This morning Public Campaign's President and CEO, Nick Nyhart, is testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Administration on H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act.An excerpt of his written testimony is below: "At Public Campaign, our federal policy focus has been on the Fair Elections Now Act, which would offer candidates an alternative way to fund their campaigns, allowing them to rely entirely on a blend of small donations and limited public financing. I am here today, however, to support a different piece of important legislation–the DISCLOSE Act. This measure is a critical response to the Supreme Court’s narrow 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC that threw out decades of common sense measures limiting the influence of corporate and union treasury funds in our elections. That decision, coupled with the skyrocketing cost of running for office, has made a bad situation worse. "The average cost of winning a U.S. House race has increased 111 percent in the last decade, significantly outpacing the rate of inflation. While we have yet to see the full impact of the Citizens United decision, we can expect, with near certainty, even more money will find its way into our elections, forcing you and your colleagues to spend more time fundraising to keep pace with the new political expenditures of the post-Citizens campaign world. "..While we support the DISCLOSE act, and believe it should move forward, it should be further strengthened. The current legislation does not require the Federal Elections Commission to make corporate disclosure reports machine readable, searchable, sortable, and downloadable, but they should be. To fully benefit the American public and find out quickly who is paying for corporate political expenditures, there must be one central, well-publicized, and reliable storehouse of such information where people can search up-to-the minute and recent expenditures, instead of looking for a disclosure needle in an internet haystack."To see the full written testimony, please click on the file attachment below.