House Democrats pass top legislative priority, H.R. 1 – the For The People Act

So much for the concern trolls’ “Dems divided” meme. House Democrats voted unanimously today to pass their top legislative priority, H.R. 1 — the For The People Act. They are on a roll. House passes sweeping electoral reform bill:

House Democrats passed a sweeping electoral reform bill in a 234-193 party-line vote on Friday.

The For The People Act, better known as H.R. 1 — spearheaded by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) — aims to expand voting rights, implement new ethics rules and increase transparency in elections, according to its proponents.

The bill includes provisions to enable automatic voter registration, strengthen resources to stave off foreign threats on elections and make Election Day a national holiday for federal workers.

Democrats unveiled the legislation shortly after the start of the 116th Congress, underscoring its importance in their agenda. Supporters of the bill argued it’s necessary in order to tackle corruption and dark money in politics. Under the legislation, the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which got rid of some limits on corporate and union political spending, would be overturned and coordination between super PACs and candidates would be prohibited.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that enactment of the package is vital if Congress is to restore the voters’ trust in the idea that Congress is working in the public interest.

“It is fundamental to our democracy that people believe — they believe — that actions taken here will be in their interest,” she said. “That is what this legislation will help to restore.”

Portions of the bill appear to directly take aim at President Trump, including language requiring the president and vice president and candidates for those positions to disclose a decade’s worth of their tax returns.

“The Enemy of The People,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pushback against the bill played a key role in rallying all House Republicans against the bill and helping them remain on message, one senior GOP aide told The Hill.

“We really did unite everyone in opposition to this and pushed hard against it,” the source said. “Obviously, we’ll lose the vote, but I think there’s satisfaction among members that we had a cohesive and unified message against this. And working with McConnell and getting him engaged against this was huge.”

Five things to know about Democrats’ sweeping election reform bill:

Here are five things to know about bill.

It overhauls election rules, expands voter access

At the core of H.R. 1 is a set of far-reaching election reforms that have the potential to expand voter access, reshape how campaigns are financed and overhaul how congressional districts are drawn.

One key provision would establish an automatic voter registration system. Another would prohibit states from denying convicted felons who have served out their sentences the right to vote. A different provision would make Election Day a federal holiday in a bid to boost voter turnout.

In addition to expanding ballot access nationwide, the bill looks to curtail partisan gerrymandering, the drawing of congressional districts to benefit one political party over another, by ordering states to create independent redistricting commissions.

The legislation would also require 501(c)(4) nonprofit entities engaged in political activity — dubbed “dark money” groups — to disclose their large-dollar donors, a move lauded by political transparency advocates but criticized by other groups, who warn that the requirement could chill free speech.

H.R. 1 represents the centerpiece of Democrats’ efforts to make good on a campaign pledge to combat corruption in Washington and take on what they have alleged is a long-running effort by Republicans to suppress voter turnout and muddy the waters of campaign finance.

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It contains a few controversial provisions

While most of the bill’s provisions embody broad Democratic ambitions of elections and ethics reform, it also contains a few controversial items.

One provision would allow candidates for public office to treat certain personal expenses — child care or health care costs, for example — as campaign expenditures. The point of the provision, according to the bill, is to lower economic barriers to running for office.

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One provision, for example, would require presidential and vice presidential candidates to release 10 years of personal tax returns. Presidential hopefuls have for decades released past tax returns as a show of transparency. But that precedent ended in 2016 with the real estate mogul, who has repeatedly refused to make such documents public.

The legislation would also bar the government from spending federal funds on businesses owned by the president or members of his Cabinet.

Another provision takes aim at presidential inaugural committees, placing a $50,000 limit on individual contributions to such groups and requiring that they disclose donors that give more than $1,000.

It’s going to be a hot issue in 2020

With both parties ramping up for what’s expected to be a long and bitter election battle in 2020, the fight over H.R. 1 is almost certain to provide political fodder for Democrats eager to oust Trump and expand their House majority.

In a way, the measure embodies the party’s argument that Trump and his administration have repeatedly shirked ethical standards and precedents. Democrats are likely to seize on any effort by the president or Republican lawmakers to block the legislation to bolster their argument that Trump has something to hide.

“The Enemy of The People,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell works to freeze support for Dem campaign finance effort:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is pulling out all the stops to make sure not a single Republican senator backs the campaign finance and ethics reform bill that House Democrats are set to pass on Friday.

McConnell, a longtime opponent of campaign finance reform who battled the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over the issue, made clear in December that the House proposal would never see floor time in the Senate.

He’s continued to pummel the legislation, sending a stern warning to any GOP colleague who may be thinking about supporting it.

“This is an issue that I’ve dealt with for decades,” McConnell said at a press conference with Senate and House GOP colleagues on Wednesday. “This is a terrible proposal, it will not get any floor time in the Senate.

“For myself, I don’t see anything in here salvageable,” he added. “This is a solution in search of a problem. What it really is is a bill designed to make it more likely Democrats win more often.”

Earlier this year, McConnell wrote an op-ed entitled Behold the Democrat Politician Protection Act. There are no limits to his assholery.

Despite the GOP leader’s efforts, Senate Democrats feel confident they can pick off some members of his conference.

“There are pieces of it that many senators and House members have been working on for a long time, whether it’s making voting easier, whether it’s taking the dark money and big money out of politics, or whether it’s government ethics, there are a number of senators who have almost identical parts of their bills in this bill,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said of the House legislation, known as H.R. 1.

Udall plans to introduce a companion Senate bill next week.

He says it will be “very difficult” for McConnell to keep his GOP conference unified “based on the history of how Republicans have responded individually to a lot of these issues.”

Two possible swing players in the Senate, Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), declined to comment Thursday on the House bill.

Udall thinks his GOP colleagues, several of whom face tough reelection races next year, are nervous about the deluge of outside money that is about to pour into their home states.

“The more those dark money numbers grow, the more people see these attacks. If you’ve been in a campaign where you’ve had tens of millions of dollars spent in dark money against you —you talk to Republican members, and they say this isn’t right,” Udall said.

One component of the House bill, the Honest Ads Act, requires social media companies such as Facebook to disclose who is paying for political ads on its platform.

That language reflects a bill introduced in the last Congress by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.). It attracted the support of McCain.

Another piece of the bill, the Disclose Act, resembles legislation that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) sponsored with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in 2013, the Follow the Money Act. It would have required the Federal Election Commission to establish a real-time reporting system for contributions to candidates’ campaigns and independent spending efforts.

Murkowksi did not vote when the Disclose Act failed to overcome a 60-vote procedural hurdle in September of 2010 and July of 2012, but she spoke “kindly” about the bill, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), one of its backers.

Asked Thursday if she could support legislation to require more disclosure of donors to independent political spending groups, Murkowski replied, “I have in the past said that these are issues that are ripe for review.”

“Is it appropriate for more disclosure, generally, and quicker? Yes,” she added.

A third component of the House-passed reform bill would attempt to slow the flow of foreign money into elections by cracking down on the use of shell corporations to hide political spending from overseas sources. That idea has support from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“We’re going to have a hearing about how foreign entities, the dark money stuff,” influence elections, Graham said Thursday.

“It’s just a matter of time and it’s probably already happened where some foreign entity has used our system against us,” Graham added.

Another key piece of H.R. 1 would support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), the landmark Supreme Court ruling that overturned campaign finance restrictions on corporations and labor unions, enabling outside groups to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence federal races.

Historically, a constitutional amendment to give Congress authority over campaign finance law without interference from the courts has enjoyed Republican support.

McConnell is trying to keep his colleagues in line by arguing that Republicans should use the House bill as ammo against Democrats in the 2020 elections.

“I believe we can actually win elections against people who vote for this turkey,” he said Wednesday.

He highlighted its most controversial elements, such as public financing for presidential and congressional candidates that would have the federal government provide matching funds from voluntary donors.

He also cited a proposal to restructure the FEC into a five-member commission that would be controlled by the president’s party.

McConnell has a long record opposing campaign finance efforts. He took the lead in the Senate opposing the McCain-Feingold campaign reform push of 2001 and 2002, which resulted in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and banned national political parties from raising and spending unlimited funds known as soft money.

He also served as the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that attempted to overturn that law, McConnell v. FEC, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2003.

“The Enemy of The People,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of the popular will of the American people his entire political life.

H.R. 1 — the For The People Act — is laying down a marker for the future when the Democrats take back the Senate. Major reforms sometimes take years to build support before they finally become law (see the Civil Rights Acts, for example). “The Enemy of The People,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, can only delay the inevitable.

UPDATE: Donald Trump campaigned on “drain the swamp.” Instead his administration has been Sustain the swamp: Hundreds of lobbyists swim through Trump’s administration.

The Democrats are trying to do something about the stench of corruption, but there is Only One Roadblock on the Road to Reform: Mitch McConnell.