Push for Lobby Database Fades
Roll Call Staff
Lobbyists bracing for tough new disclosure requirements from the Democrats’ ethics reform drive can breathe a little easier.
Democratic leaders appear to be backing away from a provision included in ethics proposals last year that would require lobbyists to detail their contacts with Members of Congress.
The plan was met with stiff resistance from labor and nonprofit groups, which argue that the requirement would be onerous, impossible to apply consistently and could chill contact on politically sensitive topics.
Democrats, who last year pushed the measure as key to shedding light on lobbyists’ role in the lawmaking process, are now suggesting the disclosure standard is too problematic.
“That is a provision that raised a lot of concerns with a lot of people,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). “We haven’t gotten through all of them. We’re going to take another look at it.”
House Democratic aides said that while the measure still could find its way into a reform bill the chamber is expected to take up later this month, it isn’t topping anybody’s priority list.
The new posture, in part, reflects the challenge for Democrats seeking to make good on last year’s promises, made when they were out of power and trying to rally voters with an anti-corruption message.
The then-minority party grabbed for the high ground in the debate over ethics rules by proposing bold reform measures. Now that they are in power, Democrats are trying to pursue the strongest reforms possible while ensuring the overhaul doesn’t cause unintended consequences or spur a filibuster in the Senate.
As Senators take up the bill this week, public interest groups are preparing for fights over grass-roots lobbying disclosure and reimbursement rates for lawmakers taking rides on corporate jets.
The House Democrats’ package last year — offered as an alternative to a Republican version derided as pitiful by outside watchdog groups — would have required lobbyists to file quarterly reports listing every lawmaker they contacted over that period. The information would be available to the public in a searchable online database.
Feingold went a step further. His proposal narrowed the definition of a contact only to “oral communications,” to exclude widely circulated letters and blast faxes that would have swamped lobbyists’ reports. The Senator would have required lobbyists to report not only every lawmaker and executive branch official they contacted, but also the date that contact occurred.
Feingold left the provision out of a bill he introduced Monday with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as a high-water mark for the debate. Neither is it likely to appear in a substitute bill Senate Democratic leaders are negotiating with Republicans to strengthen the base measure, tagged S.1. “There was a recognition that too much specificity would be unhelpful and not workable,” a Senate Democratic aide said of the proposal.
Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group that advocates for greater transparency, called the current reporting requirements “ridiculous.”
“The legislation has to provide a requirement that lobbyists provide detailed reporting — what issues they are talking about and who they are meeting with,” she said. “If somebody is a paid lobbyist, and their business is to contact Members of Congress and senior staff to talk about legislation, they know who they’re talking to and what about.”
Gary Kalman, of U.S. PIRG, pointed to the controversy surrounding Vice President Cheney’s closed-door meetings in 2001 to formulate White House energy policy. “That’s a prime example of how disclosure would have helped the public understand how policy is being made,” he said.
But while most reform groups agree an ideal bill would include the disclosure requirement, they are training their fire elsewhere, on travel, earmark and enforcement measures.
Democracy 21, for example, left the reporting requirement off a checklist of reforms, including those addressing lobbyist disclosure, the group released last week as its agenda for the weeks ahead. “It’s not among the things we’re focused on,” President Fred Wertheimer said.
Despite the lack of interest on Capitol Hill, the specter of the new rule has generated plenty of buzz on K Street, where lobbyists of all stripes have tried to throw cold water on the idea by arguing it would provide too much information — or not enough — to be meaningful.
“While we haven’t really spent a lot of time looking at this provision, it seems to us it would be reporting for reporting’s sake,” said Bill Miller, a top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Another lobbyist, who requested anonymity, suggested a better rule would require lawmakers to disclose their fundraising pitches to lobbyists.
“For me to go talk to a Member or staff about an issue — is that corrupting? I don’t think so,” he said. “The corruption comes from the fundraising, and that all emanates from the Members to the lobbyists, not the other way around.”
A common complaint focused on the difficulty of defining a reportable contact, since lobbyists do so much of their work in unscheduled hallway conversations, or after hours, at fundraisers and restaurants. Lobbying law expert Tom Susman said in addition to potentially spawning hundreds of thousands of new reports, the requirement could generate untold opportunities for mischief while yielding little usable information.
Senators are expected to spend the next week and a half, at least, on the ethics rewrite, taking up the bill that the chamber passed last spring and debating amendments.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) held a press conference Monday with Obama and Feingold — the party’s point-people on the ethics rewrite — and a group of freshman Democrats to renew his commitment to strengthening that package. “We’re going to improve this bill,” he said. “At the end of the day, the Senate is going to pass the most substantive reforms since Watergate.”
Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and a bipartisan group of other leaders on the issue are expected to offer a substitute amendment as soon as today.
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