Congress must end the assault on freedom of speech protections

As House Republicans debate spending packages and tax cuts, they’re wisely making time to defend our freedoms of speech and association. Nestled in the House’s latest spending proposal is a provision to allow churches and other religious organizations to participate in our political debate without fear of losing their tax-exempt status — a longstanding and noble goal of President Trump’s.

The Republican package would also allow businesses to participate in more than one trade association at a time when it comes to representing the policy interests of their employees and customers, while preventing the Internal Revenue Service and Securities and Exchange Commission from restricting the political activities of 501(c)(4) advocacy groups.

While the provisions will surely be criticized by the anti-speech left, they will bring more voices and more ideas into our political debate — a boon to our democracy.

Pro-speech campaign finance reform is long overdue, and there is more needed. The 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known as McCain-Feingold, dramatically hindered state parties’ ability to engage voters at the local level through contribution limits that have remained static and far too low for 15 years — even as the cost of campaigns has grown and other limits increased with inflation.

Read more at The Hill