NONPROFIT LOBBYING

Some nonprofit groups are protesting against recent efforts to ban gifts of free travel to members of Congress, reports The Hill. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities have argued that their activities are not comparable to the golf outting and other types of trips at the center of the most recent lobbying scandal. “It’s a very different situation for nonprofits like ours than for big K Street firms,” says Joseph Grieboski, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. “There has to be some legitimate way to distinguish between the two.”

Also: James Copple, in an opinion piece for The Washington Post, writes that recent efforts to change the Congressional lobbying laws would hurt nonprofit organizations. Mr. Copple, a senior policy analyst at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, says that while he agrees there is a need to rein in lobbyists, putting a moratorium on Congressional earmarks “would only expand the government and shrink the resources available to nonprofits that have taken over the mission of building a healthy and safe civil society.”