The unions had always been semi-exempted from the provisions of McCain Feingold. This just puts other organizations on the same footing. This ranges from corporations to political parties, which were also very limited in what they could contribute to their own candidates.
Something that many people are not mentioning or possibly don’t know is how this is going to improve things for local political party organizations. I worked at local GOP headquarters in the last several Presidential campaigns, and many of the other volunteers were retirees or people without much skill in handling paper work. The Dems hired lawyers to go through all of our transactions, and they found one where an elderly volunteer had mistakenly recorded the purchase of a table of ten at a fund raiser as having been purchased by one individual, which exceeded the limit and also constituted a group. The individual had actually written the check to pay for himself and 9 other people who had paid him separately for their tickets. He wrote one check simply for convenience. She was supposed to have recorded each individual separately, and we actually got into trouble for this “campaign finance violation.”
The Dems used these bizarre regulations to seriously handicap our fundraising and intimidate our volunteers (who were told they could go to jail for these “violations”).
Thank you for describing some details. I hope that others can cite some specifics as you have done.