February 8, 2007 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Nonprofit groups and others that lobby Congress would face new restrictions on their dealings with U.S. senators and stricter reporting requirements under an ethics bill that was approved by the Senate last month. However, charities won an exception to a provision that bans groups from paying for Congressional travel.
The Senate also deleted language from the bill that would have required nonprofit groups and others to file reports about their grass-roots lobbying activities.
The Legislative and Accountability Act, adopted as part of a push by the new Congress to curb corruption and influence-peddling, prohibits organizations that employ or retain lobbyists from providing gifts, meals, or travel to senators or their aides. The Senate agreed, however, to allow groups to pay for a senator to attend a one-day event — a provision that eased the concerns of some nonprofit leaders who wanted to keep the ability to bring members of Congress to conferences or to visit nonprofit projects.
It also agreed to allow charitable organizations that are classified under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code to arrange longer Congressional travel if they get approval from the Senate Ethics Committee. The committee would consider factors such as the organization’s mission and history of sponsoring Congressional trips.
Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, a coalition of charities and foundations, says the group is “tentatively pleased” about the exception, although it will be watching to see how the rule works in practice if it is enacted — for example, how long it takes the Ethics Committee to act on travel requests.
House Action Expected
The House of Representatives, which will soon draft its own version of the Senate bill, adopted internal rules last month that also banned payments for Congressional travel but allowed a one-day exception.
The Senate bill also lowers reporting thresholds, requiring groups that spend a minimum amount of time on lobbying to register if they spend at least $10,000 on lobbying per quarter — down from $24,500 semiannually. Lobbyists would also have to report certain contributions and gifts that they have made to political candidates, federal employees, and presidential libraries.
But the Senate defeated one of the most controversial provisions in the bill, one that was designed to shine light on the source of money that is used to encourage members of the public to contact Congress or federal officials about legislation or policies.
It would have required any group, including charities, that spends at least $25,000 in a quarter to encourage the public to lobby Congress or federal officials to file a report on those activities — but only if it already does enough lobbying to register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.
The proposed requirement was supported by liberal and government-watchdog groups such as Common Cause, OMB Watch, and the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest as a way to uncover sham grass-roots campaigns — those that appear to be generated by members of the public but are actually paid for by an industry group, for example.
But opponents — many of them conservative groups such as Focus on the Family, an influential Christian organization in Colorado Springs, Colo., but also including the American Civil Liberties Union — conducted an intense lobbying campaign to defeat the proposal, and the Senate voted 55 to 43 to drop it before approving the final legislation.
Critics charged that the reporting rules would be burdensome for small groups and interfere with citizens’ rights to contact lawmakers. “The very core of that First Amendment freedom of speech is the right of petition,” the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative Christian advocacy group, said before the Senate voted.
Supporters of the disclosure rule note that charities already must record their grass-roots lobbying activities on the informational tax forms they submit to the Internal Revenue Service. Requiring other groups to report such information “would level the playing field,” says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a government watchdog group in Washington.
They will now take their battle to the House, which is expected to resurrect the provision in its own ethics bill. Mr. Bass says the legislation does not aim to interfere with genuine grass-roots lobbying. But the wording in some parts of the Senate measure was confusing, he says, so supporters will work to ensure the House version is clearer.
Marv Johnson, a legislative counsel at the ACLU, says he doubts the language can be fixed. “I’m not sure it’s something [the bill] needs to be regulating,” he adds.
