Manchin suggests he may be for filibuster reform

[OnDoutside]

12. Sorry for the delay, here you go

https://www.vox.com/2021/3/3/22309123/house-democrats-pass-voting-rights-bill-hr1

What’s in the bill
The For the People Act weighs in at close to 800
pages. Broadly, it can be broken down into three buckets: expanding voting rights, implementing campaign finance reform, and beefing up ethics laws for members of Congress.

Here are some major points in the bill, broken down by category:

Voting rights

Creates new national automatic voter registration that asks voters to opt out rather than opt in, ensuring more people will be signed up to vote. Requires chief state election officials to automatically register eligible unregistered citizens.

Requires each state to put online options for voter registration, correction, cancellation, or designating party affiliation.

Requires at least 15 consecutive days of early voting for federal elections; early voting sites would be open for at least 10 hours per day. The bill also prohibits states from restricting a person’s ability to vote by mail, and requires states to prepay postage on return envelopes for mail-in voting.

Establish independent redistricting commissions in states as a way to draw new congressional districts and end partisan gerrymandering in federal elections.

Prohibits voter roll purging and bans the use of non-forwardable mail being used as a way to remove voters from rolls.

Restores voting rights to people convicted of felonies who have completed their sentences; however, the bill doesn’t restore rights to felons currently serving sentences in a correctional facility.

Campaign finance

Establishes public financing of campaigns, powered by small donations. This has long been Sarbanes’s vision: The federal government would provide a voluntary 6-1 match for candidates for president and Congress, which means for every dollar a candidate raises from small donations, the federal government would match it six times over. The maximum small donation that could be matched would be capped at $200. This program isn’t funded by taxpayer dollars; instead, the money would come from adding a 4.75 percent fee on criminal and civil fines, fees, penalties, or settlements with banks and corporations that commit corporate malfeasance (think Wells Fargo).

Supports a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United.

Passes the DISCLOSE Act, pushed by Rep. David Cicilline and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats from Rhode Island. This would require super PACs and “dark money” political organizations to make their donors public.
Passes the Honest Ads Act, championed by Sens. Klobuchar and Mark Warner (VA), which would require Facebook and Twitter to disclose the source of money for political ads on their platforms and share how much money was spent. (A Facebook spokesman told Vox the company has publicly supported Honest Ads Act since 2018).
Discloses any political spending by government contractors and slows the flow of foreign money into the elections by targeting shell companies.

Restructures the Federal Election Commission to have five commissioners instead of six, in order to break political gridlock at the organization.

Prohibits any coordination between candidates and super PACs.

Ethics

Requires the president and vice president to disclose 10 years of his or her tax returns. Candidates for president and vice president must also do the same.

Stops members of Congress from using taxpayer money to settle sexual harassment or discrimination cases.

Gives the Office of Government Ethics the power to do more oversight and enforcement and implement stricter lobbying registration requirements. These include more oversight of foreign agents by the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Creates a new ethics code for the US Supreme Court, ensuring all branches of government are impacted by the new law.

Here's the key para

But Democrats can only use budget reconciliation twice, and it can only be used for things that directly impact the federal budget. Voting rights and anti-corruption measures don’t fall into that category, and HR 1’s authors are under no impression it could get through via budget reconciliation. That leaves them with a narrower set of options for HR 1, and even fewer options for other priorities like passing universal background checks or immigration reform.

Even though Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have repeatedly said they won’t get rid of the Senate filibuster, some of their Democratic colleagues are hopeful they might change their minds if the party’s agenda meets repeated opposition from Republicans.

“You bring it to the floor a few times and you let them obstruct it and you see what effect bad-faith obstruction has on some members’ views about the filibuster,” Sen. Whitehouse told reporters recently. “It’s one thing to say, ‘I don’t want to get rid of the filibuster’; it’s another thing after you’ve met repeated bad-faith obstruction to say, ‘Okay, this is getting out of hand.’”