To facilitate understanding of how H.R. 1 would change current federal law that regulates political speech, the Institute for Free Speech has created a document that places relevant provisions of the bill into current code.
As of January 22, 2019, the bill had not yet been officially released to the public via Congress.gov. Instead, we’ve been working off a copy of the bill on Representative Sarbanes’ website. We believe that copy reflects the actual bill that was introduced. However, there are clearly some drafting errors in that document. The following provisions appear in this document:
Title IV
Subtitle B (Sec. 4101 to Sec. 4122) [“DISCLOSE Act”]
Subtitle C (Sec. 4205 to Sec. 4209) [“Honest Ads”]
Subtitle D (Sec. 4302 to Sec. 4305) [“Stand By Every Ad”]
Title V
Subtitle D (Sec. 5302) [Treatment of payments for child care and other personal use services as authorized campaign expenditures]
Title VI
Subtitle A (Sec. 6002 to 6007) [Changes in the Federal Election Commission]
Subtitle B (Sec. 6102 to 6103) [Coordination]
The following provisions are not in this document:
Title IV, Subtitle A relates to findings. Subtitle E would repeal the restriction on use of funds by the Internal Revenue Service to issue new regulations regarding tax exemption under Sec. 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. Subtitle F would repeal the restriction on use of funds by the Securities and Exchange Commission to work on regulations requiring corporations to report to the agency their contributions to tax-exempt organizations, dues paid to trade associations, or political contributions. Subtitle G would repeal the restriction on use of funds to issue any order or rule to require prospective government contractors to report their membership in trade associations and support for advocacy groups as a condition of bidding on a contract. Subtitle H contains new provisions regulating presidential inaugural committees that can be found in Sec. 4702 of the bill.
Since the provisions in H.R. 1 relating to a voucher pilot program and small dollar financing for congressional election campaigns are new provisions (see Title V), there is no benefit from placing these provisions in this document.
The document that places relevant provisions of H.R. 1 into current federal code is available here.
