The bill's campaign finance reform sections are a mix of new disclosure requirements and procedural improvements to revive the presidential public financing system and expand public financing as an option in the states. Those provisions, which are designed to close current loopholes, include:
- Banning the use of shell companies that funnel foreign money into U.S. campaigns;
- Banning campaign contributions from corporations with significant foreign ownership;
- Requiring super PACs and other vehicles to disclose donors giving more than $10,000;
- Requiring large digital platforms to maintain a public archive of all political ads, and prevent foreigners from directly or indirectly buying ads;
- Calling for the IRS to create new rules for non-profit political spending;
- Requiring government contractors disclose their political spending;
- Requiring presidential inaugural committees to disclose their spending.
The bill also seeks to restore and expand public financing of campaigns, where small donations are matched by public funds -- a means of lessening the reliance on larger donations and special interests. It does this by:
- Asserting Citizens United was wrongly decided by the Supreme Court and Congress has authority to regulate campaign contributions and expenditures;
- Creating a six-to-one match for donations up to $200 to congressional and presidential candidates;
- Allowing lower-income candidates to use campaign funds for expenses like rent, childcare and elder services;
- Defining what is and isn't a "coordinated" expense among political allies.
The bill's ethics section calls for a "code of ethics" for the U.S. Supreme Court, spends additional money on policing activities by foreign agents in domestic campaigns, and expands who is required to register as a lobbyist. It seeks to prevent conflicts of interest by requiring presidential appointees to recuse themselves on issues where the executive branch or their spouses have a stake in the outcome.
There are other provisions targeting the executive branch, including:
- Barring payments from corporations to people entering government service;
- Barring former employees from being a federal contractor for two years;
- Barring ex-executive branch employees from lobbying former colleagues;
- Requiring the president and vice-president to file financial disclosure reports;
- Reviving the oversight powers of the branch's Office of Government Ethics;
- Instituting rules barring personal enrichment or gifts to executive branch employees;
- Requiring the president and vice-president to release their income tax returns.
A To-Do List or Catalog of Broken Government?
Longtime democracy reformers like Public Citizen's Craig Holman note that each of these focal points is itself a microcosm needing checks and balances.
"Some of the more significant reforms, to me, are elements that I helped write," he said Thursday. "For example, we would apply the conflict of interest code, 18 USC 208, to the White House, to the president in particular. And then enforce it by changing the Office of Government Ethics, which is the executive branch ethics agency, and make it the actual ethics cop. Currently, it's just an advisory body. It can't do anything. It can't make anyone do anything they don't want to. We've seen Trump just refuse to abide by the ethics rules, because OGE has no authority to make him do so. So we'd change OGE from an advisory agency to an actual ethics cop with the enforcement authority over the White House."
Holman points to other conflicts of interest that are as serious as they are unresolved.
"There's a provision that would require full disclosure and no personal use of funds that have been raised for the inauguration," he said. "As you may know, Trump is now under investigation for some $50 million missing from his inaugural financing."
Erin Chlopak, director of campaign finance strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, said H.R. 1 "on the campaign finance side really addresses a number of different issues in our current system. They include trying to bring in more people into the process through public financing programs, both at the congressional and presidential levels."
"It's addressing some of the disclosure loopholes that exist with our current system," she continued. "The current laws really don't address all of the advertising that's happening in the online space. The current regime was really created when most of the advertising was taking place on radio and TV. So this would incorporate the Honest Ads Act-type provisions to extend the requirements that exist for those other media to the digital space, and also require a public database for ads purchased on those platforms. So even when the ads become ephemeral and disappear, there would still be a place to locate them."
Chlopak also said the bill would outlaw the current game of hide-and-seek that many big donors play, anonymously funding campaigns but not lending their names to the effort.
"It would address the lack of disclosure issue created using super PACs and C4 and LLCs and other ways to essentially hide their identity by transferring money from one entity to another to avoid being disclosed as the original source of financing of a particular campaign activity," she said. "Another way this addresses current problems is post-Citizens United and other cases that led to the emergence of super PACs, the FEC has failed to clarify or to create any rules defining what it means to coordinate with a super PAC. So now we have these ostensibly independent organizations that exist solely to promote a single candidate. The new legislation would define what sorts of activities amount to coordination between a campaign and a super PAC."
Republican Resistance Expected
In short, H.R. 1 is designed to re-balance the rules governing the current world of election advocacy and voting. While it can be seen as a statement of best practices, or even a pro-democracy political platform, it attests to the depth of intentional dysfunctions that are imposed on the political system, culture of campaigns, and voting process by those who stand to gain money, power or influence by tilting the process.
None of the experts interviewed Thursday thought Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, would take up the House's massive political reform agenda. But they also expressed some optimism that the public was seeing the depths of the distortions undermining American democracy and a need for serious systemic remedies.
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