- It seems that the Senate passed the new ethics bill last
week that curtailed much of the influence and gifts made by lobbyists.
One of the provisions was to ban travel trips awarded by lobbyists to Congress.
It seems like a good bill until you read the exclusion. The American
Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, was able to convince lawmakers
to exclude from the measure's travel ban trips to Israel sponsored by the Israeli lobbyists.
It's just one more evidence as to how the Israeli Lobby runs our government.
It's pathetic. The paragraph that I refer to is highlighted
in the following bill. I will call my Senator about the AIPAC ethics
exclusion. I hope you do the same.
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- Senate Passes Ethics Package
- Parties Reach Hard-Fought Deal On Lobbying and Other
Reforms
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- By Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
- Washington Post Staff Writers
- Friday, January 19, 2007
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- Senate Democrats and Republicans broke a difficult stalemate
last night and approved 96 to 2 expansive
legislation to curtail the influence of lobbyists, tighten congressional
ethics rules and prevent the spouses of senators from lobbying senators
and their staffs.
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- The Senate legislation, hailed by proponents as the most
significant ethics reform since Watergate, would ban gifts, meals and travel
funded by lobbyists, and would force lawmakers to attach their names to
special-interest provisions and pet projects that they slip into bills.
Lawmakers would have to pay charter rates on corporate jets, not the far-cheaper
first-class rates they pay now.
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- The House earlier this month approved similar language
as part of an internal rules change. But other portions of the Senate-passed
measure would carry the weight of law and would have impacts far beyond
the Capitol. The House would have to pass comparable legislation for those
provisions to take effect.
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- One of those legislative provisions would force lobbyists
to publicly disclose the small campaign donations they collect from clients
and "bundle" into large donations to politicians. Bundling is
a way for lobbyists to contribute far more money to candidates and thus
wield more influence than they could by making individual contributions,
which are currently limited to $2,100 per candidate for each election cycle.
Lavish gatherings thrown by lobbyists and corporate interests at party
conventions would be banned.
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- Former lawmakers would no longer be able to engage in
any lobbying activity for two years after they leave office. And, in most
cases, the lobbyist spouses of senators would no longer be able to take
advantage of their family status to influence the colleagues and staffs
of their husbands and wives. The only exception is for spouses who had
been lobbying for at least one year before their husband or wife was elected.
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- "This is the toughest reform bill in the history
of this body as relates to ethics and lobbying, so everyone here tonight,
when they vote on this, should vote proudly," said Senate Majority
Leader <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/r000146/>Harry
M. Reid (D-Nev.). "This is historic."
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- James Thurber, a professor of political science at American
University, did not go that far, but he said the impact of the Senate bill
would be substantial: "It will change lawmakers' behavior and lobbyists'
behavior as well, and it will bring more transparency to lobbying."
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- The measure appeared dead Wednesday night after Republicans
refused to allow passage without a vote on an unrelated amendment that
would hand the president virtual line-item veto authority. For nearly two
days, <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/b001210/>Sen.
Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) -- who jealously guards the Senate's prerogatives
on spending matters -- single-handedly blocked efforts to come to an accord
on that line-item veto vote.
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- Democrats and government watchdog groups angrily pointed
their fingers at the Republicans, charging that their demand for a vote
on such an extraneous provision was simply an indirect way to kill popular
legislation they dared not vote against.
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- But Reid found a path around Byrd, offering Republicans
a chance next week to add the spending control measure to a bill to raise
the minimum wage if they can find the votes. That broke the logjam, and
the Senate then began debating several amendments to the bill, with an
eye toward completing work late last night.
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- The bipartisan vote masked furious backroom lobbying
on a measure too popular to kill in public. One provision that was stricken
from the bill last night would have forced interest groups to disclose
funds spent on grass-roots campaigns that implore the public to contact
their representatives about legislation.
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- That provision -- to force the disclosure of pseudo-grass-roots
campaigns -- had raised the ire of an odd coalition that included the American
Civil Liberties Union, the Traditional Values Coalition, the American Conservative
Union and the National Right to Life Committee, which worked hard to strip
it out or even block the whole bill.
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- The Family Research Council met with lawmakers and their
staffs, conducted interviews on radio talk shows, extensively e-mailed
its members and notified other organizations, asking them to contact their
senators to express opposition, according to Tony Perkins, the group's
president. In the end, the Senate struck the measure, 55 to 43.
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- "This is an issue about free speech, not an issue
that is either Republican or Democratic," said Marvin Johnson, legislative
counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, during the coalition's telephone
news conference yesterday.
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- In another defeat for watchdog groups, the Senate overwhelmingly
defeated a proposal to create an independent ethics counsel to investigate
allegations of wrongdoing in the Senate. The 71 to 27 vote was the second
time that Congress has rejected the proposal in recent years.
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- *** Opposition from so many conservative activists had
raised accusations from Democrats that Republicans were doing their bidding
by blocking passage, but other opponents were less partisan. Lobbyists
for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, also talked
to lawmakers about excluding from the measure's travel ban trips to Israel
sponsored by the group's nonprofit foundation affiliate. The legislation,
as written, would allow those trips to continue. ***
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- In addition, lobbyists' organizations worked against
many parts of the Senate bill, arguing that lobbyists would still be able
to spend lavishly on lawmakers under its provisions. They would just have
to do so in the context of political fundraisers because fundraising activities
are not addressed in the bill.
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- "The bill has gone from bad to worse," said
Paul A. Miller, immediate past president of the American League of Lobbyists.
"What's being proposed now puts us in danger of making the system
even more corrupt than it is now, largely because the bill would move a
lot of lobbying contacts into the realm of campaign finance, and that's
more corrupting than under the current system."
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- But government watchdog groups said they saw much to
praise in the bill, and they worked hard for its passage. After Republicans
temporarily derailed it late Wednesday, the watchdogs responded furiously.
Democracy 21 posted what it called a "Hall of Shame," listing
the 45 Republicans that voted to filibuster the bill. The League of Women
Voters condemned what it called "late night shenanigans."
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- "Let there be no mistake here: This was Senate Republicans
thumbing their noses at the American people," declared Common Cause
President Chellie Pingree.
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- But, ultimately, it was Byrd that tried to block all
of Reid's efforts to accommodate Republican demands on a measure long sought
by President Bush that would allow the president to submit to Congress
a list of spending items that the White House wants to strike from congressionally
passed spending bills. Under the measure, Congress would then vote on whether
to sustain or accept those rescissions. <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/g000445/>Sen.
Judd Gregg(R-N.H.), its sponsor, called it a modest proposal to help ferret
out egregious waste that leaves Congress the final say.
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- But Byrd decried it as "an assault on the single
most important protection the American people have against a president,
any president, who wants to run roughshod over [their] liberties."
GOP demands for a vote were "little more than political blackmail,"
he said.
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- Under the agreement reached last night, Byrd and Gregg
will rejoin that battle next week, when the spending-control provision
finally comes to a vote.
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