Thursday, March 30, 2006
Senate Passes Weak Lobbying Reform Bill
The Senate voted yesterday to require lobbyists to provide far more information about their dealings with lawmakers, responding to the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal with a plan for more disclosure rather than tougher enforcement of ethics laws.
By a vote of 90 to 8, the Senate approved a bill that would also force the disclosure for the first time of indirect lobbying, such as grass-roots activities, and prevent registered lobbyists from paying for lawmakers' meals or giving them gifts such as sports tickets. Congressional leaders had promised far-ranging revisions of lobbying activities after Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to bribe public officials. But the legislation that emerged yesterday is less sweeping than GOP leaders envisioned...
On Tuesday, the Senate rejected a bipartisan plan to create an independent investigative office designed to help the Senate's ethics committee enforce lobbying and ethics laws. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), one of the authors of the Democrats' lobbying proposals, voted against the Senate bill in part because it did not contain the office of public integrity.
Senate and House leaders will have to reconcile differences before Congress can send a final bill to the president. The House's leading ethics proposal, offered by its Republican leaders, would also broaden disclosure requirements, though not for such grass-roots activities as instigating e-mails, letters and phone calls from voters back home. The House plan would bar neither meals nor gifts...
Besides Obama and John McCain (Ariz.), the other six senators voting against the measure were Democrats Russell Feingold (Wis.) and John F. Kerry (Mass.), and Republicans Tom Coburn and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina. Not voting were West Virginia Democrats Robert C. Byrd and John D. Rockefeller IV...
"This legislation contains very serious reform," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of the architects of the Senate bill...
Asked if the measure meets the sweeping pledges of change voiced by senior members of the House and Senate early in the year, McCain laughed. "The good news is there will be more indictments, and we will be revisiting this issue," he said.
McCain gets the last word.
