who donated $400,000 to Governor Martinez’s gubernatorial campaign. Before the law went into effect.

“They can throw around a modest amount of money here comparatively and win elections,” added Steinborn. “It’s propping up candidates that we maybe wouldn’t support otherwise. And you have to look at the timing of this too: we’re coming up on a presidential election, and we could be a swing state. It’s exactly what we sought to shut down with our bill, and we really wanted to get the big money out of the races. It’s very bad for New Mexico. Very bad.”

In a web seminar sponsored by the Business Ethics Network last week, groups concerned about the role of money in politics gathered to review strategies for increased disclosure.

Norm Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, who once helped craft the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act, said that he was struck and “even a little bit heartened” by the fact that Sarah Palin railed against crony capitalism during her Labor Day speech in Iowa saying, in effect, “what do we suppose those fat cats want for their money?”

“It suggests to me,” Ornstein said, “that there is at least a glimmer of a possibility that we might be able to build a very unusual type of coalition against what has become an utterly appalling landscape of influence peddling by enormous monied interests and more and more overt, almost shakedown schemes by political figures to get the money they want from corporations and individuals.”

The Citizens United decision did not strike down any rules that require disclosure of political spending, but loopholes in the tax system and lax campaign finance rules allow corporations to give money in ways that are very hard to track, disclosure advocates say.

According to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2010 election 67 percent of all outside (non political party) spending came from groups that had been freed to contribute by the Citizens United decision with non-profit 501(c) groups dominating spending on election ads.

IRS rules state that 501(c)(4) groups don’t have to name their contributors as long as electioneering is not their primary purpose, but this can be difficult to enforce in a meaningful way. Groups can form and carry out campaign work and then later switch to other activities so that political projects don’t appear to dominate their activities.

With Congress deadlocked over most issues, campaign finance reform advocates say it’s more prudent to focus on promoting regulatory measures that could increase disclosure.

One possibility would be to get the IRS to enforce its requirements for 501(c)(4)s. Another would be to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to require publicly traded companies to report their political spending to shareholders.

Aside from the way it could corrupt the political process, experts point out, unregulated corporate spending on politics poses risks for company shareholders.

Ten corporate law academics recently petitioned the SEC to adopt rules to require that corporations communicate with shareholders about political use of corporate funds.

The idea has support from major institutional investors including the International Corporate Governance Network, which represents $18 trillion in assets.

Any rule change at SEC will be a time consuming process. In the meantime some groups are trying to get corporations to voluntarily release information about their political spending.

Since 2003 the Center for Political Accountability has been working to get companies to establish rules for disclosure of political spending and shareholder oversight.

Valentina Judge of CPA said that such resolutions are good business practices that can protect companies from embarrassing contributions that can cause reputational damage.

The Target corporation learned the pitfalls of political donations last year, she pointed out.

The company endured bad press and boycott threats after it made a $150,000 donation to a group that supported a candidate opposed to gay rights.

CPA is preparing to release an index of corporations that have adopted policies on corporate spending.

It’s urgent that groups focus on disclosure strategies that could work fast, said Craig Holman of Public Citizen.

“We just was a 427 percent increase in outside spending in the 2010 election,” he said, “This is a phenomenal increase … and this was just a test run, a trial. Corporations and CEOs were just starting to get involved and were pretty cautious.”

In the 2012 elections, he said, “I believe we are going to see numbers that are off the charts.”

The only thing that could force more disclosure right away would be an executive order from President Obama, he said.

“We need President Obama to step up to the plate and sign an order requiring enhanced political disclosure for contractors to show that contracts are being based on merit and not contributions.”

Another short term effort could involve getting the president to appoint a Federal Elections Commissioner who would work to require funding disclosure on television ads, said Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center.

The most pressing need, however, she said, is is a public education campaign to translate the current situation around corporate funded politics into terms that meet average Americans.

“You have to build a public base before you can get into specific answers,” she said. “The pot is not yet boiling.”

“The reality is that the other side that is supporting this outcome is outgunning the reform community and those that see the problem by a million to one,” she said. “It doesn’t mean give up. It means you’ve got to start thinking about 21 century solutions and approaches.”

In the run-up to the 2008 election, Citizens United, a conservative organization that has since aligned itself with the tea party, produced an attack film with the on-the-nose title Hillary: The Movie. When a D.C. court ruled that advertising and widely screening Hillary would be a violation of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, Citizens United took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Court ultimately determined that corporate expenditures on “electioneering” constitute a form of protected free speech, and that neither state nor federal law can bar corporations or non-profits from using general treasury funds to support or oppose a candidate.  At the time, former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who lost his re-election bid in 2010 to tea partier Daniel Webster, called Citizens United “the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case.”

The Center for Responsive Politics now finds that, following the Citizens United decision, midterm spending on campaign ads and electioneering efforts by outside interest groups (including corporations, nonprofit interest groups and unions) has quadrupled. Moreover, 72 percent of spending for ads around the 2010 election came from groups that were legally barred from such spending before the Court made its decision. Although unions and liberal nonprofits have taken advantage of the ruling, outside spending from conservative groups is where the true growth has occurred. In 2010, election spending from conservative groups without direct party connections was up nearly 10 times what it was during the last midterm election cycle. At $190.5 million, it was also nearly double the $98.6 million that non-party-affiliated liberal groups spent on the 2010 election.

A slideshow of some of the Center’s findings is below:

The deluge of corporate money that rushed into the election process once the Supreme Court opened the floodgates has now prompted at least one group to challenge the ruling directly. Free Speech for People is a non-partisan organization dedicated to the idea that constitutional free speech protections intended for individuals don’t extend to corporate spending, nor should they.  The group points out [PDF] that, according to polling done by Hart Research, fewer than 14 percent of Americans agree with the Court’s decision, and that 82 percent of Americans believe Congress should step in to place limits on corporate campaign spending.

Now, Free Speech for People is standing by Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock as he works to appeal state Judge Jeffrey Sherlock’s October ruling that Citizens United made Montana’s 1912 Corrupt Practices Act unconstitutional. The Corrupt Practices Act was passed nearly 100 years ago, Free Speech for People co-founder and General Counsel Jeffrey Clements tells The American Independent, because of the undue influence the copper industry had on Montana politics at the turn of the century.  Now, a century on, corporate influence has been restored to its place in the political process; Clements and Free Speech for People co-founder John Bonifaz hope to change that.

To that end, Free Speech for People has filed an Amicus Curiae brief [PDF] (a document that an outside party can submit to provide information to a court) with the Montana Supreme Court, which will be hearing Attorney General Bullock’s appeal of Sherlock’s decision.

Bullock and Free Speech for People, however, now face an uphill battle. Western Tradition Partnership (WTP) is an anti-environmental regulation organization that, along with two local businesses, brought the suit that Bullock is now appealing. If WTP and its partners win in the Montana Supreme Court, the state of Montana can take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court; if the state wins, WTP can do the same.

Either way, the case has a very real possibility of ending up under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court. But with very recent precedent weighing in favor of corporate expenditures and no significant ideological shifts on the Court since the decision, the future of the Montana case seems all but sealed.

Tara Malloy, associate legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit dedicated to campaign reform, says that Montana’s best option now is to gather as much evidence as it can to show that unchecked corporate spending is a path to quid pro quos and bribery. “It would be very interesting if Montana could come with a good record—or terrible record, if you will—of corruption,” she says. “But even then, the Supreme Court does not have to accept that.”

Free Speech for People’s Clements has the same take. He says that the onus will now be on Montana to show that the state’s political process is inherently compromised without the Corrupt Practices Act. The fact that all the evidence goes back 100 years, though, might weaken the case. “Will this lead to a reversal of Citizens United?” he says. “Probably not. But it’s important that states do stand up against Citizens United like this, because otherwise, we don’t have democracy anymore.”

Clements stresses that he’s not defying the Supreme Court or arguing that it has created an illegal or unconstitutional political atmosphere. But he hopes that Montana’s case could at least prompt other states to consider taking on the Citizens United decision and alert the Supreme Court to how it has played out across the country. “Corporations aren’t people,” he says. “Multinational corporate money has no place in our elections.”

Because the group is registered as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it is not regulated by the Federal Elections Commission or the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. And unlike other politically active organizations, it is also not mandated to disclose where it gets its funding.

In 2010, AFF spent its money exclusively attacking Democratic candidates around the country. It’s biggest investment came in the race to unseat U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa). The group spent spent more than $1.8 million, a sum higher than either candidate in the race raised independently. Braley ended up emerging victorious despite the group’s heavy investment.

Both Democrats and Republicans have discussed tightening the state’s disclosure laws to force groups like American Future Fund — and it’s sister organization The Progress Project — to disclose donors if they spend money in state-level campaigns. Even Gov.-elect Terry Branstad has said he’d like to see groups that spend money trying to influence campaigns forced to disclose where they are getting their money.

But many of Branstad’s key advisers are closely associated with AFF, and Branstad himself served as chairman of American Future Fund’s Lecture Series before re-entering politics. Among those in Branstad’s inner circle with ties to AFF are:

• Bruce Rastetter – ethanol businessman and co-chair of Branstad’s inaugural committee. He was the governor’s largest donor, and provided the seed money to start American Future Fund.
• Nick Ryan – a founder of AFF and founder and president of the Concordia Group LLC (AFF paid Concordia $300,000 in 2008). Ryan was one of Branstad’s biggest financial contributors and is a long-time adviser to Rastetter.
• Sandy Greiner — president of AFF and leader of a political action committee that successfully worked to encourage Branstad to jump back into politics. She won a seat in the state Senate last month. Before the election, Greiner said her association with AFF would only be a conflict of interest if she won. She has yet to resign her position since the November election.
• Nicole Schlinger — past president of AFF who led Branstad’s fundraising efforts.
• Tim Albrecht– Branstad’s communication director who previously served in the same position with AFF.
• Kathy Pearson – secretary of The Progress Project and a member of Branstad’s Linn County campaign committee.
• David Kochel – past president of The Progress Project and formerly deputy manager of Branstad’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign. He did some consulting for Branstad’s most recent campaign as well.

The three groups — Public Citizen, Protect Our Elections and the Center for Media and Democracy — filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in October asking for an investigation into whether American Future Fund should register as a political action committee.

The lame-duck session could be the last chance for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to pass a number of bills. (Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com)

The midterm hangover having finally worn off, the 111th Congress returns today to kick off the lame-duck session, its last hurrah before its successor takes over. And the 112th Congress will look radically different, with Republicans in control of the House and the Democratic majority in the Senate significantly reduced. These next few weeks, then, could be the last chance for major Democratic initiatives. But the hurdles are high, and Republicans see no reason to grant Democrats any victories after the populace voiced its discontent with the policies of the past two years.

[Congress1] The battle lines are drawn; here are the fields on which they’ll be fought:

Bush tax cuts:

The biggest question before the Senate — and the one that will likely receive the most attention — is the expiration of the 2001 tax cuts signed into law by President Bush. Facing Democratic resistance in the Senate at the time, Republicans set up the cuts to sunset after ten years. Now that they’re set to expire, however, GOP lawmakers have lined up shoulder to shoulder to make them permanent.

President Obama, on the other hand, ran for office on a pledge to extend the existing tax rates for families making less than $250,000 a year, while letting the tax cuts for those making over that number expire. But as the economy continued to falter and Democratic re-election prospects began looking bleak, Democrats in Congress put off addressing issues related to the tax code until after the midterm elections. Now that Republicans have made big gains in both chambers of Congress, Democrats find their confidence further weakened.

Following the midterms, the White House has signalled that Democrats might be willing to compromise on the idea of a permanent extension of tax cuts for middle-class families and a temporary extension of cuts for the two percent of Americans families making more than $250,000, but it won’t stomach the approximately $700 billion in additional debt that would be required to extend those cuts permanently. Republicans, on the other hand, haven’t deviated from their position that the tax cuts for all Americans be kept together as a package deal.

If neither side blinks, taxes are set to rise for all Americans effective January 1. Neither party wants to be seen as responsible for a tax hike during difficult economic times, but Democrats have appeared far more worried at the prospect of getting blamed should negotiations break down. Polls favor the Democrats’ position that the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans should be allowed to expire, but without the votes of at least two Republicans in the Senate, the proposal is likely to fail. Barring momentum in Congress for the creation of a new tax bracket — for people making half a million dollars or a million dollars per year — in order to better rhetorically define the class of folks for whom Republicans are advocating tax relief, the easiest and most likely outcome will be a bill that temporarily extends all the tax cuts, simply kicking the decision of what to do to some point farther down the road.

Unemployment insurance benefits

As Congress frets over whether the marginal tax rate for incomes over $200,000 should be raised three percentage points, the Senate is also on the verge of allowing federal unemployment benefits to lapse — again. Extending the benefits before they expire on November 30 might seem like a no-brainer: It would prevent somewhere between 1.2 and 2 million unemployed Americans from having their subsistence checks cut off just in time for Christmas and would reduce the risk of a drop in consumer spending and economic growth as high as 0.4 percentage points from December to February.

Republicans might have trouble arguing that deficit reduction trumps other priorities, including unemployment benefits, when the only major initiative the GOP is pushing — extending the Bush tax cuts for the upper 2 percent of wage earners — would increase the deficit by $700 billion over ten years. That said, Republicans in the Senate, along with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), are likely to vote against any extension of unemployment insurance benefits unless Democrats can come up with ways to offset their cost.

The last time unemployment benefits were set to lapse, back in early June, the Senate was unable to muster enough votes to renew an extension for 51 days. With Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine joining Democrats to vote for cloture, and Nelson joining with Republicans to vote against debate, Democrats had no choice but to wait for Sen. Carte Goodwin (D-W.Va.) to be sworn in as a replacement for the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D- W.Va.) in order to garner a 60th vote.

This time, assuming all the senators maintain their positions in the debate, the hurdle will be that much higher for Democrats after Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) takes the seat of Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) on Nov. 29. With one fewer assured vote, Democrats would either have to come up with a package of equivalent spending cuts that satisfies Republicans’ demands or persuade one more Republican to join their cause. Neither scenario appears particularly likely, however, which is why many unemployed Americans are bracing for the worst come Nov. 30.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

A long-awaited Pentagon study on ending the practice of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the 17-year-old law that requires military service members to keep their sexual orientation secret, isn’t due to President Obama until December 1, but early media reports indicate that it will buttress gay rights advocates’ arguments to repeal the law. More than 70 percent of the respondents in the Pentagon survey indicated that repeal would have either positive, mixed or nonexistent effects, leading the authors to conclude that the military can lift its ban on gay and lesbian Americans serving openly in uniform while incurring minimal risk in its current war efforts.

If the study brings good news to those hoping to repeal the law, however, the current situation in the Senate should not. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) attempted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” before the midterm elections, tacking the provision onto a defense reauthorization bill that failed to overcome a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. The bill was weighed down by many add-ons — including the DREAM Act, which seeks to extend a path to citizenship to some undocumented immigrants who attend college or serve in the military — giving too many senators excuses to vote against it, but advocates remained hopeful that repeal could pass along with the defense bill when Congress resumed for its lame-duck session.

Now Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, is said to be negotiating with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, to remove the DADT repeal provision from the defense bill. McCain had previously voiced openness to authorizing a repeal of the law following the Pentagon’s review, but since that time his views have hardened. During his re-election battle earlier this year, McCain faced a primary challenger from the right and promised during his campaign to preserve the law.

In the absence of support from McCain, advocacy groups have identified 10 senators who have indicated in the past that they’d like to see the Pentagon’s study before deciding on whether to lift the military’s policy. The list includes Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Oympia Snowe (R-Maine), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jim Webb (D-Va.). Once the results of the study are known, gay rights groups hope these senators will take them to heart and vote for repeal. If they follow McCain’s lead and renege on their previous openness to getting rid of the law, however, it may be a long time before Congress can muster sufficient votes to repeal the policy.

Campaign finance reform

Following an election season that saw record amounts of cash — including a fair chunk from undisclosed sources — spent on political advertising by outside groups, campaign finance reform advocates are still hoping that Democrats in Congress might take advantage of their remaining time in charge of both chambers to pass legislation to shore up the loophole-ridden landscape of campaign finance law. The most popular effort, by far, during the last year has been a bill called the DISCLOSE Act, which would require all groups spending money on electioneering activities in future elections to disclose their major donors.

While premised on a fairly bipartisan concept of full disclosure, the bill soon ran into trouble in the Senate over additional components that had been added on to it. Measures to prohibit campaign spending by companies holding government contracts or those exceeding a certain threshold of foreign ownership were read by Senate Republicans as an attempt to privilege union speech over that of corporations. Traditional campaign finance reform advocates like Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) held onto such objections and voted against cloture for the bill when Democrats declined to take them out.

Now Democrats in the Senate are contemplating one last attempt to pass a stripped-down version of the DISCLOSE Act — one that sticks strictly to the principle of transparency that Republicans once advocated as their gold standard for effective campaign finance legislation. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a staunch opponent of nearly all campaign finance legislation, might prove an even bigger obstacle to the bill’s passage than any single aspect of the legislation. While Snowe or Collins, or even Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) or Senator-elect Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), might prove receptive to the measure in principle, it appears highly unlikely that any of them are willing to buck their party leadership for the cause.

Energy/environment

Even if the lame-duck session likely represents the best opportunity for Democrats to pass key pieces of energy legislation before a more Republican Congress comes to town, it seems unlikely that anything significant will move.

The House, for its part, has already passed a cap-and-trade bill and an oil spill response bill, and all eyes are now on the Senate. But it looks like major energy action in the chamber will have to wait until next year, if it happens at all.

One clean energy advocate with close ties to Congress downplayed the likelihood that energy legislation will pass during the lame duck. “Little will happen, probably,” he said.

The only energy-related bill that is likely to see the light of day during the lame-duck session is a proposal to encourage the production of electric and natural gas vehicles. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has scheduled a cloture vote for Wednesday on the bill, the Promoting Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles Act of 2010. The bill has bipartisan support.

Asked about the prospects for energy legislation during the lame duck in the Senate, Regan Lachapelle, a spokeswoman for Reid, said, “We filed cloture on a motion to proceed to a natural gas bill before we left. Other than that, we have many items that are possible for consideration during the lame duck.” Lachapelle did not elaborate on the pieces of legislation to which she was referring.

Backers of a renewable energy standard, which would require that a certain percentage of the country’s electricity come from renewable sources like wind and solar, are keeping their fingers crossed that such a proposal can move in the lame-duck session. “We’re optimistic about the lame duck,” said one RES proponent who was not authorized to talk on the record.

Reid and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) spoke on the phone Tuesday about the possibility of moving an RES during the lame duck. Bingaman’s spokesman, Bill Wicker, would not discuss the call. “This was a private conversation between two Members, so I have to respect that,” he said in an email. “But we all should know more about the lame duck before much longer.”

But a senior Senate aide with knowledge of the conversation downplayed the possibility that an RES would be brought up for a vote during the lame-duck session. “They had a good conversation and agreed it will be challenging to get 60 votes for expedited consideration of an RES during the limited time left in the session,” the aide said of discussion between Reid and Bingaman. Indeed, RES supporters would need to secure the support of two to four Republicans in addition to the four who already support the bill in order to get 60 votes.

An oil spill response bill and various pieces of legislation to promote energy efficiency and home weatherization are all pending in the Senate. But it looks like consideration of those bills will have to wait until next year.

DREAM Act

Reid and Pelosi have vowed to push for a lame-duck vote on the DREAM Act, a bill that would allow some undocumented young people who came to the United States as children to gain legal status for attending college or serving in the military.

In the House, the vote could come as early as this week, Democrat sources told Politico. Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) were reportedly tasked by Pelosi with determining whether the caucus would be able to pass the bill.

If the act does not pass in the lame-duck session, it has very little chance of passage before 2013. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who is expected to head the House subcommittee on immigration, refers to the DREAM Act as “amnesty” and promised he would use his authority in the GOP-led House to block the act. GOP gains in the Senate also lessen the likelihood of passing the bill next session.

Reid recently said he would need support from “a handful of Republicans” to pass the bill during the lame duck, echoing estimates by bill sponsor Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that at least five Republicans would need to support the bill for it to pass. A spokesman for Reid confirmed last week that he plans to bring up the DREAM Act for a vote during the lame-duck session, although it is still unclear whether it would be as a standalone measure or as an attachment to another bill.

The problem is that Reid doesn’t have much time — or sure support for the DREAM Act from his caucus. The act last came up for a vote in 2007, and seven of the eight Democrats who voted against it then are still in the Senate. While a few might support the bill this time around, five told The Hill in September they are still undecided on the DREAM Act.

Complicating matters, Mark Kirk’s assumption of Roland Burris’ seat in the Senate turns a sure “yes” vote into a likely “no.” Kirk has been lobbied heavily by DREAM Act supporters, but said before the election that he would vote against the act unless border security measures were pushed first. “It’s not time for the DREAM Act right now,” he told reporters in October. “If the DREAM Act came up for a vote right now, I would vote ‘no.’”

All current Republican senators voted in September to filibuster the defense authorization bill after Reid announced plans to attach the DREAM Act. But given the additional controversy over that bill — it included a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and would have allowed for only limited changes from Republicans — it’s tough to extrapolate much from it about how senators would vote on the DREAM Act as a standalone bill.

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) said he would support the bill if it were brought to the floor on its own, even though he opposed it as part of the defense authorization bill. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who co-sponsored the bill, would also almost certainly vote for it if it comes up in the lame-duck session.

Several other Republicans voted for the DREAM Act in 2007, but their support this year remains uncertain because of rightward shifts on immigration policy and the possibility of the bill again being attached to other legislation. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was an original sponsor of the bill when it was first introduced in 2001 and voted for it in 2007. This year, he said the government should secure the borders before it focuses on the DREAM Act.

Written by Jesse Zwick, Andrew Restuccia and Elise Foley.

“We’re going to carefully monitor and adamantly oppose any efforts by Republicans to either repeal the soft money ban or greatly increase the limits on contributions to parties and candidates, which would have the same effect,” said Wertheimer. “The argument is going to be made that now that parties are the only ones still under the old campaign finance system, then we better take the limits of the parties. But that’s a argument that says we ought to deal with the potentially corrupting influence of outside spending by opening the door to more direct forms of corrupting influence though direct donations to congressmen.”

The rumors are the product of comments Lungren made the other week in a conversation with the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Morain, in which he floated the idea that lifting the contribution limits for parties and candidates would be one way to keep the growing influence of outside groups in check. As to whether Lungren is planning to put his ideas into legislation, a call to his office yielded only the news that the congressman was recovering from knee surgery and a promise to call back later.

Secret contributions in political campaigns are a formula for influencing-buying corruption. It has happened before and will happen again. [...]

Just as history tells us secrecy results in scandal, history also tells us that scandal results in reform.

The Watergate campaign finance scandals in the 1970s resulted in the creation of the landmark presidential public financing system which served the nation well for most of its existence until it became outdated when Congress failed to modernize it. The Watergate scandals also led to the enactment of limits on individual contributions to candidates and parties, upheld by the Supreme Court as necessary to prevent corruption of federal officeholders and government decisions.

The soft money scandals in the 1990s led to the ban on unlimited contributions to the national parties upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003, a decision that was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court earlier this year. The soft money ban continues to serve the country well in preventing a system of legalized bribery of federal officeholders.

There’s no doubt that a scandal involving tax code violations or legislative favors exchanged for some of the political spending in 2010 would most likely provide an onus for Congress to do something about the lack of disclosure in much of independent spending, but it also seems like a fairly longshot legislative strategy. I’ve yet to see why Democrats don’t just try to pass a disclosure-only version of the DISCLOSE Act in order to silence whining about special treatment for labor unions before it starts and just force a straight referendum on merits of the issue at hand.

Rep. Mark Kirk, who could become the next senator from Illinois, said at a recent debate, “I think all of the groups entering Illinois to support my opponent and the ones trying to support me should reveal their donors and be fully transparent.” Likewise, Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck: “I think it is important that people know who is paying for the ads.”

So do we. If Mr. Kirk or Mr. Buck end up in the Senate, we hope that they – and other colleagues will cut off the flow of secret money before even more gushes forth in 2012.

You could make a case for adding Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul to the list, too, at least when it comes to the issue of barring federal contractors from lobbying or contributing to congressional campaigns.

“What I would do is that for every federal contract, if you sign a federal contract and we pay you, the taxpayer pays you a million dollars, I would put a clause in the contract that you voluntarily accept that you won’t lobby or give contributions,” he told Rush Limbaugh, “because I think it galls the American people that taxpayer money is paid to contractors who take that taxpayer money and immediately lobby for more money.”

And even Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller has been up in arms about a new Super PAC, Alaskans Standing Together, which is spending loads of corporate money from the parent companies of federal contractors to back his opponent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. He’s even gone so far as to file a complaint about the issue to the otherwise loathed Federal Elections Commission.

Does this mean that any of these candidates would back legislation like the DISCLOSE Act in its present form? Probably not, but it shows that while conservative candidates who possess Paul’s libertarian streak might be all for free corporate spending, they’re not for cozy corporatist arrangements either. To the extent that these interests overlap with those of campaign finance reformers, you might yet see some cooperation after all.

Why does Lungren’s opinion matter? Assuming he wins re-election and Republicans capture a majority of seats in the House, he’s slated to take over the chairmanship of the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over campaign finance legislation. Last week he sat down with the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Morain and explained his ideas more fully:

As Lungren’s sees it, the main problem with the system is that there are caps on direct donations to candidates. An individual cannot give more than $2,400 per election to a congressional candidate. Lungren would obliterate limits, permitting donations of unlimited size directly to candidates and political parties. That, he says, would limit the role of independent groups. [...]

“You’re going to have money flowing, and I would rather have the money flowing to the candidates,” Lungren said. “You’d still have a lot of money, but (donors) would be identified with the party and with the candidate.”

Lungren might be right that doing away with direct campaign contributions would go a long way toward cutting out the middleman of outside groups, but he’s also jumping into the one area of campaign finance where the Supreme Court still holds that the threat of corruption and quid pro quo arrangements between donors and candidates remains very real. His idea is basically a nonstarter with those seeking to reform campaign finance laws in Washington, but he’s the guy that they’d most likely have to go through to get anything passed in the House.

Lame duck sessions aren’t known for passing legislation that’s at all controversial, but some advocates are arguing that it’s Congress’ last chance to get something meaningful pertaining to donor disclosure or public financing passed, and Lungren’s remarks are doubtless adding urgency to that mission.

It’s called the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 6116), and yesterday it cleared the House Committee on Administration with bipartisan support. Public Citizen’s David Arkush hailed the bill and its passage out of committee as “one of the most effective single steps Congress could take to loosen the special interests’ grip on Washington. It would enable candidates to forgo large campaign contributions and instead fund their campaigns with small donations from average Americans, which would be multiplied by matching federal funds.”

The goal of the bill is to set up an alternative system of financing Congressional campaigns that House and Senate candidates could opt into. If candidates qualify by obtaining sufficient initial support, they would receive a lump sum right off the bat. Donations of $100 or less from in-state contributors would then be matched by the government 4 to 1. Participating candidates would also receive a 20% reduction from the lowest broadcast rates in their state or district. In return, a candidate’s PAC would be limited to a $100 contribution limit per individual per year.

Public financing has been a touchy subject among the Obama administration and good government groups ever since Obama decided to opt out of the public system of presidential campaign financing while on the campaign trail in 2008. He declared the system antiquated (which it was) and pledged to fix it when he got elected (which he hasn’t).

The Fair Elections Now Act deals with congressional elections, but look for another bill sponsored by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) and Reps. David E. Price (D-N.C.), Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Todd R. Platts (R-Pa.) that deals with the presidential public campaign finance system to start getting more attention as well, especially as the 2012 race inches closer. It seems unlikely, though, that a Republican-heavy Congress will feel compelled to work with the president on a bill in that context.