Our Story

Fixing America’s Political System So Our Democracy Works for Us

We live in turbulent times, and Americans are yearning for change. Issue One is uniquely positioned to seize this historic opportunity and win bold, national political reforms — to strengthen ethics laws, reduce the influence of big money on politics, modernize elections and end the pay-to-play culture in Washington. We believe American Democracy is the best way to solve problems, and that fixing the system is the first step towards tackling the most critical issues facing our nation.

Building a Bipartisan Movement

Since 2014, Issue One has been leading a bipartisan movement for systemic change.

• Issue One’s ReFormers Caucus of more than 200 Republican and Democratic former members of Congress, Cabinet officials, and governors is the largest bipartisan coalition of its kind ever assembled to advocate for solutions to fix our democracy.
• The Reformers Caucus served as the inspiration for the Congressional Reformers Caucus — the only group in Congress — half Republican, half Democratic — working on reform.
• Our Rebuild Congress Initiative (RCI) has engaged more than 60 Republican and Democratic members of Congress dedicated to fixing the dysfunction in the legislative branch, ranging from members of the Freedom Caucus to the Progressive Caucus. Issue One and RCI aggressively pushed for the creation of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress passed with overwhelming bipartisan support at the beginning of the 116th Congress.

A Three-Part Strategy to Win

We’re working to pass comprehensive federal legislation that fixes the political system so that our government better serves the people.

We can do this in three steps:

1. Build a cross-partisan movement for change.
2. Organize opinion-makers and citizens across the country to create the outside pressure on Washington we need to win big reforms in Congress.
3. Educate the public and advocate for new laws now to increase disclosure and accountability of political spending, tighten enforcement and strengthen ethics to pave the way for big reform.

Read our policy framework and legislative proposals here.

Our Impact

We are involved in a range of strategic activities to pass federal legislation to fix our broken political system. Here’s a sampling of what we do:

• Recruited the largest, politically diverse coalition of more than 200 former members of Congress, governors, and Cabinet officials—nearly half of whom are Republican—to join Issue One’s ReFormers Caucus.
• Held nearly 200 meetings on Capitol Hill with members and their staff, and testified before Congress about the need for bipartisan political reform.
• Gained national attention for our groundbreaking investigative reports on issues ranging from dark money in politics, leaderships PAC funds, the pay-to-play system for committee assignments in Congress and the lack of ethics enforcement in the legislative branch.
• Advocated for The Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, signed into law September 21, 2018, which requires timely disclosure of Senate campaign finance reports.
• Recruited additional sponsors to the bipartisan Honest Ads Act to combat foreign interference in U.S. politics through paid online advertising, the Political Accountability and Transparency Act to shine a light on who is behind dark money ads and strengthen coordination rules, the Restoring Integrity to America’s Elections Act to restructure the dysfunctional Federal Election Commission and the Election Protection & Integrity Certification Act, a bill to safeguard American elections from the influence of foreign money.
• Published a sweeping legislative framework: Returning Government to the American People focused on core values such as promoting transparency, increasing participation and reducing pay-to-play politics.
• Provided credible, nonpartisan analysis and commentary for the media. Issue One is consistently sought after by national news organizations and opinion-makers. Our experts are interviewed dozens of times a year on national radio and television programs, and our research and insight are cited hundreds of times a  year by national, regional and Capitol Hill journalists.

Watch to learn more about our work: