Today I received an email asking me to support the Disclose act to get dark money out of politics by requiring disclosure of who is contributing. There are been many versions over recent years and none have made it into law. This bill seems like a good idea to me but I would like to hear more since as they say the devil is in the details.

The current version is S.512 which was sponsored by Senator Whitehead almost a year ago (Feb 16 2023) and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration. According to https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/512 there has been no action since then.

We do know a little about an earlier version, S. 443 THE DISCLOSE ACT, which did get as far as having a hearing in July of 2022. A transcript of the hearing is here but it is plain text and does not seem to have all the submitted materials. That bill was filibustered by the Republican Senators.

Dark money in politics. It is an important issue and although the transcript cited above gives some ideas of the pros and cons, I would like to see more public and detailed debate on the issue.