Wednesday, August 13, 2008

New Congressional Database on Lobbying Contributions

BNA Money and Politics ($$) reports on some findings from the new database of lobbyist campaign contributions as required by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. "Lobbyists and the organizations they work for have disclosed nearly 100,000 contributions and other payments linked to members of Congress and other top officials under a new reporting system required by last year's lobbying and ethics reform law."

"Only a little more that 2,700 of the reported transactions involved 'honorary' payments, meeting expenses, and contributions to presidential library funds, which were not previously required to be disclosed. One researcher, Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said he has used the new database to calculate a total of $26 million just in direct campaign contributions by individual lobbyists to lawmakers over the first half of this year."

In doing a search on the House site, I found 97,662 disclosed contributions from both individual lobbyists and political action committees controlled by lobbyists or lobbying organizations, to candidates and political committees regulated under the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Attorney Kenneth Gross of the firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom said the reports being filed under the new law are "of mild interest but contain no great revelations." Particularly interesting are the reports regarding money contributed by political action committees controlled by lobbyists and lobbying organizations, Gross suggested. Although the contributions themselves were required to be reported before, the link between this PAC money and particular lobbying interests was not necessarily known.

"The confusion over requirements did lead some organizations to report large payments honoring members of Congress, which may have been misleading." The new Senate site is here and the House site is here.