ICYMI: WSJ: Pelosi’s Top Priority: Consolidating Power
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board is out with a look at Nancy Pelosi’s top priority: consolidating power.
Whether it’s her politically toxic scheme to give politicians public funds to pay for their campaigns, or her Constitutionally dubious effort to make D.C. a state, it’s clear that Pelosi cares more about partisan power grabs than helping the American people.
There’s a reason House Democrats have their thinnest majority in decades.
In case you missed it…
Pelosi’s Top Priority: Consolidating Power
Wall Street Journal
Editorial Board
January 14, 2021
Her first bills in the new Congress would dilute ballot integrity and make D.C. a state.
After impeaching Donald Trump again, what do Democrats want to do with their new dominance of Washington? It’s revealing that Speaker Nancy’s Pelosi’s first legislative priority is cementing Democratic political power.
Last week House Democrats reintroduced as H.R.1 a voting and campaign-finance bill that would grease the Democratic voting machine nationwide and restrict political opposition. They also introduced a bill to provide statehood for the District of Columbia that would guarantee Democrats two new Senate seats.
H.R.1 imposes California-style election rules nationwide. The bill requires every state to register voters based on names in state and federal databases—such as anyone receiving food stamps or who interacts with a state DMV. It mandates same-day and online voter registration, expands mail and early voting, and limits states’ ability to remove voters from rolls. Overall the bill is designed to auto-enroll likely Democratic voters, enhance Democratic turnout, with no concern for ballot integrity.
The bill also strips state legislatures of their role in drawing congressional districts, replacing them with commissions that are ostensibly independent. In practice commissions have turned out mostly to favor Democrats, as in New Jersey and California. If states want such commissions, so be it. But this is an attempt to impose one Pelosi standard from coast to coast.
H.R.1’s campaign-finance provisions would also limit the political speech of conservatives and Republicans. The bill requires some nonprofits to disclose publicly the names of donors who give more than $10,000, even if those groups aren’t taking part in candidate elections. The left’s pressure groups and media will then stigmatize donors. The bill also raises disclosure requirements for political ads on radio and TV, requiring the head of an organization to approve messages and list the group’s top donors by name.
It also imposes new disclosure and reporting requirements on online platforms that run paid political advertising, some of which go beyond or are at variance with standards placed on radio or TV ads. And the bill restructures the Federal Election Commission from a split of three Democratic and three Republican commissioners to two each plus an “independent.” That deciding vote will almost always vote left given the Beltway’s political and media balance of power.
As for D.C. statehood, the U.S. hasn’t admitted new states since 1959, and the admission of Hawaii and Alaska that year was designed to balance what was at the time one new Republican-leaning state with one Democratic state. The D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood movements are naked attempts to enlarge the Democrats’ Senate majority. It isn’t even clear D.C. can be admitted without a constitutional amendment, given that the Founders created a federally controlled district in the seat of U.S. government to maintain federal sovereignty.
The GOP Senate blocked H.R.1 in the last Congress, but Joe Biden has endorsed many of its principles and all that stands in its way now is the Senate legislative filibuster. The progressive goal is to use the narrow Democratic majority to consolidate a permanent one.