How We Make Sure that Foreign Contributions Don't Influence Our Elections

Over the past year whether I’m at a coffee shop, holding a town hall, or talking to someone at my local Safeway I’ve heard a common complaint from folks. They want Congress to do something about the plague of campaign cash that has poisoned our political system.

Every year it seems like more and more money is spent by groups and individuals in an effort to get preferred candidates elected. This reduces political debates to wrestling matches and makes voters feel left out. I firmly believe that we need to bring people power back to Congress. And in order to do that, it’s time to make some changes to our campaign finance laws.

It’s why I’ve tried to lead the way in making progress on this issue. Last week, I continued my work by introducing a bill to stop any foreign money from being used in our elections. Of course, our current laws explicitly prohibit foreign nationals from contributing directly or indirectly to campaigns in the United States.

While this is the letter of the law for any federal, state, or local election in reality, there is still the possibility for a foreign national or corporation to end up influencing our process. This is happening because of the role outside groups are playing in our elections. So far in 2016, entities like 501(c) nonprofit groups have spent more than $400 million on campaigns. According to Open Secrets, that’s a 175 percent increase so far from 2012.

That’s a lot of money. And foreign nationals, or U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, can donate to these 501(c) groups so long as the money does not go toward influencing elections. But here is the problem. These groups do not have to disclose where the money comes from. So as ever more of it is spent we simply have to trust that none of it is coming from overseas.

I don’t think that’s right. The potential for foreign contributors to try and influence electoral outcomes is a threat to the integrity of our political process. That’s why I’m proud to have worked on a bipartisan bill that will bring some sunlight to this process and make sure that groups involved in campaigns have not opened a backdoor to foreign contributions.

To better ensure foreign contributions do not influence elections here is what our bill would do:

• Include on the annual return filed by tax-exempt organizations and certain applications for tax-exempt status an additional check box for 501(c) groups to declare no foreign donations went to campaign activities.
• Require these organizations to certify on Federal Election Commission filing forms that no foreign funds were used for independent expenditures and political communications.
• Direct the Government Accountability Office to look into corporate campaign activities, and see if foreign funds are being used.

I’m proud to say our legislation has been backed by key campaign finance groups like Campaign Legal Center, Take Back our Republic, and Issue One as well. I’m hopeful we can make progress because it’s time we did a better job of making transparent just how money is being spent in our democracy.