Whenever liberals make proposals they claim will improve government, look out. You can almost guarantee that the result will be more money taken out of your wallet or more of your constitutional rights taken away (and usually both). So it is with President Obama’s latest proposal, a draft executive order that would implement portions of the discredited DISCLOSE Act on all government contractors.
The DISCLOSE Act was defeated in the Senate last year. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. (both of whom headed the political action committees responsible for re-electing Democrats to Congress), were pushing it to overturn the Citizens United decision. Schumer admitted that the purpose of the legislation was to deter independent political speech, the basic First Amendment right upheld by the Supreme Court.
The draft executive order says it will “increase transparency and accountability.” It would require any company bidding on a government contract to disclose all political contributions made in the two years before the bid by the company, its affiliates and subsidiaries, and any of its directors or officers.
Thus, this executive order would require bidders to investigate the personal political contributions being made by their officers and directors — contributions made with personal funds, not corporate dollars, so those contributions can be reported to government officials.
But of course, government contracts are supposed to be awarded to the lowest bidder, so why would this kind of information be relevant for government officials to know before awarding a bid?
Cynics might say this is the surest way of guaranteeing that the political appointees in the Obama administration know the political background and campaign funding history of the officers and directors of a company before they make decisions about who should be awarded a government contract.
This is particularly true since federal law already bars contractors from making contributions during the negotiation and performance of a contract — and corporations are barred from making any direct contributions to federal candidates at any time.
But Obama’s proposed executive order goes even further. It would require government contractors to disclose any contributions they make to third-party organizations “with the intention or reasonable expectation” that the funds will be used to make “independent expenditures or electioneering communications.”
In other words, bidders will have to disclose all of their charitable and noncharitable donations to third parties if those outside organizations engage in any grassroots lobbying or political speech. This is obviously intended to curtail (and censor) political speech by government contractors.
The draft order claims that these burdensome and intrusive disclosure requirements are necessary to ensure that contracting decisions “deliver the best value for the taxpayer” and are “free from the undue influence” of extraneous factors “such as political activity or political favoritism.” But if one accepts that rationale, then delivering the “best value for the taxpayer” would require such disclosure by anyone receiving federal dollars.
Yet this executive order would not apply to federal employee unions that negotiate with government officials to provide billions of dollars in benefits for their members. Nor does it apply to the many nonprofits that receive federal grants. Many of them have strong political agendas and interrelated sister organizations that engage in political fundraising and expenditures.
What is really going on here is a transparent attempt to introduce political gamesmanship into the government contracting business by the Obama administration. It is a cynical attempt to use the guise of reform to achieve political goals at the cost of the liberty that all Americans have to participate in the political process, and to voice their political opinions, without fear of retribution to themselves and their businesses.
Hans A. von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission.
