SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
democracy 21
D21 President Fred Wertheimer On House GOP Effort To Gut Office Of Congressional Ethics
Statement Of Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer
Jan 03, 2023
Buried in the House Rules that House Republicans will propose and consider as an early order of business are provisions designed to gut the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE).
The OCE was created in 2008 and has served the nation and the House well in protecting against ethics violations and holding Members accountable for improper actions.
There is no basis for gutting the effective and successful OCE other than to make it easier for unethical Representatives to break House ethics rules without facing consequences for their actions.
House Members who break House ethics rules cast a shadow on all House Members and seriously discredit the House as an institution in the eyes of an already skeptical public.
New first-term Republican Members who vote for the proposed Republican House Rules package will be casting their first policy vote in Congress to support enabling unethical and improper conduct by their colleagues.
Democracy 21 strongly urges every Republican Representative to vote against the Republican proposed House Rules that contain provisions enabling unethical and improper conduct by House Members.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leadership Conference On Civil And Human Rights And 53 Other Groups, Including Democracy 21, Urge Congress To Remain Focused On The Fight For Voting Rights
Reforms to the Electoral Count Act (ECA) are “needed and welcome, but they simply are not adequate to meet the current moment.”
Feb 02, 2022
As Congress considers the next steps in the fight to move voting rights forward, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 230 national organizations, and 53 individual groups, including Democracy 21, today urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the Members of Congress who supported voting rights legislation "to remain extremely focused in the weeks ahead on the core issue of racial discrimination in voting."
In a letter sent today, the groups thanked Majority Leader Schumer for his leadership on the issue. The debate and vote on the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act "mark progress on our journey towards becoming a truly inclusive, multiracial democracy. Yet we have far to go, and we must fight on," the groups wrote in the letter.
"Voters of color are facing the greatest threat to voting rights since Jim Crow, and this threat is targeted," the groups wrote. "As civil rights and community leaders have said many times, we cannot out-organize or litigate past attacks on our freedom to vote. Therefore, we must have a legislative solution, and that solution must address racial discrimination head on."
Conversations "regarding reforms to the Electoral Count Act (ECA) are needed and welcome," the groups wrote, "but they simply are not adequate to meet the current moment. We should certainly make sure that votes duly cast are reflected in the ultimate presidential count. But we also must address the discriminatory barriers to the ballot that prevent votes from even being cast, or we will retreat and retrench from our aspirations as a multiracial democracy -- just as we did after Reconstruction."
According to Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, "The ECA by itself has no impact on House and Senate races. The ECA does nothing to overturn the numerous state voter suppression and election sabotage laws enacted in 2021, with more coming in 2022. The ECA is in need of repair, but fundamental voting rights must be part of that repair if we are to truly protect our nation's elections and our democracy."
The letter urged Majority Leader Schumer to ensure "that any revised legislation also includes components of the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act that are necessary to address the problems faced by eligible voters in their attempts to cast votes and have those votes counted. Further, while seeking narrow reforms that can garner 60 votes is useful, we must continue the conversation -- in the Senate and across the country -- about the imperative to no longer allow an arcane rule with a racist history to block urgently needed protections for the freedom to vote."
Read the full letter online or below.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Senate Expected To Consider Voting Rights Legislation Soon
Updated D21 Report Shows The Evolution Of Senate Filibuster, How Filibuster Rules Changes Have Been Routine, & The Urgent Need To Modify The Rules To Allow Voting Rights To Pass
Jan 12, 2022
"For the Senate to preserve our democracy and protect the right to vote, and to be known again as the 'world's greatest deliberative body,' the Senate filibuster rules must be revised," Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer writes in the introduction to a new update to the Democracy 21 report: A Timeline Of The Senate Filibuster -- And Why The Filibuster Rules Must Be Revised To Save Democracy And Restore The Senate.
Attacks "on the right to vote and the integrity of our elections have put our democracy at grave risk," Wertheimer writes. "The need to revise the filibuster rules is of paramount importance."
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced the Senate will consider changes to Senate rules as early as this week.
The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act are essential voting rights measures that were blocked by multiple Republican filibusters in 2021.
These measures would override the state voter suppression laws triggered by Trump's Big Lie, protect against partisan election administration officials rigging federal election results, and prevent future voter discrimination laws in selected states and local jurisdictions.
"The moment of truth is here," Wertheimer says. "At stake is whether our democracy as we know it will be preserved."
The Democracy 21 report details the history of the Senate filibuster:
- Its creation in 1806 - a "housekeeping" mistake by Vice President Aaron Burr;
- Its prolific use to block civil rights legislation - from anti-lynching and anti-poll tax measures in the 19th and 20th centuries to voting rights legislation today;
- Its weaponization for partisan purposes by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY);
- How the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), the acknowledged master of the Senate rules, opposed eliminating the filibuster entirely, but believed that the filibuster rules should be changed when "circumstances change" and played a key role in revising the Senate filibuster rules three times in the 1970s; and
- How the filibuster rules have been modified more than 160 times since 1969, including in December 2021 to allow an increase to the debt ceiling to pass by majority vote.
The Democracy 21 Timeline Of The Senate Filibuster is online here.
Statement Of Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer On Senator Romney's Disingenuous Case For Protecting The Filibuster Rules
Nov 01, 2021
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) has an op-ed in The Washington Post today in which he makes a disingenuous case for protecting the filibuster rules.
He makes his case based on creating an incorrect impression that Senate Democrats are seeking to fully repeal the Senate filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation.
He has to know that this isn't the case. What is currently being considered in the Senate is a change in the filibuster rules that would allow voting rights legislation to pass by a majority vote - not a full repeal of the Senate filibuster rules.
Senator Romney suggests in his op-ed that Senate Republicans have not been a part of any conversation regarding the voting rights legislation. In crafting the Freedom to Vote Act, however, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) made clear that he wanted bipartisan support, and he worked hard to negotiate with and obtain Republican support in the Senate. No Republican, including Senator Romney, has been willing to join with Senator Manchin in his effort to enact the Freedom to Vote Act.
Senator Romney deigns to label the Manchin compromise Freedom to Vote Act wrongly, calling it a "message bill" when the measure is necessary to override an unprecedented wave of state voter suppression laws and to protect the ability of millions of Americans to exercise their fundamental right to vote.
The change to the filibuster rules that is being considered today would have the same kind of effect as the change made by then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his Senate Republican colleagues in 2017 to allow Supreme Court Justices to bypass the filibuster rules and be confirmed by majority vote.
What Senator Romney conveniently fails to mention in his op-ed is that he himself had no problem using the McConnell-led change in the filibuster rules that allowed the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett by majority vote. Cloture was invoked by a 51-to-48 vote, including Senator Romney's yes vote, and Barrett was confirmed 52-to-48, including Senator Romney's yes vote.
Changes to allow measures to pass the Senate by majority vote without being subject to the filibuster rules have been routine over the years with 161 exceptions to the filibuster rules having been enacted in the Senate between 1969 and 2014.
Senator Romney's position, apparently, is that it is perfectly okay for Senate Republicans to make a change to bypass the filibuster rules to confirm a Supreme Court Justice by majority vote, but it is wrong for Senate Democrats to make a similar change in order to protect our democracy by passing essential voting rights legislation by majority vote.
Senator Romney has wrongly presented the situation today by arguing that Democrats are seeking to fully kill the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation.
He's wrong and he knows it.
Most Popular