Who Said That? A Pop Quiz about Senate Rules Committee Members Marking Up S. 1 Today – Wertheimer piece
Enclosed for your information is a piece by Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer entitled, “Who Said That? A Pop Quiz about Members of the Senate Rules Committee as they Mark Up S. 1 Today.” Read the full piece below.
Who Said That? A Pop Quiz about Members of the Senate Rules Committee as they Mark Up S. 1 Today
By Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21 President
The Senate Rules Committee is marking up S. 1, the For the People Act today.
The Act is holistic democracy reform legislation that includes essential reforms dealing with voting rights campaign finance, redistricting, government ethics, election security and foreign interference.
There are nine Democratic Senators and nine Republican Senators on the Rules Committee. “Who said that?” is a pop quiz about these Senators and statements made in the past about campaign finance issues:
- Which Senator said “it might be argued” that “any law that maintains the private contribution system to finance public elections” is providing “but a Band-Aid on a cancer”?
- Which Senator said “Clearly, public financing at least for presidential elections is an idea whose time has come”?
- Which Senator set forth a comprehensive series of reforms to address the “questionable, or downright illicit, practices” in the private funding system?
- Which Senator said that “obviously, many qualified and ethical persons” are “effectively priced out of the election marketplace”?
- Which Senator said that “the allowance of anonymous donations has no place” in a system of disclosure?
- Which Senator said that “the lack of an overall limit on spending is an open invitation for special interests” to “lavishly finance future candidates, regardless of the limitations on amounts of individual contributions”?
The answer to questions 1, 2, and 3 is Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. The answer to questions 4, 5, and 6 is also Senator McConnell.
In 1973, Mitch McConnell, then the Republican Party Chair for Jefferson County, Kentucky, wrote an op-ed for the Louisville Courier-Journal in which he outlined bold campaign finance reform measures, including public financing, complete disclosure of donors, contribution limits, spending limits and effective enforcement.
By the time McConnell got to the Senate in 1985, however, the bold reformer of the 1970s had disappeared. For decades his Senate career was dominated by political money. He made his bones with his Senate Republican colleagues by raising huge sums of money for their campaigns, often from influence-seeking big donors, and by leading mostly successful filibusters against campaign finance measures that reached the Senate floor.
The Senate has made various changes and exceptions to the filibuster rule over the years. Senator McConnell himself had no problem with an exception to the filibuster rule when it suited his personal political interests.
In 2017, he led Senate Republicans in making the last exception to the filibuster rule, which was then used to confirm three Trump-nominated Justices by majority vote, even though Republicans did not have the 60 votes normally needed to end a filibuster.
Today we have a broken political system, a corrupt campaign finance system and a Republican political coup in progress in the states where Republican-controlled legislatures are passing the greatest array of voter suppression laws since the days of Jim Crow.
An exception to the filibuster rule, just like the McConnell exception for Supreme Court Justices, is clearly justified to pass S. 1 by a majority vote. This would protect the right to vote in federal elections by overriding state suppression laws, combat political money corruption in Washington and repair and revitalize our democracy.
Using the same kind of exception to the filibuster rule that McConnell used in 2017 would set the stage to enact the same kind of campaign finance reforms proposed by McConnell as a bold young reformer.
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