By Eliza Newlin Carney, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, May 7, 2007

After considerable hand-wringing and procrastination, House Democratic leaders are finally poised to introduce a bill revamping the lobbying rules.

	The lobbying bill's bumpy ride toward passage is testament to just how mightily lawmakers cling to the status quo.

House members resoundingly approved internal ethics changes at the opening of this Congress, including new travel, meal and gift restrictions. But it's taken an embarrassingly long time for them to follow through with a separate package of promised lobbying reforms.

A crowded legislative calendar is partly to blame, but the real culprit is lawmakers' own entrenched resistance to change. Public disgust with congressional corruption scandals helped hand Democrats the majority on Capitol Hill, exit polls show. Yet rank-and-file House Democrats continue to fight new lobbying regulations every step of the way.

Even now, it's not clear just how ambitious House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's lobbying reform legislation will be. Nor is it exactly clear when a bill will be dropped. The House Judiciary Committee had been tentatively scheduled to mark up an omnibus lobbying bill this Thursday, with a floor vote planned for the week of May 14. But House leaders also have sent signals that they may need more time to wrestle the bill into shape.

The bill will be modeled in part on the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act, which the Senate approved in January. (That bill won't take effect until the House enacts a companion measure.) Reform advocates are pushing for the House bill to include three key measures:

• New disclosure requirements for lobbyists who "bundle" campaign contributions for members of Congress. This provision would require lobbyists to report the fundraisers they host on behalf of members, and to disclose the donations they round up for lawmakers by mutual agreement, for example by using a tracking mechanism.

• Expanded "revolving door" restrictions that would extend from one year to two years the ban on lobbying by House members who leave Capitol Hill. Reform advocates want the ban to include all "lobbying activities," as well as direct "lobbying contacts."

• Disclosure rules aimed at shedding light on high-dollar grassroots lobbying campaigns. The Senate rejected grassroots lobbying disclosure requirements, which have outraged conservative and civil liberties activists. House reform advocates have come up with a more narrowly tailored grassroots disclosure proposal, but it remains controversial.

Of these, the most likely to win approval is the bundling disclosure rule. "It's been difficult for anyone to argue that campaign finance contributions shouldn't be disclosed to the public," notes Craig Holman, legislative representative for Public Citizen, which has helped spearhead the pro-reform lobbying effort.

House leaders, moreover, recognize that they could pay a political price if they fail to approve at least one of the three lobbying changes on the table. Pelosi, in particular, is determined to hold Democrats to their campaign pledges to clean up Washington. "She does not want the Democrats to disappoint the American public on this issue," Holman says.

Pelosi's faced considerable resistance from House members of both parties, however, on the lobbying reform front. Rank-and-file members have complained bitterly behind closed doors about the revolving door restrictions, which would make it harder for them to jump directly from Capitol Hill to lucrative lobbying and trade association jobs.

The proposed disclosure rules for grassroots lobbying firms are in even bigger trouble. Opponents have portrayed grassroots disclosure requirements as an attack on free speech. In an effort to mollify those concerns, Reps. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., and Christopher Shays, R-Conn., on May 1 introduced a new bill that would limit disclosure to for-profit vendors that spend $100,000 or more per quarter on public communications efforts intended to influence Congress.

But the measure's detractors reject those fixes. Under the Meehan proposal, average citizens would still "risk ruinous fines, or even criminal penalties," simply for exercising their right to petition Congress, the National Right to Life Committee wrote in a May 1 letter to House members. The letter also bemoaned the "strikingly 'non-transparent'" nature of the House lobby reform debate.

If Pelosi drops the grassroots disclosure provision from the omnibus bill, Meehan may seek approval for it as an amendment, either in the Judiciary Committee or on the House floor.

Whatever House members ultimately approve, the lobbying bill's bumpy ride toward passage is testament to just how mightily lawmakers cling to the status quo. There's already been plenty of backsliding since Pelosi and her allies pledged to run the most ethical House in history.

Proposals to strengthen ethics enforcement through a Public Integrity office, once considered a linchpin of an ethics overhaul, were tossed to a bipartisan task force. That task force did hold one public hearing, but has missed its May 1 deadline to report back to Pelosi. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, in the meantime, has petitioned Pelosi to set up yet another task force to revisit the ethics rules changes approved in January. (Pelosi has yet to publicly respond.)

Amid all this whining and foot-dragging, it's time for House Democrats to take some substantive action on lobbying reform. Lawmakers may complain that the changes on the table go too far. Most voters, however, would probably argue that they don't go far enough.

-- Eliza Newlin Carney is a NationalJournal.com contributing editor and writer for National Journal and Government Executive. Her e-mail address is ecarney@nationaljournal.com.

[ Rules Of The Game Archives ]

Need A Reprint Of This Column?
National Journal Group offers both print and electronic reprint services, as well as permissions for academic use, photocopying and republication. Click here to order, or call us at 877-394-7350.