Wednesday, May 02, 2007

House Democrats Continue To Try and Hash Out Fixes for Long Awaited Lobbying Bill

According to CongressDaily, House Democratic leaders met yesterday to work on the stalled lobbying and disclosure bill. The Judiciary Committee held one hearing in March on the bill the Senate passed in January, but no legislation has yet to be introduced. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) accurately commented; "It's a time crunch. No doubt about it. It's May 1 already," and he has expressed plans to mark up the bill as soon as possible. The contentious issues that have stalled the bill are whether to require lobbyists to disclose their activities in bundling contributions for candidates, whether to require disclosure for grassroots lobbying and whether to expand a one-year lobbying moratorium to two years and extend the ban to include all lobbying activity. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen is hopeful bundling language will make it into the bill. He has also introduced a stand alone bundling measure, HR 633, to require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, and political party committees for whom they collect contributions.

An article in Roll Call ($$) describes how grassroots lobbying disclosure is giving Democrats a "storm of opposition." The strong force of opposition to grassroots lobbying disclosure that surfaced when the Senate was considering it was the reason behind such a scaled back version. For example, if only hired lobbying firms receiving over a certain amount of money to try and rouse public communication to Congress have to disclose, groups that originally opposed the measure wouldn't be affected such as the National Rifle Association and the National Right to Life Committee. Average citizens who want to voice opinions to Congress would not be affected; a small grassroots civic organization would not even be able to afford a lobbying firm that the bill targets.

To step up pressure on their colleagues to adopt the grass-roots provision, Reps. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) this week introduced pared-down language as a stand-alone bill. If their proposal is not included in the broader overhaul, Meehan is likely to offer it as an amendment when the House Judiciary Committee marks up the overall lobby reform bill in the coming weeks. . . . The bill requires lobbying firms to register as grass-roots advocates if they receive more than $100,000 a quarter for stirring public communications with Congress. Firms that register must disclose individual clients paying more than $50,000 over that period

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