This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 2nd, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Disclose Act has failed in the Senate.

That means, as of now, the High court's recognition that freedom of speech

extends broadly to political speech will at least have a chance to impact this

year's elections but will that impact be large? John Samples, director of the Cato Institute's

Center for Representative Government, comments.

The Disclose Act didn't get enough votes

to overcome the filibuster in the Senate.

It probably had maybe 58, maybe 59 votes.

So it was one or two votes short.

It, Democratic leaders made a strong appeal to and even change the legislation a bit to appeal to the main senators

Senator Collins and Senator Snow.

My impression is from statements

is that they didn't come close to getting their votes.

And I think the reason why is somewhat unusual in today's Washington to today's Congress.

On the House side and coming down to the vote itself,

it was very apparent that even by the standards of campaign

finance bills this was an extremely partisan bill that is it was concocted

because primarily I think in the house the Democratic majority was very concerned about its effects on the election this coming year.

This all could have gone a different way.

There could have been a congressional response to the Supreme

...