House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused Republicans of being behind a provision of the bill meant to prevent a government shutdown that effectively blows up key campaign finance limits.
“With this provision, Republicans would multiply ten times the amount of money wealthy individuals can give to a political party,” Pelosi said in a statement on Wednesday.
The provision, on page 1,599 of the 1,603 page bill, establishes three funds within the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. A donor can give $97,200 to each fund within the committee. A single donor, through the provision, could also give as much as $324,000 in a year to all three funds in addition to the donation caps currently in place.
In response, Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said “those provisions, like the entire bill, were the result of a good bipartisan, bicameral process. If Rep. Pelosi doesn’t think her negotiators did a good job, she should discuss it with them — but sour grapes doesn’t mean she gets to rewrite the deal after the fact.”
An aide familiar with the discussions over the provision told TPM that the provision was requested by “both political committees, including the Democratic National Committee under Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).”
The full statement from Pelosi is below:
Once more, Republicans are working to stack the deck for the special interests against everyone else. Buried in the more than 1,600 pages of the omnibus package Republicans posted in the dead of night are provisions to put hard-working taxpayers back on the hook for Wall Street’s riskiest behavior. This provision, allowing big banks to gamble with money insured by the FDIC, opens the door to another taxpayer-funded bailout of big banks – forcing middle class families to bear the burden of Wall Street’s mistakes.
To make matters worse, the package includes a provision that would work to drown out the voices of the American people and massively expand the role of big money in our elections. With this provision, Republicans would multiply ten times the amount of money wealthy individuals can give to a political party.
These provisions are destructive to middle class families and to the practice of our democracy. We must get them out of the omnibus package.”
