Pelosi Rips McConnell For 200 Days of Inaction on H.R. 1 Ethics Package

WASHINGTON – Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharply rebuked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Friday for allowing 200 days to elapse without any action on H.R. 1, the sweeping reform package the House of Representatives passed last winter.

“We sent this legislation over to the … McConnell, and it’s been sitting there [ever since],” Pelosi said during a Friday press conference on Capitol Hill.

Noting that McConnell has referred to himself as the Grim Reaper when it comes to blocking the steady stream of legislation that’s come out of the House this year, Pelosi warned, “You may think this is dead over there, Grim Reaper … but it is alive and well in the public.

“The people know,” she added. “And they will know more that you are holding this up.”

The House passed H.R. 1, also known as the For The People Act, by a 234-193 vote on March 8.

The massive anti-corruption bill aims to reduce the role of dark money in politics, advance fair and secure elections and restore ethics and integrity to government.

“H.R. 1 restores the people’s faith that government works for the public interest, the people’s interest, not the special interest,” Speaker Pelosi after the March vote.

“It is fundamental to our democracy that people believe that actions taken here will be in their interest. That is what this legislation will help to restore,” she said.

But McConnell quickly declared the bill dead on arrival in the Senate.

“This is a terrible proposal,” he said, voting for it will never get any floor time in the Senate.

On Friday, Pelosi said “it is important to note that Mitch McConnell has said the problem is not that there is too much money in politics, the problem is that there isn’t enough money in politics. 

“If there was ever a declaration of lack of values in terms of our democracy, with stiff competition, that stands as a prominent one,” she said. “It’s time for the Senate to do its job and vote.”