House Adopts Stricter Rules For Lobbyists

Under strong urging by Democratic leaders, the House voted Thursday to bar lawmakers from accepting gifts, meals or trips from lobbyists and to require disclosure by lobbyists who round up campaign donations and "bundle" them for members of Congress.

Passage of the two measures was a partial step toward fulfilling the Democrats' pledge to run a more ethical and open Congress. To achieve it, party leaders had to overcome a rebellion by colleagues who say the changes are going too far and might hamper their ability to raise campaign funds and land well-paid lobbying jobs when they leave Congress.

Rejection of either bill would have embarrassed top Democrats, whose caucus is split between new members who campaigned on a clean-up-Washington theme and veteran members wary of changing a political system that has served them well.

The most contentious issue involved a bill to require lobbyists to disclose bundling, in which they solicit and collect donations from several sources on a candidate's behalf. It passed 382-37. The practice is popular with many lawmakers, who find it easier than raising money check-by-check. It also is favored by lobbyists who can ingratiate themselves to lawmakers without publicly divulging their role.

The second bill, passed 396-22, included several provisions that both parties had largely agreed to. In addition to prohibiting gifts from lobbyists, they include requiring lobbyists to disclose efforts to insert special-projects "earmarks" into spending bills. Lawmakers also would be prohibited from pressuring lobbying firms to hire employees based on political affiliations, a practice dubbed "The K Street Project."

Top Democrats suffered minor setbacks when several of their freshman colleagues joined most Republicans in approving amendments that Democratic leaders initially had opposed. One item, offered by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, would require disclosure of lobbyists' bundled donations not only to individuals but also to political action committees, or PACs.

Democrats receive more PAC money than do Republicans, said Smith, who called the omission of bundled PAC donations a loophole "big enough to ride a Democratic donkey through."

A second GOP amendment — to apply the disclosure requirements to lobbyists for public universities and state and local governments — was added to the broader bill.

The Senate in January approved a lobbying package that would require disclosures of bundling and also force former lawmakers to wait two years after leaving Congress, rather than one year, before becoming lobbyists. A growing number of House and Senate members have left office in recent years to become highly paid lobbyists, and House members last week rejected the two-year "cooling off" period.

Editorial writers, public watchdog groups and others accused Democrats of backing away from their clean-government vows. Democratic leaders spent days imploring colleagues to support the bundling disclosure provision even though many rank-and-file members said there's nothing wrong with having lobbyists help them raise campaign money.

House and Senate conferees eventually will have to resolve differences in the legislation, including the question of a one- or two-year delay for lawmakers-turning-lobbyists.

Republicans stayed mostly on the sidelines in recent weeks, content to watch Democratic leaders struggle to keep their troops in line. When Thursday's bills reached the House floor, most Republicans realized they could be labeled as anti-reformist if they voted against them. But they took obvious pleasure in adding a few amendments.

Democratic leaders decided this week to make the bundling measure a separate bill rather than folding it into the larger package of lobbying revisions. Had it been part of the larger bill, they said, enough Democratic opponents might have joined most Republicans in a procedural vote — often seen as a strictly partisan matter — to stop the bill from reaching the House floor.

Under current law, individual campaign donors must report their contributions, but bundlers often remain anonymous. The disclosure requirement would not apply to bundlers who are not lobbyists.

"In the last election, the American people sent Congress a very strong and unambiguous message: that it's time to change the way that Washington does business," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of his party's 2008 House campaign committee, said during Thursday's debate.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said the package was "largely indistinguishable from the bill Republicans passed last year," a claim that Democrats dismissed.

Fred Wertheimer, president of the open-government advocacy group Democracy 21, hailed the vote on bundling. "The fight to pass lobbyist bundling disclosure legislation was a battle between the interests of citizens and the interests of Washington lobbyists," he said, "and citizens won."

The bundling disclosure bill is HR 2317. The broader lobbying bill is HR 2316.