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Obama Assails Republicans on Campaign Finance

President Obama on Monday at the White House. He spoke out against Senate Republicans, who are expected to block a vote on a campaign finance bill.Credit...Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday sought political advantage from the expected defeat of a campaign finance measure that he has championed by pre-emptively attacking its Republican opponents for “nothing less than a vote to allow corporate and special-interest takeovers of our elections.”

Mr. Obama’s statement to reporters at the White House was added to his daily schedule after it became clear that the Senate would vote Tuesday on whether to take up a bill that would require corporations, unions and other special interests to disclose the donors that bankroll their political advertisements. The legislation would also ban campaign spending by foreign-controlled corporations.

The House has passed the measure, which Democrats initiated after the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to allow unlimited independent expenditures by corporations in elections, saying the federal limits violated First Amendment rights. But in the Senate, with a solid wall of Republican opposition, the measure is expected to fall short of the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.

That would probably kill the initiative for this election year, handing Mr. Obama a big loss in a fight against not only Congressional Republicans but also the dominant conservative faction on the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

A week after the court issued its decision in January in the case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Mr. Obama delivered an unusually direct critique in his State of the Union address, with justices in the audience. He said the court had “reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”

Mr. Obama got applause then in urging Congress to pass legislation mitigating the problems he foresaw, but it mostly came from Democrats.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader who has marshaled his party against other Obama initiatives, has made stopping the campaign finance bill a personal priority. Before he became Republican leader, Mr. McConnell was perhaps best known for his longtime battle against what became known as the McCain-Feingold law, the act restricting campaign spending.

While Mr. McConnell is favored to win the legislative round, the White House remains confident that public opinion is on its side. Mr. Obama turned his lectern in the Rose Garden into a bully pulpit to define the debate for the so-called Disclose Act on his terms, and to make it part of his election-year portrayal of Republicans as obstructionist.

Anticipating the legislation’s defeat, Mr. Obama said: “Now imagine the power this will give special interests over politicians. Corporate lobbyists will be able to tell members of Congress if they don’t vote the right way, they will face an onslaught of negative ads in their next campaign.”

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Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has made stopping the campaign finance bill a priority.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

“Nobody is saying you can’t run the ads. Just make sure that people know who in fact is behind financing these ads,” Mr. Obama added.

Besides mandating disclosure of donors, the act would require someone behind a political advertisement — like a company executive, union leader or an advocacy group’s major contributor — to appear in it to take responsibility.

“You’d think that reducing corporate and even foreign influence over our elections would not be a partisan issue,” Mr. Obama said. “But of course, this is Washington in 2010.”

Just as with legislation to extend unemployment compensation and to provide tax credits and lending assistance for small businesses, “the Republican leadership in the Senate is once again using every tactic and every maneuver” to block a vote, Mr. Obama added. “On issue after issue, we are trying to move America forward, and they keep on trying to take us back.”

The president’s offensive, however, comes as Congressional Republicans are emboldened. A fragile economy and stubbornly high unemployment have helped to drag down support in the polls for the president and Congressional Democrats, threatening their party’s control of Congress this November.

One Republican senator said the expectation was that no one would break ranks to support the measure.

Mr. McConnell described the bill on Monday as a product of back-room deals that “seeks to protect unpopular Democrat politicians by silencing their critics and exempting their campaign supporters from an all-out attack on the First Amendment.”

Republicans say Democrats made a mistake in overly politicizing the issue by having the drive for the law led by Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who formerly led the campaign committee for Senate Democrats.

Democrats tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, to support the measure. Two other potential Republican supporters, Senators Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, have also indicated they will not join Democrats in taking up the issue before the elections.

Democrats had hoped to win allies with reminders that in past fights Republicans typically argued for more disclosure and transparency about political donors and spending as an alternative to constitutionally questionable limits on campaign finance.

“For years, opponents of campaign finance reform have expressed support for complete and timely disclosure of campaign contributions and spending,” Senator Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who sponsored previous campaign finance changes, said Monday. On Tuesday, he added, “we will see if they are serious.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama, Facing Loss on Campaign Bill, Pushes for a Political Edge. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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