Obviously, the House Democrats can pass anything they want in the next Congress but unless it is linked to must-pass legislation, they don’t have a prayer of compelling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to consider legislation he doesn’t like. Still, the Democrats made a lot of promises on the campaign trail and they have to make an honest showing that they intend to follow up. It has now been announced that the House of Representatives under its New Democratic leadership will bring up a very large bill as their first order of business in January.
House Democrats unveiled details of their first bill in the new Congress on Friday — a sweeping anti-corruption bill aimed at stamping out the influence of money in politics and expanding voting rights.
This is House Resolution 1 — the first thing House Democrats will tackle after the speaker’s vote in early January. To be clear, this legislation has little-to-no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate or being signed by President Donald Trump.
But by making anti-corruption their No. 1 priority, House Democrats are throwing down the gauntlet for Republicans.
It’s actually far more than a mere anti-corruption bill, as it will include significant electoral reforms as well, including a “new national automatic voter registration that asks voters to opt out, rather than opt in…”
Here are some of the things the surviving House Republicans will have to oppose if they don’t want to support House Resolution 1.
- A requirement that members of Congress stop using taxpayer money to settle sexual harassment cases or buy first-class plane tickets.
- A new ethical code for the US Supreme Court.
- Restoration of the gutted Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Public financing of campaigns, including a voluntary 6-1 match for candidates for president and Congress.
- A requirement that Super PACs and “dark money” political organizations make the identity of their donors public.
- A requirement that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter disclose the source of money for political ads they run and an accounting of how much money was spent.
- Money for improved elections security, including a requirement that the Director of National Intelligence provide regular updates on foreign threats.
- A requirement that President Trump release his tax returns.
No member of the House will want to be on the record as having opposed all of the items on that list since most of them poll very well. Some Republicans will probably vote for the bill for that reason, but I doubt there will be many defectors because most of the truly vulnerable Republicans have already been defeated.
The hope is that anyone who won’t support these measures is going to open themselves up to potent lines of attack, and some people who would not otherwise be vulnerable will begin to find themselves in jeopardy if they continue to defy popular common sense legislation.
According to Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland, who will be spearheading this bill, the Democrats won’t stop with just passing this big comprehensive legislation.
HR 1 will be a large package, but Sarbanes said in addition to passing it as the first bill, members will likely break out pieces of it into smaller bills as well that individually could get bipartisan support from Republicans in the Senate — things including the Honest Ads Act and election security.
“The combination of having some [bills] like that plus having a powerful push out of the gate the public responds to in a positive way creates political pressure for Republicans to get on board,” Sarbanes told Vox. “They are going to discover this sort of thing is popular back in their district.”
It’s possible that at least some of these measures could stand a chance of getting a hearing in the Senate if taken up individually, but it would require a big public outcry. At this time next year, when Congress is trying to finish up all the spending bills to keep the government operational, we might see some of this get attached to the must-pass legislation.
If not, then the Democrats will at least have brought forward their ideas and given the electorate a better understanding of the differences between the two parties and what they might expect if the Democrats get complete control.
Sounds good to me. Emailed to a local political group I have a leadership position in for discussion early January.
Wow. I’m very impressed … I almost didn’t recognize the little leap of hope that went through me reading this!
BBbbbbbut both parties are. the. same!!
. . . messag[ing]!
Good, needed policy, on the merits, that’s also the high priority they’re making it, on the merits, and could only be objectionable to bad-faith bad actors.
With the not-just-coincidental (and good on the Dems for that) advantage of the very good politics of very good “optics”.
I’m actually pretty impressed and pleasantly surprised.
They are in the best of all worlds. They can pass anything and not worry about it actually becoming law. So they can work on the 2020 campaign right away without worrying about donor complaints.
This did this before with the EFCA. Fool me once …
Your last sentence, exactly. People forget that every Democratic Senator, including the Walmart twins, voted for the EFCA while C- Augustus was President because of course he was going to veto it. Once Obama became President? They abandoned the very same bill they passed a year prior.
This, unfortunately, is true, which is one of the reasons we now have Trump. Nevertheless, I’m going to put aside my cynicism and hope that the young house leaders are able to circumvent old walls made of trash, money and sputum/blood (Pelosi & Hoyer), and make a difference. God knows Obama wasn’t able to… but… maybe this time….
Good luck with the Crone as Speaker. She did it before; she will do it again. If Young Turks overthrow her … maybe.
This is fantastic both substantively and strategically. Kudos to the new Dem House… Keep this up AND POUND IT IN THE MEDIA! They need to all be on the same page on this. It needs to be a mantra!
I agree that future HR-1 will be rally symbolically important but let’s also remember that the Democratic Party has a dismal record of public communications and hammering their message to the public over multiple media. Aside from having nothing remotely comparable to Faux News, the Democrats really don’t even seem to try (beyond a few blogs and MoveOn) to bang their message to the broader public. I don’t get it.
I Obama had made this his #1 priority in 2009 then we wouldn’t be in the Age of Trump today!
I know he was invested in his stimulus package. But, the endless fight over health care would have been far easier if the Democrats had focused on reforming the system from the ground up, and building a permanent party structure to carry the fight to the Republicans in every state.
Only if they start losing elections over and over will the GOP ever reform itself and start allowing change. They did this before during the Roosevelt administration after their efforts at screaming “No! No! at everything failed spectacularly in 1936.” In 1940 they ran the moderate Wendell Wilkie.
In 1948 they ran NY Gov. Dewey who was a wild-eyed liberal by modern standards. Then Eisenhower came in and said:
Can you even imagine a Republican daring to say anything remotely like this today? No.
Because the Texas oilmen and right wing political operatives exploited white nationalist fears of “losing our identity” as a white nation to stir up race hatred among working class white voters that were the base of the Democratic party. Nixon’s southern strategy in 1968, which has been the blueprint of every GOP national campaign since. No longer a tiny splinter faction, the kook right has become a terrifying fascist movement in 2018.
The moderating of the GOP and abandonment of Trumpism and fascism can happen again, but only if the Democrats unite and keep pushing these honest government issues as a key priority until they pass. And use the support they gain from this to seize so much power that the GOP cannot win national elections without reforming itself.
. . . folks making predictions with arrogant certitude do so precisely enough to make them verifiable/falsifiable by events.
But occasionally, one is foolish enough to do so. It struck me when I saw that in realtime that it was a rare such opportunity for eventual accountability, so I bookmarked it (which I just now remembered having done, hence this comment now; though it’s really not so off-topic to what Dems plan to do with their new House Majority!). The prediction:
The bizarrely misnamed (see above) “dataguy” is long gone (no sightings in over a year), an absence unlamented by me, for reasons that should be obvious from the example above. So presumably won’t benefit from this accountability. But perhaps it will prove an instructive precautionary tale for some, or even someone?
I believe dataguy was banished for using a phrase that he had been previously warned about using. He is not missed.
. . . I do recall his intransigence about that xenophobia/racism of his.
So banned makes pretty good sense. And, yeah, no great loss.
Wow – picking an issue that has broad support from regular every day Americans as a way to put pressure on the opposition. Something that benefits the people of this country. What a great concept!
Gosh I wonder why no one thought of this before?