Republican Reform: Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge

UPDATE: Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barak Obama, and Rep. Louise Slaughter will be speaking in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress to unveil the Democrats' Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. Most of the Congressional Democratic Delegation will be at this event, scheduled to start around 2:00 pm EST, and will be web-cast LIVE on CSPAN and webcast at www.democrats.gov. Highlights of the Democrats' proposals are here.

Today's Washington Post reports on several Republican plans that would crack down on lobbyists. One plan, floated by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would specifically ban meals and privately paid travel for lawmakers.

Really? No, not really.

According to lobbyists and ethics experts, even if Hastert's proposal is enacted, members of Congress and their staffs could still travel the world on an interest group's expense and eat steak on a lobbyist's account at the priciest restaurants in Washington.

The only requirement would be that whenever a lobbyist pays the bill, he or she must also hand the lawmaker a campaign contribution. Then the transaction would be perfectly okay.

As usual, there's a loophole that you could drive a Mack truck through: the plan says nothing about reforming campaign finance laws.

The plans offered by Republican leaders yesterday would change two of the three areas of law or regulation that govern lobbyists' behavior: the congressional rules that limit gifts to lawmakers and the laws that dictate the amount of disclosure that lobbyists must give the public.

A third major area -- campaign finance laws -- would go untouched, an omission that amounts to a gaping loophole in efforts to distance lobbyists from the people they are paid to influence.

Anything that members of Congress can now do in the pursuit of money for their reelections will still be permitted in the future -- including accepting lobbyist-paid travel and in-town meals -- unless campaign finance laws are altered.

One result may be an increase in out-of-town "fundraising" events.

Currently, lawmakers and staff members are permitted to take "fact-finding" trips paid for by private groups, including lobbying organizations and corporations. These excursions, whose destinations are often major cities and warm resorts in wintertime, need only be disclosed and include official functions to be acceptable under the rules.

Yesterday, Hastert and high-ranking Senate Republicans, led by Rick Santorum (Pa.) and John McCain (Ariz.), said they would eliminate these privately funded fact-finding trips as part of a comprehensive ethics package that they hoped would begin moving through Congress early next month. The senators also said they would restrict gifts to lawmakers but apparently would not go as far as to ban meals, as Hastert said he intended to propose.

Ye Gods. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The Republicans are going to have to do a much better job than these pissant proposals to prove they are truly the party of reform. Cooperating with federal investigators would be a good start.

And the Democrats? We're supposed to hear from them today about their ethics reform package. In Columbus, Ohio, Howard will be attending an "Honesty in Government" event at 10 A.M. this morning in the North Cross Hall of the Ohio State House. This event coincides with the unveiling of a package of reforms being introduced in Washington by the Democratic leadership in Congress. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and House and Senate Democrats will propose their Honest Leadership and Open Government agenda.

I'm curious to hear what this agenda is all about. I sincerely hope the Democrats present a plan for real and substantive reform, not a plan that simply seeks to undermine the Republicans. I also hope it includes a component that is clearly absent in any of the Republican proposals: enforcement.

You can talk about reform and integrity all you want. But unless you have a plan to enforce the rules, any talk of reform is meaningless.


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