Skip to content

Friday, May. 14, 2021

Did a Senate committee block McConnell’s attempt to redirect proposed congressional campaign funding to address opioid abuse?

Gus Fisher, Gigafact

yes

Republican Senators in committee proposed more than 100 amendments to an expansive Democrat-backed election reform bill. One, proposed by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, would have redirected new funding for congressional election campaigns to efforts to address the nation's opioid epidemic. The amendment didn’t win the required majority.

The campaign funding provision in the bill would allow candidates to opt into accepting public funding, a step intended to diminish the influence of special interests. Other provisions in the legislation address early voting, absentee voting and voter registration. The House has passed the bill, but its prospects of passage by the Senate remain uncertain given strong Republican opposition.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.