Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) attacked Senate Republicans Monday for sitting on a bill that in actuality has not passed the House of Representatives.
Ocasio-Cortez received thousands of retweets for a tweet claiming that the "For the People Act" had passed the House with over two hundred cosponsors. "Now it’s at the Senate," she wrote. "GOP is calling getting money out of politics a 'power grab.'"
Democrats took a 1st step to fix the massive, foundational issue of voting reform & money in politics.#HR1 For the People Act by @RepSarbanes was cosponsored by 227 members&passed the House.
Now it’s at the Senate. GOP is calling getting money out of politics a "power grab." https://t.co/ruzqcN1MgZ
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 11, 2019
H.R. 1 is actually still before a series of House committees, including the House Oversight and Reform Committee of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member. Ocasio-Cortez's mistake is particularly odd as it comes a few days after the congresswoman went viral for a series of questions she posed during her committee's hearing on H.R. 1, a hearing that ended without the bill being marked up or sent to the House floor.
North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, a Republican member of the House Oversight Committee, pointed out her colleague's error in her own tweet.
Fact Check: #HR1 hasn’t "passed the House" yet alone had a committee mark-up in the 116th Congress. Perhaps you are thinking of HR 1, the #TCJA which is getting money out of the government's hands and giving it back to the People! https://t.co/2oVGXQtQ9J https://t.co/vdD6wt2Vua
— Virginia Foxx (@virginiafoxx) February 11, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez responded by adding a "quick correction" in the replies to the tweet, while leaving the erroneous tweet up.
Quick Correction: intro’d House instead of passed (yet!)
Senate GOP still speaking out against it
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 11, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez is correct that the bill has been criticized by Senate Republican leaders. In a January op-ed, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the bill the "Democrat Politician Protection Act" and cast the election reform measures as "tailor-made by Washington Democrats to help their D.C. attorneys descend on local communities, exploit confusion and try to swing elections."