Thank Senator Whitehouse re DISCLOSE Act

Earlier this week, Senate Republicans shamelessly abused the filibuster to prevent the DISCLOSE Act from passing. But the Democrats, led by progressive champion Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, didn't take it lying down.

Instead, they confronted the obstructionist Republicans intent on protecting the secret campaign spending by billionaires and wealthy corporate interests, and took their case directly to the American people.

And when Sen. Whitehouse went to the floor of the Senate to fight for the DISCLOSE Act, he brought your name with him, along with the signatures of over 213,000 members of CREDO Action who signed on as citizen co-sponsors of the bill.

Click here to watch a short video of Sen. Whitehouse's remarks about the citizen co-signers, and then sign the petition to thank the Senate Democrats for fighting to pass the DISCLOSE Act.

Sometimes the threat of a Republican filibuster has been enough to keep an issue from being raised in the Senate.

But this time the Democrats didn't let the Republicans kill the DISCLOSE Act without a fight.

The Republicans gave every excuse in the book for opposing the DISCLOSE Act because they couldn't justify defending secret election spending by billionaires and wealthy corporations.

And the supporters of the DISCLOSE Act stayed on the Senate floor past midnight talking about the need to stop the torrent of secret election spending that's flooded our political system since the Supreme Court handed down its terrible Citizens United decision.

By keeping the fight going, it allowed CREDO Action members to make over 3,500 reported calls to Republicans who were blocking the bill.

Click the link below to watch the video of Sen. Whitehouse's remarks, and then sign the petition to thank the Senate Democrats for fighting to pass the DISCLOSE Act:

http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6913330&p=disclose_thanks&id=43483-2593817-pu5LkRx&t=6

We knew this would be an uphill battle, but we need to pick hard fights like this to begin restoring some sanity to a campaign finance system that has become insane.

And it's important that we have leaders in the Senate like Sen. Whitehouse who are willing to step up and take on this kind of hard fight. When they do so, they deserve our support.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

P.S. Speaking about the citizen co-sponsors, Sen. Whitehouse said:

I've got with me today on the Senate floor ... 213,000 citizen co-sponsors of this DISCLOSE Act, which were collected by CREDO Action.

[...]

Unlike the corporations and the billionaires who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy our elections — and who insist on doing it in secret — these regular people are unashamed to stand up for what they believe in.

Their pride in civic engagement reflects the best values of America, and their numbers show that this is an issue where a broad cross-section of Americans demand a change to what is happening in our elections.

As Justice Antonin Scalia has written (I'll quote him), "[r]equiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed."

Our friends who have signed on as citizen co-sponsors have that courage, and the biggest campaign spenders in the world should as well.

Click here to watch the video and thank the Senate Democrats for fighting to pass the DISCLOSE Act.