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Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague, and I know that Senator Van Hollen is here as well.

I am going to be brief. I particularly want to thank our colleague from Rhode Island because he has been relentless in terms of making this case day after day. I want to put this in very personal kind of terms because all of us who have the honor of serving in the U.S. Senate can relate to this issue.

Senator Whitehouse has added a reform to his proposal that is very personal to me and I think embodies the accountability and the transparency that Oregonians and people in Minnesota, Michigan, and Maryland are calling for. Here is how I would start it: A number of years ago, I authored legislation that millions of Americans now understand is called Stand By Your Ad. Stand By Your Ad stipulated that as an elected official or a candidate, you would have to actually put your name behind these attack ads where you go after your opponent. And, now, day after day, in these next 50-plus days, we are going to see plenty of these ads.

The law worked well, and it is still on the books today, much to the chagrin of some officials who would like to take a quick hit on their opponent--an official or a candidate--and then scamper off without any accountability.

I do want to make clear, because of the good work of the Senator from Rhode Island, that Stand By Your Ad doesn't mean as much today because we now know the premium is ongoing for these secret, incredibly negative ads on your opponent because the people paying for dark money ads aren't required to put their name behind what they are saying.

That is an extraordinarily strong hit against openness and accountability and transparency in our democracy. Oregonians and people across the country are rightfully disgusted by it. It is extraordinary the lengths that those who are orchestrating these dark money attacks will go in order to make their case when there is no accountability.

I see my seatmate from the Finance Committee. We have worked together for years to change the Medicare statute that barred Medicare from negotiating to hold down the price of medicine. Big Pharma protected this negotiating ban like it was the Holy Grail. My colleague and I would come to the committee day after day and talk about: How is this common sense? Everybody in America negotiates in order to get the best possible deal.

But we looked, particularly in this session, at the start of the debate as a classic study in dark money. Big Pharma, and groups associated with it, spent enormous sums of money attacking me personally in Washington, DC, media. There was scary music, and there were attacks about how anybody who wanted these reforms was like a leech and taking away cures from the American people.

The striking part of all of this, and why what Senator Whitehouse has had to say is so important, is that the ad wasn't even directed at me, because it was in Washington, DC. I am barely a household word in my own household, let alone in Washington, DC.

And what was the point of these extraordinarily large sums attacking me in Washington, DC? The point of it was to scare my colleagues-- Senator Stabenow, Senator Van Hollen, all of my colleagues here-- because there was so much money at the hands of these extreme groups associated with Big Pharma that wanted to undermine a commonsense reform backed by millions of Americans that Medicare should negotiate.

At one point, someone said: Oh, there is so much opposition to this effort to negotiate.

I said: Are you kidding me? The opponents of negotiating on Medicare must be in a witness protection program because we can't find anybody who thinks you shouldn't negotiate.

Yet Big Pharma was willing to spend huge sums of money--dark money-- not really to damage me politically, because my constituents live in Oregon, but to scare other Senators.

So people, of course, are going to get bludgeoned with these dark money ads every time they turn on the television, the radio, or watch a video online. I just don't think that Americans should be forced to guess or wonder what special interest is funding these ads that come from murky groups that have these radical names like the Coalition for Prosperity and Justice. We all know that they are not going to tell you who they really are.

My colleague from Maryland has been very patient. We had some glitches in the schedule, and we want to hear from our friend from Michigan as well.

I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for basically taking the ``Stand By Your Ad'' concept and kind of reconfiguring it in the DISCLOSE legislation. Senator Whitehouse's bill would require the heads of corporations, unions, or other organizations to identify when they are behind political ads, the same way Stand By Your Ad works under the original version of the law that I authored.

And remember--and I want this to be the takeaway about this issue-- Senator Whitehouse's proposal and extending ``Stand by Your Ad'' in this kind of fashion treats everybody the same. This is quintessential good government. It is not about going after somebody on the right or somebody on the left. This is about common sense. It is not a radical, leftwing proposal.

The American people ought to know who is trying to influence their votes. By the way, when we authored the original ``Stand by Your Ad'' proposal, it used to be bipartisan. And as my colleague from Rhode Island has mentioned, of late, it has been the Republicans who have been protecting dark money and protecting the basic kind of disclosure that I think our system of government has been all about.

The American people have strong differences of opinion on issues. There is no question about that. But I have had more than 1,020 open- to-all townhall meetings. What nobody disputes is that openness and accountability is what the American system is all about.

So, Senator Whitehouse, our thanks to you for spending years and years at it because you are taking us, in a significant way, back to what I think used to be common sense, used to be accountability, used to be something that transcended the kind of thing that Big Pharma was doing early on where they didn't even pretend--they didn't even pretend--it was about an individual legislator; it was about scaring off all Members of Congress.

We can do better. Senator Whitehouse's proposal moves us in that direction, and I want to thank my colleague from Maryland, who also was trying to deal with the scheduling kind of challenge, and look forward to working with him and my seatmate on the Finance Committee and Senator Whitehouse, another exemplary member of the Finance Committee.

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