The House Democratic leadership will likely finalize a lobbying reform bill this week, sending it to the House Judiciary Committee and then to the full House of Representatives for a vote the week of May 7, if all goes as planned.
This bill stands as a major test of how serious the 110th Congress really is about lobbying and ethics reform. In the wake of über-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Reps. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham and Bob Ney going behind bars, the $90,000 in alleged bribe money found in the home freezer of Democratic Rep. William Jefferson, the recent FBI raids linked to Republican Reps. John Doolittle and Rick Renzi and the November campaign of the Democratic Party against the 'culture of corruption' in Washington DC, you would assume that the heat is on. And it should be — as the New York Times notes:
If the Abramoff ghost is not enough of a prod to clean up the Capitol, members need only check out their current ranks. (...) Last November’s voters are still watching for something better than business as usual.
But in fact, the House appears to be losing momentum...
The bill includes several important provisions:
· Disclosure of "bundled" contributions. Using a loophole in the law, lobbyists collect numerous individual contributions and then donate these as a package to grateful incumbents. This provision would require disclosure of this practice (which 'Pioneer' Abramoff used in his 2004 Bush campaign)
· Disclosure of paid grassroots campaigns. This provision would require disclosure by PR firms of paid (or phony) grassroots lobbying campaigns that cost $100,000 or more, such as "Hand Off The Internet", which was funded by AT&T and Verizon.
· Slowing the revolving door. This would double the cooling-off period in which a former Member of Congress is not allowed to lobby, upping it to two years.
But the parallels between this bill and the failed reform proposals of the 109th Congress are striking. Last time, House members waited several months and then began to back away from the proposal. Some House Democrats are doing the same thing now.
Meanwhile, a group of 27 freshman Democrats, dissatisfied by the waning momentum, have written a letter to chair of the House ethics taskforce, Rep. Michael Capuano, urging the installation of an independent ethics commission.
If Democrats want to restore public trust in Congress, the last thing they should do next week is not live up to their promises to 'drain the swamp'. Otherwise, they risk becoming the subjects of the old adage, "Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it."