Obama Assails Republicans on Campaign Finance

WASHINGTON – President Obama on Monday sought to capitalize on the expected defeat of a campaign finance measure that he has championed by pre-emptively linking its Republican opponents to “nothing less than a vote to allow corporate and special interest takeovers of our elections.”

Mr. Obama’s statement to reporters at the White House was added to his daily schedule after it became clear that the Senate will vote on Tuesday whether to take up a bill. The measure would require corporations, unions and other special interests to disclose donors that bankroll their political advertisements, and it would also ban campaign spending by foreign-controlled corporations.

The House has passed the measure, which Democrats initiated after the Supreme Court in January voted 5-4 to allow unlimited corporate contributions; the majority said the federal limits violated contributors’ First Amendment rights. But in the Senate, with a solid wall of Republican opposition, the measure is expected to fall short of the 60-vote supermajority needed to avoid a filibuster.

That would likely kill the initiative for this election year, handing Mr. Obama a loss in a fight that he took on not only against Congressional Republicans but also against the dominant conservative faction on the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Just after the Court ruled in the campaign finance case, called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Mr. Obama in his State of the Union address delivered an unusually direct critique with Mr. Roberts and other justices sitting before him, saying the Court had “reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections.”

Mr. Obama got applause then in urging Congress to pass legislation mitigating the problems he saw, but it mostly came from Democrats.

The Senate’s Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has marshaled his party against other Obama initiatives, made stopping the campaign finance bill a personal priority; before he became Senate Republicans’ leader, Mr. McConnell was best known for his long effort to block passage of what became known as the McCain-Feingold law, the act restricting campaign spending that the Supreme Court has chipped away at.

While Mr. McConnell is favored to win the campaign finance fight this time, the White House remains confident that public opinion is on its side and Mr. Obama turned his podium in the Rose Garden into a bully pulpit Monday to define the debate for the so-called Disclose Act on his terms, and to turn it into a broader assault against Republican obstructions.

Anticipating the legislation’s defeat, he said, “Now imagine the power this will give special interests over politicians. Corporate lobbyists will be able to tell members of Congress if they don’t vote the right way, they will face an onslaught of negative ads in their next campaign.”

“Nobody is saying you can’t run the ads -- just make sure that people know who in fact is behind financing these ads,” Mr. Obama added. “And you’d think that reducing corporate and even foreign influence over our elections would not be a partisan issue. But of course, this is Washington in 2010. And the Republican leadership in the Senate is once again using every tactic and every maneuver they can to prevent the Disclose Act from even coming up for an up or down vote” – just as the leaders have against legislation to extend unemployment insurance and to provide tax credits and lending assistance for small businesses.

One Republican senator predicted that no one would break ranks and support the measure.

In advance of the vote, Mr. McConnell on Monday described the legislation as the product of backroom deals. He said the measure “seeks to protect unpopular Democrat politicians by silencing their critics and exempting their campaign supporters from an all out attack on the First Amendment.”

Republicans argued that Democrats made a mistake in overly politicizing the issue by having the drive for the law led by Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the former head of the Senate campaign arm of Senate Democrats.

Democrats had sought to persuade Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, to support the measure, but he has said he would not vote for it. Other Republicans considered potential supporters, including the moderate Senators Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, are also not expected to join Democrats.

Democrats had hoped to win Republican allies by reminding them that in past fights over campaign finance restrictions they had often spoken in favor of greater transparency of the sources of campaign money as the best form of regulation rather than spending and contribution limits..

“For years, opponents of campaign finance reform have expressed support for complete and timely disclosure of campaign contributions and spending,” Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who championed previous campaign finance changes, said Monday. “Tomorrow, we will see if they are serious.”