Don’t Forget About Reform. H.R. 1 Is Not Going Away.
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | October 3, 2019
“H.R. 1 contains measures that are essential to combating political money corruption in Washington.”
Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called out Senate Majority Leader McConnell for blocking Senate consideration of H.R. 1, the unprecedented democracy reform legislation passed by the House more than 200 days ago to repair our broken political system.
“Moscow Mitch” is also gravely damaging our democracy by blocking consideration of almost all bills pending in the Senate to strengthen the nation’s election security to prevent cyberattacks by foreign countries, as occurred in 2016.
H.R. 1 contains measures that are essential to combating political money corruption in Washington. The legislation creates a new, alternative way to finance federal campaigns with clean money in order to free officeholders from being dependent on and obligated to the billionaires, millionaires, Super PACs, dark money nonprofits, bundlers, lobbyists, and PACs that currently dominate the financing of most campaigns.
The small donor, public matching funds system in H.R. 1 provides federal candidates with a 6-to-1 match for contributions of up to $200 per donor, per election. Thus, if a donor gives $200 to a candidate who chooses to participate in the system, the candidate receives $1,400 – $200 from the donor plus an additional $1,200 from the 6-to-1 match of the $200. The more small contributions a candidate raises, the more public matching funds the candidate receives.
In return for receiving the matching funds, candidates who participate in the system must agree to a substantially reduced limit on the private individual contributions they can accept.
This alternative financing system, when combined with the breakthroughs being made in online fundraising, will flood our elections with clean money, greatly increase the role of ordinary Americans in financing campaigns, greatly dilute the influence of big money, and fundamentally change the way campaigns are financed.
A powerful new idea is being used for the first time in H.R. 1: The public matching funds are not funded with taxpayer money. Instead, the system is financed by imposing a small surcharge on the penalties and settlement fees that are paid to the federal government each year by corporations, corporate executives, and wealthy individuals who break the law.
In other words, the public matching funds system is paid for by lawbreakers, not taxpayers.
The Congressional Budget Office has stated that this approach will provide the funds necessary to pay for the public matching funds system. Thus, corporate lawbreakers will pay to repair the political system that corporations and their executives have played a major role in corrupting.
We know that Senator McConnell will block H.R. 1 in this Congress. But the battle does not lie there; rather it will take place as early as 2021, if a reform-minded President and Congress are elected in 2020.
We have beaten Senator McConnell in the past to enact anti-corruption legislation. We will beat him again – if he is still in the Senate following his reelection run in 2020.
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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.
