Which brings me back to the DISCLOSE Act. This bill doesn't overturn Citizens United. It doesn't limit how much money individuals or corporations can spend on independent expenditures. All it does is require that this spending be disclosed publicly. It reflects what used to be a bipartisan consensus around the effectiveness of transparency and disclosure in avoiding corruption.
But today -- unless, again, I'm pleasantly surprised -- all the Republicans in the Senate, including those who have specifically called for more disclosure in our system, will once again block it from proceeding.
In our country, a few have a lot more money than the rest. In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else -- and for our democracy itself. And although we've always argued over how best to prevent that from happening, today's vote is yet another sign that some have decided to embrace that shift instead.
