Wendy Sherman: “What is clearly unreasonable is to make this bill effective today, before the Senate acts, before the President acts.…”

“What is clearly unreasonable is to make this bill effective today, before the Senate acts, before the President acts. Not only is that impractical, it is clearly unconstitutional. Article 1, section 9, clause 3 tells this House not to pass an ex post facto law. Yet this bill imposes criminal penalties on acts taken tomorrow, which are legal tomorrow, but which would become retroactively illegal when the President signs this bill. Tomorrow soft money will be used for issue ads naming candidates on the March 5 ballot in the primary in California and other early March primaries around this country. These ads were legal yesterday. They will be legal tomorrow. They will become illegal when the President signs this bill. And if they become retroactively illegal, then people can be put in jail for doing things which were legal at the time they did them. Our Founding Fathers made it clear that this Congress should never pass such a criminal statute.”