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<BillSummaries>
<item congress="113" measure-type="hr" measure-number="5011" measure-id="id113hr5011" originChamber="HOUSE" orig-publish-date="2014-06-26" update-date="2014-07-29">
<title>MERIT Act</title>
<summary summary-id="id113hr5011v00" currentChamber="HOUSE" update-date="2014-07-29">
<action-date>2014-06-26</action-date>
<action-desc>Introduced in House</action-desc>
<summary-text><![CDATA[<p>Making Every Representative's Integrity Transparent Act of 2014 or the MERIT Act - Amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit a candidate's authorized committee from employing any of the candidate's relatives in a paid position.</p> <p>Prohibits a leadership political action committee (PAC) from employing in a paid position any relative of the candidate or any individual holding federal office who establishes, finances, maintains, or controls the leadership PAC.</p> <p>Limits the interest rate an authorized committee may pay on a loan accepted from the candidate to an annual rate no higher than the prime rate plus 2%.</p> <p>Revises political committee disclosure requirements about:</p> <ul> <li>loans made by candidates,</li> <li>expenditures to relatives of candidates for operating expenses, and </li> <li>disbursements received by a candidate's relative or a business organization one of whose officers or dicrectors is a relative of the candidate. </li> </ul> <p>Applies the prohibition against the conversion to personal use of contributions accepted by candidates also to contributions accepted by political committees.</p> <p>Allows the use of contributions accepted by political committees for authorized expenditures in connection with political activities.</p> <p>Amends the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 to: (1) require lobbying registrations to contain, for each employee of the registrant who has acted or who the registrant expects to act as a lobbyist on behalf of the client, the name of each relative of the employee who serves currently or who has served previously as a covered executive or legislative branch official, including the Congressional Bioguide Identifier of any covered official who is or was a Member of Congress; (2) require updates to registrations for employees who become relatives of covered officials, and (3) include lobbying contacts with relatives who are covered officials in quarterly reports on lobbying activities.</p>]]></summary-text>
</summary>
</item>
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<dc:language>EN</dc:language>
<dc:rights>Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.</dc:rights>
<dc:contributor>Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress</dc:contributor>
<dc:description>This file contains bill summaries for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.</dc:description>
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