Rep. John Sarbanes explains what’s in the first bill Democrats plan to pass in Congress.
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After taking the House, Democrats are taking on big money & voter reform. These are the Dems’ top priorities after taking the house. Democracy reforms top Dems’ agenda after taking the house. This is a first look at Dems top priorities after taking the house. Big money, ethics, and voting reforms are on House Dems’ agenda. Now that Dems have the House, here’s what they want.
The voters in this last election definitely sent a message that they don’t like business as usual, they want to change that status quo. They want back into their own democracy. That’s what this is all about. And Democrats are ready to do that.
Big money in politics. Sarbanes: And the first thing to push back on the influence of the big money.
Super PACs are pouring money in, millionaires, billionaires. You don’t know where it comes from because they’re hiding the ball. We need transparency and disclosure so that you the voter know where this is coming from and you can make decisions based on that.
Ethics reforms: The second thing we’re going to do is we’re going to make sure that when people come to serve in Washington, they serve with integrity. … we have to strengthen the Office of Government Ethics, give it some enforcement power so it can make sure that people are acting in the public trust. … We need to focus on lobbying activity as well. Lobbyists have way too much influence here in Washington. So we’ve got to make sure they behave and if they’re going to get into the lobbying business, if they’re going to be advocating on behalf of some special private interests, they better raise their hand and register and disclose what they’re doing.
Voter suppression: Third we have to make it easy not harder to vote in America…. We’ve got to push back on voter suppression which means that certain communities get targeted in a way that will stop them from getting out and exercising their right to vote. So we’ve got to strengthen the Voting Rights Act that’s absolutely fundamental here. We’ve got to make it easy to register to vote. Automatic voter registration is absolutely critical to that. … We’ve got to bolster election security because there are these new concerns about people hacking into our election system. So we’ve got to make sure election security is there so that you have confidence that when you cast the vote it will actually be tabulated and counted. … And we got to address this partisan gerrymandering that we’ve seen across the country because people are are rightly resentful of that.
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