The For the People Act can help ensure accountable government.

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From the Desk of Trevor Potter
Dear John,

As you have probably been reading, the For the People Act (S. 1) has now gone through the amendment process in the U.S. Senate Rules Committee. S. 1 (H.R. 1 when it passed the House) is a comprehensive bill that will help make the promise of democracy real for us all, and the U.S. Senate must act to address the range of challenges we face.

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Major components of this bill have been previously introduced in Congress with at least some bipartisan support. Despite this, Sen. McConnell has led the attack on the bill, claiming that it is a “Democratic power grab.”
Establishing federal minimum standards for the freedom to vote, rather than states being able to erect new barriers to the ballot box, is more urgent than ever. This is illustrated by the actions of legislatures in Georgia, Arizona, Florida and Texas to make it harder to vote.

Congress has exercised such federal control in the past, such as when it passed the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination against voters of color. When S. 1 will be brought up on the Senate floor now depends on the legislative strategy of the Democratic leadership—and what they do with Sen. Manchin’s suggestion that the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (which deals with federal review of changes in state voting rules) be the focus of a hoped-for bipartisan compromise.

Polling shows that Americans across the political spectrum understand the urgency of S. 1 and support its provisions. ([link removed]) Sen. Amy Klobuchar has rightly said that “[t]he stakes could not be higher,” ([link removed]) and conservative voices, such as The xxxxxx, have called the For the People Act, ([link removed]) “a necessary step in protecting our political order because it reflects that the key tension is no longer left versus right, but democratic versus anti-democratic.”

Over the past few months, in my capacity at Campaign Legal Center, I’ve fielded many questions about the For the People Act. People have often asked me: why is it 800 pages long? And why does it include so many different topics, and not just voting rights?

S. 1 is often talked about in terms of voting and creating national standards to protect the freedom to vote. And for good reason: S. 1 will help ensure Americans can cast a ballot freely, safely and equally, ([link removed]) regardless of their background or zip code. This is a crucial part of S. 1, especially as politicians across the country are working to create deliberate barriers to voting based on what we look like or where we live, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when more Americans voted than ever before.

S. 1’s voting provisions are understandably at the forefront of the debate. But what’s often missing in the headlines are the other important aspects of the bill, which address key problems in campaign finance, redistricting and ethics. These are just as important, too, and the U.S. Senate can’t leave them out—Congress must pass solutions to respond to these challenges. Campaign Legal Center has an overview of the key parts of the For the People Act ([link removed]) on our website.

One reason that S. 1 is so long and so comprehensive is that we are so overdue for these updates needed to make the promise of democracy real for all of us.

Congress cannot afford to continue to fail to act. While we are seeing horrendous restrictions on our freedom to vote passed on the state level, we’re also facing a political system rigged by special interests and fair representation threatened by partisan gerrymandering.

These need to be addressed, too, if we are to have a government that is transparent, inclusive and accountable.

S. 1’s ethics provisions are in a similar boat; they often miss the headlines, but they’re very important to ensuring government is accountable. They are intended to address many of the gaps that were exploited over the four years of the Trump administration. Failure to act would invite repetition of unethical behavior in the future—by administrations of any party—at the expense of the public interest.

S. 1 would close gaps in our conflict-of-interest rules, strengthen ethics enforcement by empowering the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, and codify the ethics pledge for senior executive branch officials in the federal government.

In particular, the ethics pledge is intended to ensure that senior officials are held to a high standard and are free of conflicts of interest that would compromise their work on behalf of the public. Former presidents have instituted some version of an ethics pledge using executive orders, in an attempt to close gaps in federal ethics laws. Unfortunately, these pledges have been inconsistent across administrations and unevenly enforced. President Trump even rescinded his own lobbying ban during the middle of his last night in office. ([link removed])

It’s clear that the ethics pledge (and S. 1’s other provisions) should be made the law of the land, so the public can rebuild our trust that government officials are working in the public interest, not for their own benefit.

This is just another reason why the U.S. Senate needs to pass the For the People Act in its entirety; we need these solutions.

While Congress is moving forward, the Biden-Harris Administration can simultaneously act to ensure ethics is treated as a top priority. One step the White House can take is to fill all remaining inspector general vacancies. ([link removed]) At a time when the federal government is spending trillions of dollars to address the pandemic and its economic fallout, it’s important that federal agencies have inspectors general to prevent and detect waste, fraud and abuse and to promote economic efficiency and effectiveness in agency operations and programs. CLC has been at the forefront of calling for cleaner government in the Biden-Harris administration, including with our support for the Accountability 2021 plan ([link removed]) led by the Open the Government coalition.

We have a crucial opportunity to make change. Our leaders in Washington can act right now to ensure that our political system is responsive to the interests of the American people, and that the public has meaningful opportunities to have a say in decisions that impact our lives. That is why we need the For the People Act, S. 1. — all of it.
Sincerely,

Trevor Potter
President, Campaign Legal Center
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