Under existing law such a disclosure mandate should not violate even the Supreme Court's most bizarre re-interpretations of the First Amendment to legalize influence peddling. The conduct of government functions has been generally exempted from such First Amendment rulings. E.g. Wagner v. FEC (D.C. Cir. 2015) (unanimous en banc decision) (upholding constitutionality of the contractor-contribution prohibition). To rule otherwise would raise serious separation-of-powers boundary concerns about judicial incursion deep into executive-branch territory. Even Citizens United, 558 U.S. at 359 (2010), which legalized such investments in other contexts, acknowledged this government function exception in order to accommodate the public's "interest in allowing governmental entities to perform their functions" free of judicial interference. Moreover Citizens United, Buckley (1976) and McCutcheon (2014) all more generally approved disclosure rules in any context.
It is just good government practice that contractors should not be creating conflicts of interest by funding politicians who both create the projects and appropriate the funds to pay the contractors. The law is equally clear that disclosure is an acceptable mechanism for enforcing that good practice in all government business.
Obama disagrees, of course. After the Wagner case persuasively upheld the government contractor anti-corruption provisions, Obama needed a new excuse for his refusal to enforce the law. By conniving with Congress to pass a law that makes it illegal for him to use any of the three mentioned tools previously available to require disclosures of government contractors' illegal political investments, he is theoretically no longer impeachable for his failure to see that federal-procurement law be faithfully executed by him after Citizens United. Technically such "willful blindness" to the procurement-corruption business gift-wrapped by Congress in exchange for $2 billion kickbacks would provide no defense for delivering a package of, for example, street drugs someone else wrapped. But such "willful blindness" of the rampant violation of federal-procurement law is good enough for government work, apparently.
Disabling his enforcement tools for requiring disclosure of all independent political investments from government contractors can be pleaded in defense of Obama's willful blindness to the systemic corruption of the federal-procurement process. Santa Obama can blame Congress for wrapping this gift for Wall Street he just happened to find in Santa's Christmas bag. After all, everyone remembers that Obama prominently spoke against Citizens United. He must not have known that his Omnibus II bag included gifts that widely extend the scope of Citizens United for the potential permanent corruption of all government procurement, which had previously been exempt from its reach under accepted First Amendment law. No new president, such as Bernie Sanders, can now require disclosure of political investments by government contractors under procurement regulations, by SEC-regulated corporations (i.e., most contractors) under SEC regulations, or by any plutocrats who launder their political investments, corporate or otherwise, through 501(c)(4)'s under IRS regulations.
Obama's defense, more for historical legacy purposes than legal purposes, depending on Bernie Sanders, is that Congress has withdrawn his power to know who is spending money in violation of the law. The money has become even darker now, too dark for Obama to see. Without such mandatory disclosures of dark money, billion-dollar Obama can feign ignorance of activity that otherwise would be subject to the law that he has refused to enforce for six years.
This is no surprise since right from the outset when Obama chose, in his 2008 campaign, to be the first candidate to ever turn down public funding, Obama has typically taken the corrupt option, whenever he has had the choice. All three of these anti-disclosure provisions are contained in a law that was approved by an overwhelming majority of Democratic Senators, and negotiated, approved, signed, and propagandized by Obama. All of these hypocritical politicians have chanted the empty refrain of wanting a futile "constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United." They not only missed their chance to accomplish a significant part of this pretended goal by easily promulgated administrative regulations, they repealed their chance just in case someone like Bernie Sanders.were elected who might use the power to do so.
Among the 37 Democratic Senators who provided a filibuster-proof majority by a margin of seven to protect dark money were at least seven Democrats who complain about "dark money" in politics, like Obama who magisterially recommende d that "we spend less time drowning in dark money," and like Hillary Clinton, who is no slouch in the Obaman arts of deception herself. These new provisions from CRomnibus II constituting a "Dark-Money Promotion Act" are reproduced below in an Addendum, as documentary evidence of the influence-peddling racket they serve.
The point that needs to be made clearly here is that Obama and the Democratic Party, just as they did last year, have again taken political corruption to outrageous new levels, well beyond even what the plutocratic Supreme Court has mandated with its bogus "money-is-speech" doctrine. It would have been difficult for the Court to ignore the Wagner rule in order to extend corruption to federal procurement. But now that all three branches of the federal government are full partners in the political-corruption racket, the Court does not have to carry the whole burden of expanding and entrenching systemic corruption to perpetuate the overthrow of the former United States.
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