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109th Congress Rept. 109-439
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
2d Session Part 3
======================================================================
LOBBYING ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY ACT OF 2006
_______
April 25, 2006.--Ordered to be printed
_______
Mr. Dreier, from the Committee on Rules, submitted the following
R E P O R T
together with
MINORITY VIEWS
[To accompany H.R. 4975]
[Including cost estimate of the Congressional Budget Office]
The Committee on Rules, to whom was referred the bill (H.R.
4975) to provide greater transparency with respect to lobbying
activities, and for other purposes, having considered the same,
report favorably thereon with amendments and recommend that the
bill as amended do pass.
CONTENTS
Page
Amendments....................................................... 2
Purpose and Summary.............................................. 3
Background and Need for Legislation.............................. 4
Hearings......................................................... 9
Committee Consideration.......................................... 9
Committee Votes.................................................. 9
Committee Oversight Findings..................................... 12
Performance Goals and Objectives................................. 12
New Budget Authority, Entitlement Authority, and Tax Expenditures 12
Committee Cost Estimate.......................................... 12
Congressional Budget Office Estimate............................. 13
Federal Mandates Statement....................................... 16
Advisory Committee Statement..................................... 16
Constitutional Authority Statement............................... 16
Applicability to Legislative Branch.............................. 17
Exchange of Committee Correspondence............................. 17
Section-by-Section Analysis of the Legislation................... 17
Changes in the Rules of the House Made by the Bill, as Reported.. 24
Minority, Additional, or Dissenting Views........................ 27
Amendments
The amendments (stated in terms of the page and line numbers
of the introduced bill) are as follows:
Page 20, strike line 14 and all that follows through page 21,
line 4, and insert the following:
``(d)(1) For the purpose of this section, the term `earmark'
means a provision in a bill, joint resolution or conference
report, or language in an accompanying committee report or
joint statement of managers, providing or recommending a
specific amount of discretionary budget authority to a non-
Federal entity, if such entity is specifically identified in
the report or bill; or if the discretionary budget authority is
allocated outside of the normal formula-driven or competitive
bidding process and is targeted or directed to an identifiable
person, specific State, or Congressional district.
``(2) For the purpose of paragraph (1), government-sponsored
enterprises, Federal facilities, and Federal lands shall be
considered Federal entities.
``(3) For the purpose of paragraph (1), to the extent that
the non-Federal entity is a State or territory, an Indian
tribe, a foreign government or an intergovernmental
international organization, the provision or language shall not
be considered an earmark unless the provision or language also
specifies the specific purpose for which the designated budget
authority is to be expended.''.
Page 21, strike line 5 and all that follows through page 22,
line 3 and insert the following:
SEC. 502. MANDATORY ETHICS TRAINING FOR HOUSE EMPLOYEES.
(a) Mandatory Ethics Training for House Employees.--
(1) Chief administrative officer.--Clause 4 of rule
II of the Rules of the House of Representatives is
amended by inserting the following new paragraph at the
end:
``(d) The Chief Administrative Officer may not pay any
compensation to any employee of the House with respect to any
pay period during which the employee, as determined by the
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, is not in
compliance with the applicable requirements of regulations
promulgated pursuant to clause 3(r) of Rule XI.''.
(2) Mandatory ethics training program.--Clause 3 of
rule XI of the Rules of the House of Representatives is
amended by adding at the end the following:
``(r) The committee shall establish a program of regular
ethics training for employees of the House and promulgate
regulations providing for the following:
``(1)(A) Except as otherwise provided, all employees
of the House are required to complete ethics training
offered by the committee at least once during each
congress. Any employee who is hired after the date of
adoption of such rules is required to complete such
training within 30 days of being hired.
``(B) Any employee of the House who works in a
Member's district office shall not be required to
complete such ethics training until 30 days after the
district office has received a notice from the
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct that the
required ethics training program is available on the
Internet.
``(2) After any employee of the House completes such
ethics training, that employee shall file a written
certification with the committee that he is familiar
with the contents of any pertinent publications that
are so designated by the committee and has completed
the required ethics training.
``(3) As used in this paragraph, the term `employee
of the House' refers to any individual whose
compensation is disbursed by the Chief Administrative
Officer, including any staff assigned to a Member's
personal office, any staff of a committee or leadership
office, or any employee of the Office of the Clerk, of
the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, or of
the Sergeant-at-Arms, but does not include a Member,
Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.
``(b) Ethics Training for Members, Delegates and the Resident
Commissioner.--Clause 3 of rule XI of the Rules of the House of
Representatives is amended by inserting the following new
paragraph at the end:
``(s) The committee shall establish a program of regular
ethics training for Members, Delegates, and the Resident
Commissioner similar to the program established in paragraph
(r), and encourage participation in such program.''.
Page 2, in the matter following line 2, by striking the item
relating to section 502 (in the table of sections contained in
section 1(b)) and inserting the following:
Sec. 502. Mandatory ethics training for House employees.
Purpose and Summary
H.R. 4975, the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act
of 2006, provides greater accountability and transparency with
respect to lobbying activities, protects the institution of the
legislative branch of government, and maintains the First
Amendment right of all Americans to petition their government.
The bill improves the current disclosure regime under the
Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 to provide more complete
disclosures regarding lobbying activity, and requires that they
be made electronically and rapidly made available in a
searchable format on the Internet to ensure public access. The
bill also vests audit authority over those disclosures in the
House Inspector General, the first time anyone has been given a
mandate to regularly review these disclosures for accuracy.
The bill also makes several improvements to the
institutional functions of the House, including addressing
potential conflicts arising from employment negotiations of
Members, an explicit prohibition on the linkage of official
actions to partisan employment decisions by outside entities,
and addresses potential problems in the current rules governing
acceptance of gifts and privately funded travel by Members,
officers, and employees of the House. The bill also includes
provisions addressing the potential for a Member convicted of
certain felonies to face the loss of Government contributions
to his or her Congressional pension. The bill also establishes
a new regime for ethics training for House employees and
ensures that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct
maintains up to date information regarding the rules and
standards which comprise the ethical principles for conduct in
the House.
The bill includes a new rule requiring the disclosure of
earmarks in a general appropriations bill, its report, or an
accompanying conference report. Finally, the bill includes
provisions ensuring that so-called ``527'' organizations are
subject to the same kinds of campaign finance regulations as
other organizations.
Background and Need for Legislation
Scandals involving lobbying in Washington are not new, and
they have occurred both when Democrats and Republicans have
held the majority. Perhaps one of the first major scandals
occurred during the 19th Century's Gilded Age. In the ``Credit
Mobilier'' scandal in 1872-73, the careers of several
politicians came to an end when they were found to have taken
shares in a railroad construction company and then approved
lucrative Federal subsidies for that company. In the 20th
Century, there were the Korean Influence investigations in the
1970s, the ``Abscam'' bribery cases of the 1980s, and the
``Keating Five'' inquiry of the 1990s. The recent convictions
and guilty pleas of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates
Tony Rudy and Michael Scanlon, as well as the guilty pleas of
former Representative Randy ``Duke'' Cunningham and of former
congressional staffer Brett Pfeffer have cast a pall over
Americans' faith in their government.
Indeed, in October 2005, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll
found ``only one-third of Americans give Congress good ratings
for its ethics and honesty.'' (Will Lister, Associated Press,
Oct. 29, 2005.) A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken in
January 2006 showed that 58 percent of those polled thought a
recent corruption case involving Jack Abramoff was evidence of
widespread corruption in Washington, and 90 percent thought it
should be illegal for registered lobbyists to give Members of
Congress gifts, trips, or other things of value. (Richard Morin
and Claudia Deane, ``In Abramoff Case, Most See Evidence of
Wider Problem,'' Washington Post, Jan. 10, 2006, at A7.)
However, a Pew poll taken about the same time showed that
``most people around the country aren't paying close
attention'' to the corruption scandal involving Abramoff. (Will
Lester, ``Corruption Scandal That Rocked Washington Draws
Little Scrutiny Elsewhere,'' Associated Press, Jan. 11, 2006.)
In the wake of these lobbying scandals, it is important to
keep in mind that lobbying is a constitutionally protected
profession. The First Amendment to the Constitution provides
that ``Congress shall make no law * * * abridging the freedom
of speech * * * and to petition the Government for redress of
grievances.'' The law that currently governs lobbying, the
Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA; P.L. No. 104-65, 109
Stat. 691, 2 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), explicitly recognizes this
constitutional protection in its section 8, which states
``Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to prohibit or
interfere with the right to petition the Government . . . [and]
[n]othing in this chapter shall be construed to prohibit, or to
authorize any court to prohibit, lobbying activities or
lobbying contacts by any person or entity, regardless of
whether such person or entity is in compliance with'' the LDA.
(2 U.S.C. Sec. 1607.)
Founding Father James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10
about the importance to democracy of organized interests or
what he termed ``factions.'' Madison believed that our
representative form of government would safeguard against the
worst impulses of the factions, and that the factions would
protect the Nation from falling into tyranny. Madison's belief
in protecting the rights of individuals and organized groups to
influence the policymaking process has endured for more than
200 years. Lobbying is an honorable profession, and lobbyists
do serve an important function in a participatory democracy. As
Senator Carl Levin, one of the primary authors of the LDA,
recently stated:
[L]obbying has assumed a vital role in providing a
flow of information in the political process that
assists our democracy by improving decision making.
Totalitarian regimes don't need lobbyists, because
there's no opportunity for persons outside the
government to affect the decisions made on the inside
of the government. It's just the opposite with a
democracy. Information on all sides of issues is
crucial to enacting laws that express the will of the
people, thereby helping to maintain a vital democratic
government. (Forward to The Lobbying Manual: A Complete
Guide to Federal Law Governing Lawyers and Lobbyists
(William V. Luneburg and Thomas S. Susman eds., 3d ed.
at xxvi-xxvii (2005).)
Thus, in the aftermath of every scandal, the legislative
reforms that Congress undertakes to protect the public against
the undue influence of a few criminals have to be balanced by
the constitutionally protected and democratically important
role served by the vast majority of lobbyists. One of the
earliest efforts to find this balance came in1852, when the
House of Representatives passed a lobbying regulation provision
prohibiting a newspaperman ``who shall be employed as an agent to
prosecute any claim pending before Congress'' from being on the floor
of the House. (Cong. Globe, 32nd Cong., 2d Sess. 52 (1852).) Obviously,
the balance struck then was that such a newspaperman acting as a
lobbyist could lobby Members, but not on the House floor. For many
years, the rules of the House of Representatives have prohibited
Members from being on the House floor if they have a pecuniary interest
in the legislation being considered. To respond to concerns about
former Members who become registered lobbyists abusing their privileges
as former Members, the House recently amended its rules to prohibit
former Members who are registered lobbyists from being on the floor of
the House (or in the rooms adjacent to the floor) or in the Member's
gym. (H. Res. 648; adopted by the House on February 1, 2006.)
The first comprehensive lobbying reform legislation came in
1946, when the Congress passed the Federal Regulation of
Lobbying Act as a part of the larger Legislative Reorganization
Act. It required lobbyists to register, to make reports of the
money they received from clients and spent in support or
opposition to legislation, and provided criminal penalties for
non-compliance. From the start, this legislation was considered
problematic and was substantially re-written by the Supreme
Court in the case of United States v. Harriss (1954). One of
the chief complaints about this legislation was that it lacked
a regularized mechanism for the flow of information about
lobbyists' reporting from the legislative branch to the
Department of Justice for prosecution.
Most recently, the Congress enacted the LDA which requires
improved disclosure in broad categories about the activities
and income-making of registered lobbyists. It also includes a
referral power for the Clerk of the House to the Department of
Justice for lobbyists' failure to comply with the LDA. The LDA
has functioned for a little over a decade to give the public
some access to information regarding the pressures applied to
the legislative process. In addition, since its enactment,
Congress has fundamentally revamped the laws governing our
campaign finance system in order to provide the public with
more information about contributions made to influence the
political process.
However, with the recent Abramoff, Cunningham, Pfeffer, and
other scandals, there has been a bipartisan groundswell of
support for major changes to not only the LDA but also to the
rules of the House governing gifts, travel and other ethics
matters. The Committee received many suggestions about such
reform from Members, and H.R. 4975 incorporates a number of
these suggestions.
In Title I of the bill, the LDA is substantially improved
by adding to the quality and quantity of information the public
receives as well as the speediness with which it is made
available through technology. For example, for the first time,
lobbyists will have to electronically disclose on the same form
to whom they gave gifts and political contributions, and this
information will have to be promptly posted on the Internet.
Title II addresses the concerns of the American people about
Member and staff self-dealing while not unfairly penalizing
those who choose not to make a career of Federal service. It
provides that each and every Congressional office that a person
cannot lobby for their one year ``cooling off'' period under
the Federal criminal code (i.e., 18 U.S.C. 207(e)) is told in
writing the start and end date of that period. The former
Members and staff who are leaving for the private sector are
also told in writing, and their willful disregard of this
provision can be prosecuted for a felony with up to five years
in prison (18 U.S.C. 216.)
Title III makes improvements to the Rules of the House of
Representatives for gifts and travel, and addresses many of the
concerns raised by the behavior of lobbyists such as Abramoff.
House rules provide that gifts can only be accepted in certain
circumstances, and they place limits on the overall amounts of
such gifts. Similarly, registered lobbyists are already
forbidden in the rules from funding the travel of Members or
staff. (See rule XXV of the Rules of the House of
Representatives) Given allegations made in the Abramoff matter
about whether a proper entity funded Member and staff travel,
as well as evidence that a large number of Members on both
sides of the aisle do not understand all of the nuances of the
current gift and travel rules, the bill suspends all privately
funded travel while the Committee on Standards of Official
Conduct makes recommendations to the Committee about these
matters. The report of the Committee on Standards of Official
Conduct is to include, among other things, their views about
the ability of the gift and travel rules to protect the House,
its Members, and staff from the appearance of impropriety and
about how privately funded travel can be ethically conducted.
During the Committee's consideration of this legislation,
it became clear that many privately funded fact-finding trips
do provide the Members of the legislative branch of the world's
only superpower with crucial information necessary to make
informed decisions on behalf of the American people. While some
have suggested that drawing a line between an educational trip
and ``boondoggle'' would not be too difficult, the Committee's
review of these issues reinforced the need for the Committee on
Standards of Official Conduct to instruct the Committee about
what is ethical travel, and how it should be pre-cleared and
reported. H.R. 4975 requires the Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct to report its recommendations on these issues
to the Committee by December 15, 2006. This input is very
important, for the Standards Committee is the interpreter of
the Members' Code of Conduct as well as the rules concerning
gifts and travel. Accordingly, the Committee rejected an
amendment to strike the section of the bill that suspends
privately funded travel until the Standards Committee can
report its recommendations. This amendment also would have
established a pre-approval and disclosure system through the
Standards Committee for privately-funded travel, rather than
allowing for the Standards Committee to first provide its
expertise to the Committee on these issues.
Title IV of H.R. 4975 addresses enforcement, an area of
much criticism in prior efforts at lobbying reform, by
empowering the House Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to
conduct random audits of lobbying reports and to make referrals
to the Department of Justice for violations. This is the first
time anyone has been given a mandate to regularly review these
lobbying disclosures for accuracy. Additionally, the rules
already provide that if the OIG finds information involving
possible violations of any rule of the House or of any law
applicable to the performance of official duties, this
information can be reported to the Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct. (Clause 6, rule II of the Rules of the House
of Representatives.) The Constitution, in clause 2, section 5,
of Article I, gives each House the power to punish its Members
for misbehavior. The OIG reporting where necessary to the
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct regarding Member or
staff conduct, or to the Department of Justice regarding
lobbyist conduct is the most appropriate enforcement mechanism
under the Constitution.
Title V of the bill reforms the earmarking process for
appropriations, requires frequent and comprehensive ethics
training for all staff, and requires that the ethics manual be
regularly updated. Earmark reform is an important part of
increasing the transparency of how the peoples' business is
conducted. Regular ethics training with up to date materials
are key components of restoring and maintaining the public's
faith in the Congress and ensuring that Members, Officers, and
employees of the House understand the intricacies of the
House's standards of conduct.
During the markup of H.R. 4975, the Committee adopted two
amendments to title V. First, an amendment was adopted to
improve the bill by modifying the definition of an ``earmark''
in section 501 tocover earmarks where the budget authority is
directed to a person, State, or Congressional district through a
Federal agency when it circumvents normal formulas or the competitive
bidding process. Second, an amendment was adopted to improve section
502 to require the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to
establish a mandatory training program for House employees, and to
authorize the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of
Representatives to withhold the pay of any employee who does not
complete the training at least once per Congress. This amendment also
directs, within the boundaries of the Constitution, that the Committee
on Standards of Official Conduct shall establish a training program for
Members and encourage their participation.
Title VI closes an important loophole in campaign finance
law by keeping unlimited soft money out of 527 organizations
and requiring them to live under the rules that govern other
political committees. The House recently expressed its approval
for these provisions by adopting H.R. 513 by a vote of 218-209
on April 5, 2006. Finally, Title VII of the bill punishes
Members who abuse the public trust when they are convicted of
bribery, acting as an agent of a foreign principal, or
conspiracy to commit these crimes by eliminating their
taxpayer-funded Member pensions.
Taken together, these provisions in H.R. 4975 improve the
transparency of the legislative process while achieving a
balance between protecting the public and maintaining
constitutional rights. The legislation provides for faster
reporting, more information, and greater public access to
reports filed by lobbyists. It addresses the problem of the
revolving door between the government and the private sector
with notice to all affected entities, and it requires
notification of employment negotiations by Members. It
prohibits taking official actions to influence hiring decisions
on a partisan basis. The bill doubles the penalty for
violations, and it empowers the House Office of the Inspector
General with broad LDA enforcement and oversight
responsibilities. It suspends privately funded travel until the
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct can make
recommendations to the Committee on travel and gifts. It bans
registered lobbyists from flying with Members on corporate
flights, and it values tickets without a price at the highest
rate possible. It provides real earmarking reform, mandates
regular ethics training, and requires a biennial publication of
the ethics manual. It closes an important soft money loophole
in campaign finance law, and it punishes Members who abuse the
public trust by preventing them from collecting their taxpayer-
funded Member retirement.
In conclusion, H.R. 4975, the Lobbying Accountability and
Transparency Act of 2006, constitutes an important step toward
providing the American people with better transparency about
the pressures applied to the legislative branch by lobbyists.
Informed voters help keep government officials accountable
while decreasing the power of the back room.
Even with the existing rules regarding lobbying, criminals
such as Abramoff, Rudy, Scanlon, Cunningham, and Pfeffer are
going to jail. Their fates will serve as a warning to anyone
who seeks to corrupt the American spirit or its institutions.
Nonetheless, H.R. 4975 further strengthens the rules and laws
that hold Members, staff, and lobbyists accountable for the
public trust that they serve.
Hearings
The Committee on Rules held a hearing on H.R. 4975, the
Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, on March
30, 2006. The Committee heard testimony from the following
Members: Messrs. Shays, Buyer, Kirk, Ms. Wilson, Ms. Schmidt,
Messrs. Obey, Frank of Massachusetts, Cardin, Price of North
Carolina, Meehan, Blumenauer, Doggett, Allen, Baird, Emanuel,
and Ms. Bean.
The Committee also held several days of hearings on the
general topic of lobbying reform on March 2 and 9, 2006. On
those days of hearings, the Committee heard testimony from: The
Honorable Karen Haas, Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, The
Honorable James Bacchus, Chairman, Global Trade Practice Group,
Greenberg Traurig, LLP, Dr. Thomas Mann, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
Brookings Institution, Mr. Paul Miller, President, American
League of Lobbyists, Dr. Norman Ornstein, Ph.D., Resident
Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Dr. James Thurber,
Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Government and Director of
the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, American
University, Mr. Fred Wertheimer, President, Democracy 21, The
Honorable Mickey Edwards, Director, Aspen Institute-Rodel
Fellowships in Public Leadership & Lecturer of Public &
International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton
University, Mr. Robert Bauer, Firmwide Chair, Political Law
Practice, Perkins Coie, LLP, Mr. William Daroff, Vice President
for Public Policy and Director of the Washington Office, United
Jewish Communities, Mr. Michael G. Franc, Vice President,
Government Relations, The Heritage Foundation, and Mr. Robert
Hynes, Principal, Colling Murphy Swift Hynes.
Committee Consideration
The Committee on Rules met on April 5, 2006 in open session
and ordered H.R. 4975 favorably reported to the House as
amended by a voice vote.
Committee Votes
Clause 3(b) of rule XIII of the Rules of the House of
Representatives requires the Committee to list the record votes
on the motion to report legislation and amendments thereto. A
motion by Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida to report the bill
to the House with a favorable recommendation was agreed to by a
voice vote. Record votes were ordered on the following
amendments; the names of Members voting for and against follow:
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 167
An amendment by Ms. Slaughter, No. 2, to require an
itemized list of any scope violations in the rule providing for
consideration of a conference report (items that were not in
either the House or Senate passed versions of the bill), to
provide for a consideration point of order when this rule is
violated, and to provide a motion to strike items that are
beyond the scope of a conference, was not agreed to by a record
vote of 4 yeas and 9 nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Ms.
Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay;
Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea;
Mrs. Matsui--Yea.
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 168
An amendment by Ms. Slaughter, No. 4, to require, whenever
a recorded vote is held open for more than 30 minutes, that the
Congressional Record include a log of the voting activity that
occurs after that 30-minute time frame to show which Members
voted after that time and which Members changed their votes
during that period, was not agreed to by a record vote of 4
yeas and 9 nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Ms.
Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay;
Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea;
Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 169
An amendment by Ms. Slaughter, No. 5, creating a new
Majority/Minority Leader point of order that can be raised
against consideration of a conference report where the
integrity of the conference is in question, was not agreed to
by a record vote of 4 yeas and 9 nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Ms.
Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay;
Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea;
Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 170
An amendment by Ms. Slaughter, No. 6, providing that staff
on the Committee of Standards of Official Conduct can be
dismissed only by an affirmative vote of the Standards
Committee, was not agreed to by a record vote of 4 yeas and 9
nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Ms.
Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay;
Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea;
Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 171
An amendment by Mr. McGovern, No. 7, providing that
whenever 3-day layover is waived against a conference report,
it is in order for a Member to raise a point of order to
determine whether the House will consider the conference
report, was not agreed to by a record vote of 4 yeas and 9
nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Ms.
Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay;
Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea;
Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 172
An amendment by Mr. McGovern, No. 8, regulating Member
travel on private jets by requiring Members to pay full charter
costs when using corporate jets for official travel and to
disclose relevant information in the Congressional Record,
including the owner or lessee of the aircraft and the other
passengers on the flight, was not agreed to by a record vote of
4 yeas and 9 nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Ms.
Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay;
Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea;
Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 173
An amendment by Mr. McGovern, No. 9, clarifying that the
``face value'' of a ticket for the purposes of section 304
means the cost of that ticket if a member of the general public
were purchasing it, was not agreed to by a record vote of 4
yeas and 9 nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Ms.
Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay;
Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea;
Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 174
An amendment by Mr. Hastings of Florida, No. 11,
establishing a pre-approval and post-travel disclosure system
through the Standards Committee for privately-funded travel,
was not agreed to by a record vote of 3 yeas and 8 nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Diaz-Balart--Nay; Mr.
Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Mrs. Capito--Nay; Mr.
Cole--Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay; Mr. McGovern--
Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea; Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 175
An amendment by Ms. Matsui, No. 12, requiring a roll-call
vote, in an open meeting, on the final version of a conference
report, was not agreed to by a record vote of 4 yeas and 7
nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr.
Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Mrs. Capito--Nay; Mr. Bishop--
Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay; Mrs. Slaughter--Yea; Mr. McGovern--Yea;
Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea; Mrs. Matsui--Yea
Rules Committee Record Vote No. 176
An amendment by Ms. Matsui, No. 13, changing the waiting
pe- riod before a resolution reported by the Committee on Rules
may be considered on the House Floor after it is reported from
one legislative day to a 24-hour period, was not agreed to by a
record vote of 4 yeas and 8 nays:
Mr. Dreier, Chairman--Nay; Mr. Hastings (WA)--Nay; Mr.
Sessions--Nay; Mr. Putnam--Nay; Mrs. Capito--Nay; Mr. Cole--
Nay; Mr. Bishop--Nay; Mr. Gingrey--Nay; Mrs. Slaughter--Yea;
Mr. McGovern--Yea; Mr. Hastings (FL)--Yea; Mrs. Matsui--Yea
The following amendments were also considered:
An amendment by Mrs. Capito, No. 1, improving the training
provisions of the bill to require the Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct to establish a mandatory training program for
House employees, and authorizing the CAO to withhold the pay of
any employee who does not complete the training at least once
per Congress, was agreed to by a voice vote.
A second degree amendment to the amendment by Mrs. Capito
by Mr. McGovern, No. 1a, striking section 502(a)(1) (regarding
the withholding of employee pay for not completing the required
ethics training), to the Capito Amendment No. 1, was not agreed
to by voice vote.
An amendment by Mr. Gingrey, No. 3, modifying the
definition of ``earmark'' in section 501 to cover earmarks
where the budget authority is directed to a person, State, or
Congressional district through a Federal agency when it
circumvents normal formulas or competitive bidding process, was
agreed to by voice vote.
An amendment by Mr. Hastings of Florida, No. 11, mandating
public disclosure of which Members sponsor earmarks and
disclosure of whether Members have a financial interest in the
earmark, and providing that earmarks include authorizations,
appropriations, and tax provisions, was not agreed to by voice
vote.
Committee Oversight Findings
Pursuant to clause 3(c)(1) of rule XIII of the Rules of the
House of Representatives, the Committee made findings that are
reflected in this report.
Performance Goals and Objectives
Pursuant to clause 3(c)(4) of rule XIII of the Rules of the
House of Representatives, the Committee establishes the
following performance related goals and objectives for this
legislation:
Utilizing the authority granted in this legislation, the
Clerk of the House of Representatives will initiate a more
robust electronic reporting and disclosure system to track and
make available to the public the activities of lobbyists, and
the Inspector General of the House will utilize the authority
granted by the bill to ensure the accuracy of the information
reported pursuant to the Lobby Disclosure Act, as amended.
New Budget Authority, Entitlement Authority, and Tax Expenditures
In compliance with clause 3(c)(2) of rule XIII of the Rules
of the House of Representatives, the Committee finds that this
legislation would result in no new budget authority,
entitlement authority, or tax expenditures or revenues.
Committee Cost Estimate
The Committee adopts as its own the cost estimate prepared
by the Director of the Congressional Budget Office pursuant to
section 402 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
Congressional Budget Office Estimate
Pursuant to clause 3(c)(3) of rule XIII of the Rules of the
House of Representatives, the following is the cost estimate
provided by the Congressional Budget Office pursuant to section
402 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974:
U.S. Congress,
Congressional Budget Office,
Washington, DC, April 19, 2006.
Hon. David Drier,
Chairman, Committee on Rules,
House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has
prepared the enclosed cost estimate for H.R. 4975, the Lobbying
Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006.
If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be
pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contacts are Matthew
Pickford (for federal costs) and Craig Cammarata (for the
private-sector impact).
Sincerely,
Donald B. Marron,
Acting Director.
Enclosure.
H.R. 4975--Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006
Summary: H.R. 4975 would amend the Lobbying Disclosure Act
of 1995 and the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Major
provisions of the legislation would expand reporting
requirements for lobbyists and Members of Congress, temporarily
ban privately funded travel, create additional restrictions on
gifts and travel, and require training for Members and staff on
ethics issues. The legislation also would eliminate pension
benefits for Members convicted of certain offenses. In
addition, H.R. 4975 would require certain political
organizations involved in federal election activities to
register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 4975 would cost about
$2 million in fiscal year 2007 and $1 million a year in
subsequent years, subject to the availability of appropriated
funds. Enacting the bill could affect direct spending and
revenues from reduced pensions for certain Members of Congress,
and new violations of campaign finance laws, but CBO estimates
that those effects would not be significant.
H.R. 4975 contains no intergovernmental mandates as defined
in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) and would impose no
costs on state, local, or tribal governments.
H.R. 4975 would impose several private-sector mandates, as
defined in UMRA, on the lobbying industry and certain political
organizations. Based on information from government sources,
CBO estimates that the total direct cost of all of the mandates
in the bill would fall below the annual threshold established
by UMRA for private-sector mandates ($128 million in 2006,
adjusted annually for inflation).
Estimated cost to the Federal Government: The estimated
budgetary impact of H.R. 4975 is shown in the following table.
The costs of this legislation fall within budget function 800
(general government).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By fiscal year, in millions of
dollars--
---------------------------------------
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHANGES IN SPENDING SUBJECT TO APPROPRIATION \1\
Estmated Authorization Level.... 2 1 1 1 1
Estimated Outlays............... 2 1 1 1 1
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Enacting the bill could also reduce pensions for certain Members of
Congress, and increase revenues from civil penalties, but CBO
estimates any such effects would be less than $500,000 a year.
Basis of estimate: For this estimate, CBO assumes that the
bill will be enacted near the end of fiscal year 2006 and that
spending will follow historical patterns for similar
activities.
Spending subject to appropriation
The legislation would expand reporting requirements for
lobbyists and would require the Congress to provide Members and
staff with additional training on ethics issues. Based on
information from Congressional administrative staff, CBO
estimates that Congressional offices and committees would spend
about $1 million annually to collect and disseminate newly
reported information from lobbyists and to provide the required
ethics training.
In addition, H.R. 4975 would require certain political
organizations, defined by section 527 of the tax code, to
register with the FEC. Based on information from the FEC and
subject to the availability of appropriated funds, CBO
estimates that implementing the legislation would cost the FEC
about $1 million in fiscal year 2007. This cost covers the one-
time computer-related expenses as well as writing new
regulations to implement the new provisions of the legislation.
In future years, the legislation would increase general
administrative costs to the FEC, but we estimate that those
additional costs would not be significant.
Revenues and direct spending
Enacting H.R. 4975 would likely increase collections of
fines and penalties for violations of campaign finance law for
failure to register with the FEC. Such collections are recorded
in the budget as revenues. CBO estimates that the additional
collections of penalties and fines would not be significant
because of the relatively small number of cases likely to be
involved.
H.R. 4975 would also deny pension benefits (based on
periods of elected service) to Members convicted of bribery,
acting as foreign agents, or defrauding the federal government.
CBO estimates that any savings in direct spending as a result
of this provision would not be significant because we expect
that the number of violations would be small.
Estimated impact on State, local, and tribal governments:
H.R. 4975 contains no intergovernmental mandates as defined in
the UMRA and would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal
governments.
Estimated impact on the private sector: H.R. 4975 would
impose several private-sector mandates, as defined in UMRA, on
the lobbying industry and certain political organizations. The
bill would impose new restrictions on lobbying activities and
require lobbyists and lobbying organizations to submit
additional reports and disclosures to the Senate Office of
Public Records and the Office of the Clerk of the House. The
bill also would require certain 527 organizations to register
as political committees with the Federal Election Commission
and comply with current regulations on federal campaign
finance. Based on information from government sources, CBO
estimates that the total direct cost of all of the mandates in
the bill would fall below the annual threshold established by
UMRA for private-sector mandates ($128 million in 2006,
adjusted annually for inflation).
The bill would impose several new requirements on lobbyists
and lobbying organizations. Requirements on lobbyists and
lobbying organizations would include but not be limited to:
Electronic filing of lobbyist registrations
and disclosure reports filed with the Secretary of the
Senate or the Clerk of the House of Representatives;
Quarterly, instead of semiannual, filing of
lobbying disclosure reports; and
Additional information in registration and
disclosure reports including information on:
contributions to Members, Congressional staff, federal
officers and political entities by lobbyists; any gifts
distributed by lobbying entities; and whether or not
each registered lobbyist had prior experience as a
covered executive or legislative branch official.
As of January 1, 2006, all lobbyists and lobbying
organizations must register and file semiannual disclosure
reports electronically to the Clerk of the House. However,
electronic reporting is still optional for lobbyists and
lobbying organizations filing in the Senate. Since all
lobbyists must file similar reports to both the Clerk of the
House and the Secretary of the Senate, the incremental cost of
filing reports electronically to the Senate should be minimal.
Generally, because such entities already collect the
information requested in the registration and disclosure
reports, CBO estimates that the incremental costs associated
with the new reporting requirements in the bill would not be
substantial relative to UMRA's annual threshold for private-
sector mandates.
The bill also would prohibit lobbyists from traveling on an
aircraft that is owned by a client and is not licensed by the
FAA to operate for compensation if a Member, delegate, resident
commissioner, officer or employee of the House is on board.
According to government and industry sources, roughly 500 or
less of those recorded flights are made each year. That
estimate includes federal officials and staff from both the
executive and legislative branches. H.R. 4975 would only
restrict the travel of a lobbyist with House officials and
staff. The bill would not prohibit employees of the client from
traveling on such planes with a Member, delegate, resident
commissioner, officer or employee of the House. Thus, CBO
estimates that the direct costs associated with complying with
the mandate would be minimal compared to UMRA's threshold.
The bill would change the definition of a political
committee to include certain ``527'' organizations, as defined
by section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code. Those
organizations would be required to register as political
committees with the FEC and comply with current regulations on
federal campaign finance including certain limits on
contributions and reporting and disclosure requirements. Based
on information from the FEC, CBO estimates that the direct
costs associated with those requirements would be minimal.
Previous CBO estimates: Many of the lobbying reform and
campaign finance provisions in the eight pieces of legislation
listed below are contained in H.R. 4975. The differences among
these bills are reflected in the cost estimates. However, the
four versions of H.R. 4975 are very similar, and as such, their
estimated costs are nearly identical.
On April 19, 2006, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for H.R. 4975 as ordered reported by the House Committee on
Government Reform on April 6, 2006.
On April 19, 2006, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for H.R. 4975 as ordered reported by the House Committee on
House Administration on April 6, 2006.
On April 19, 2006, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for H.R. 4975 as ordered reported by the House Committee on the
Judiciary on April 5, 2006.
On March 7, 2006, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for S. 2349, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability
Act of 2006, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on
Rules and Administration on March 1, 2006.
On March 6, 2006, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for S. 2128, the Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act
of 2006, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on March 3, 2006.
On July 13, 2005, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for H.R. 513, the 527 Reform Act of 2005, as ordered reported
by the House Committee on Administration on June 29, 2005.
On July 6, 2005, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for S. 1053, the 527 Reform Act of 2005, as ordered reported by
the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on April 27,
2005.
On June 17, 2005, CBO transmitted a cost estimate
for H.R. 1316, the 527 Fairness Act of 2005, as ordered
reported by the House Committee on House Administration on June
8, 2005.
Estimate prepared by: Federal Costs: Matthew Pickford and
Deborah Reis. Impact on State, Local, and Tribal Governments:
Sarah Puro. Impact on the Private-Sector: Craig Cammarata.
Estimate approved by: Peter H. Fontaine, Deputy Assistant
Director for Budget Analysis.
Federal Mandates Statement
The Committee adopts as its own the estimate of Federal
mandates prepared by the Director of the Congressional Budget
Office pursuant to section 423 of the Unfunded Mandates Reform
Act.
Advisory Committee Statement
No advisory committees within the meaning of section 5(b)
of the Federal Advisory Committee Act were created by this
legislation.
Constitutional Authority Statement
Pursuant to clause 3(d)(1) of rule XIII of the Rules of the
House of Representatives, the Committee finds that the
Constitutional authority of Congress to enact this legislation
is provided by article 1, section 5, clause 2 of the
Constitution of the United States (relating to each House of
Congress determining the rules of its proceedings).
Applicability to the Legislative Branch
The Committee finds that the legislation addresses the
terms and conditions of employment or access to public services
or accommodations within the meaning of section 102(b)(3) of
the Congressional Accountability Act only insofar as they
relate to the Legislative Branch, so a statement as to their
applicability is not required.
Section-by-Section Analysis of the Legislation
Section 1. Short title; table of contents
This section provides the short title of the bill, the
Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, and
provides a table of contents.
TITLE I--ENHANCING LOBBYING DISCLOSURE
Section 101. Quarterly filing of lobbying disclosure reports
Section 101 amends section 5 of the Lobbying Disclosure Act
of 1995 to provide for quarterly filing of reports under the
Act, rather than the semiannual reporting requirement under
existing law, and makes other conforming changes.
Section 102. Electronic filing of lobbying registrations and disclosure
reports
Section 102 provides that registrations and reports
mandated under the LDA must be filed electronically in addition
to any other form that may be required by the Secretary of the
Senate (Secretary) and the Clerk of the House (Clerk). The
provision also permits the Secretary and the Clerk to grant
extensions for the time to file electronically if (1) the
registrant files in every form required other than electronic,
and (2) the Secretary or Clerk finds good cause to extend the
due date upon a request by the registrant.
Section 103. Public database of lobbying disclosure information
This section mandates that the Secretary and the Clerk
maintain a searchable, sortable, and downloadable electronic
database freely available to the public over the Internet that
includes the information contained in registrations and reports
filed under the LDA and is searchable and sortable, at a
minimum, by each of the major categories of information
required in the registrations and reports. It also provides
that registrations or reports received electronically by the
Secretary or Clerk must be made available for public inspection
over the Internet not later than 48 hours after they are
received. Finally, it authorizes such sums as may be necessary
to carry out these provisions.
Section 104. Disclosure by registered lobbyists of past executive
branch and congressional employment
Section 104 amends the LDA by extending the current
requirement to disclose past Congressional and executive branch
employment from the current 2 years to 7 years.
Section 105. Disclosure of lobbyist contributions and gifts
Section 105 requires each registrant (and each political
committee affiliated with or each employee listed as a lobbyist
by that registrant) to report the recipient, date, and amount
of each contribution made to a Federal candidate or
officeholder, leadership PAC, political party committee, or
other political committee, so long as that contribution must be
reported to the Federal Election Commission.
The section also requires the reporting of any gifts given
to a covered legislative branch official which counts toward
the cumulative annual limit for gifts under the Rules of the
House of Representatives.
Section 106. Increased penalty for failure to comply with lobbying
disclosure requirements
This section increases the civil penalties under the LDA
from a maximum of $50,000 to $100,000.
TITLE II--SLOWING THE REVOLVING DOOR
Section 201. Notification of post-employment restrictions
This section amends the post-employment restrictions
contained in section 207(e) of title 18, United States Code, to
direct the Clerk, in consultation with the Committee on
Standards of Official Conduct, to inform a Member, officer, or
employee who is subject to the post-employment restrictions on
lobbying contacts contained in that section of the beginning
and ending dates of the restriction. The Clerk must also inform
each office of the House to which the restriction applies of
the restriction as well.
Section 202. Disclosure by Members of the House of Representatives of
employment negotiations
Section 202 amends the Code of Official Conduct contained
in rule XXIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives to
require that once a Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner
begins negotiating compensation for prospective employment (or
has any other arrangement concerning prospective employment
that creates a conflict of interest or the appearance of a
conflict of interest), he or she must file a statement with the
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct disclosing the
negotiations within 5 days after commencing the negotiation.
The section also provides that the Member, Delegate, or
Resident Commissioner should refrain from voting on any
legislative measure pending before the House or its committees
if the negotiation may create a conflict of interest.
Section 203. Wrongly influencing, on a partisan basis, an entity's
employment decisions or practices
Section 203 amends the Code of Conduct to explicitly
restate the existing standards of conduct for Members,
officers, and employees of the House that it is improper to
condition the taking or withholding of an official act, or
influence or offer or threaten to influence, the official act
of another, in return for a private or public entity's
employment decision or practice based on partisan political
affiliation.
TITLE III--SUSPENSION OF PRIVATELY FUNDED TRAVEL; CURBING LOBBYIST
GIFTS
Section 301. Suspension of privately-funded travel
Section 301 provides that, notwithstanding the exceptions
described in clause 5 of rule XXV of the Rules of the House, no
Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer or employee of
the House may accept a gift of travel from any private source.
Section 302. Recommendations from the Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct on gifts and travel
Section 302 directs the Committee on Standards of Official
Conduct to report its recommendations on changes to rule XXV of
the Rules of the House (regarding acceptance of gifts and
travel) to the Committee on Rules on or before December 15,
2006. In reporting its recommendations, the Committee on
Standards is directed to consider a number of issues, including
whether the current rules protect Members, officers, and
employees from the appearance of impropriety, the degree to
which privately-funded travel meets the representational needs
of Members, officers, and employees, the sources and methods of
funding for privately-funded travel, the adequacy of the
current system of approval and disclosure of privately-funded
travel, the degree to which the current exceptions to the
prohibition on the acceptance of gifts contained in rule XXV
meet the representational and personal needs of the House, its
Members, officers, and employees, the clarity of the limitation
and its exceptions, and the suitability of the current dollar
limitations contained in the rule.
Section 303. Prohibiting registered lobbyists on corporate flights
Section 303 amends the LDA to prohibit a registered
lobbyist from traveling as a passenger or crew member aboard
the flight of an aircraft not licensed by the Federal Aviation
Administration to operate for compensation or hire and which is
owned by the client of a lobbyist or lobbying firm when a
Member, officer, or employee of the House is also a passenger
or crew member on the same flight.
Section 304. Valuation of tickets to sporting and entertainment events
This section amends rule XXV of the Rules of the House to
provide that, for purposes of valuation under that rule, a gift
of a ticket to a sporting or entertainment event must be valued
at the face value of the ticket, except that when the ticket
does not have a face value, it must be valued at the highest
cost of a ticket with a face value for the event.
TITLE IV--OVERSIGHT OF LOBBYING AND ENFORCEMENT
Section 401. Audits of lobbying reports by House Inspector General
This section authorizes the Office of the Inspector General
of the House of Representatives to have access to all
registrations and reports received by the Clerk of the House
under the LDA. Further, the Inspector General is directed to
conduct random audits of that information as necessary to
ensure compliance with the Act. The section also grants the
Inspector General the authority to refer violations of the LDA
to the Department of Justice. The Committee notes that clause
6(a)(5) of rule II of the Rules of the House already grants the
Inspector General the authority to refer ``information
involving possible violations by a Member, Delegate, Resident
Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House of any rule of
the House or of any law applicable to the performance of
official duties or the discharge of official responsibilities''
to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. The
Committee expects that the Office of the Inspector General
would exercise this authority if it found any potential
violations during the audit process authorized by this section.
Section 402. House Inspector General review and annual reports
Subsection (a) requires that the Inspector General of the
House review on an ongoing basis the effectiveness of the
activities carried out by the Clerk under section 6 of the LDA,
and whether the Clerk has all of the necessary authority and
resources for effective oversight and compliance of the Act.
Subsection (b) requires that the Inspector General submit an
annual report on the review, including any recommendations for
improvements.
TITLE V--INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS
Section 501. Earmarking reform
This section provides a special order of the House
providing that it will not be in order to consider (1) a
general appropriation bill unless the bill includes a list of
earmarks in the bill or in the report to accompany the bill,
including the name of any Member who submitted a request to the
Committee on Appropriations for an earmark included in the
list, or (2) the conference report accompanying a general
appropriation bill unless the joint explanatory statement of
managers accompanying that conference report includes a list of
earmarks, including the name of any Member who submitted a
request to the Committee on Appropriations for an earmark
included in the list, which were not committed to conference by
either House or were not in the report accompanying the House
or Senate bills. If a rule waives the application of this order
to a conference report, a point of order lies against the rule.
Disposition of the point of order against the bill (or
against the rule in the case of a conference report) will be as
a question of consideration put by the Chair, and debatable for
20 minutes, equally divided between a proponent and opponent.
The section defines an ``earmark'' as a provision in either
legislative or report language providing or recommending a
specific amount of discretionary budget authority to a non-
Federal entity, if that entity is specifically identified in
the bill or report, or if the budget authority is allocated
outside of the normal formula-driven or competitive bidding
process and is targeted or directed to an identifiable person,
State, or Congressional district. The definition also describes
the treatment of government sponsored enterprises, Federal
facilities, Federal lands, Indian tribes, foreign governments,
and intergovernmental international organizations.
Section 502. Mandatory ethics training for House employees
This section amends rule II of the Rules of the House to
prohibit the Chief Administrative Officer (``CAO'') from paying
compensation to an employee of the House when the Committee on
Standards of Official Conduct has determined that the employee
is not in compliance with the regulations regarding mandatory
ethics training issued pursuant to clause 3(r) of rule XI. The
Committee anticipates that this provision will be rarely used,
and that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct will
make every effort to bring the employee in question into
compliance with the regulations prior to making the
determination described in this provision.
It also amends rule XI to direct the Committee on Standards
of Official Conduct to establish a mandatory program of regular
ethics training for employees of the House. The regulations
must provide that each employee of the House must complete
ethics training offered by the Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct at least once during each congress. Employees
hired after the adoption of the regulations must complete the
training within 30 days of being hired. Furthermore, the
requirement is tolled for any employee who works in a Member's
district office until 30 days after that office is notified
that the training is available over the Internet.
Upon the completion of training, each employee is required
to file a written certification with the Committee on Standards
of Official Conduct that the employee has completed the
required ethics training and is familiar with the contents of
any publications designated by the Standards Committee.
Employees are defined as any individual whosecompensation is
disbursed by the CAO, but does specifically does not include a Member,
Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.
While the Committee recognizes that a mandatory requirement
for the ethics training of Members could be construed as a
qualification of service that could raise Constitutional
questions, the Committee believes that ethics training for
Members is vitally important so that they know and understand
the rules and laws applicable to their service. To that end,
the section also directs the Committee on Standards of Official
Conduct to establish a program of regular ethics training for
Members, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner similar to
the program established for employees of the House, and
encourage Member participation in the program.
Section 503. Biennial publication of ethics manual
This section requires that, not later than 120 days after
the enactment of this legislation, and one time in each
Congress thereafter, the Committee on Standards of Official
Conduct publish an up-to-date ethics manual for Members,
officers, and employees of the House and make the manual
available to those individuals. It further provides that the
Standards Committee has a duty to keep all Members, officers,
and employees of the House apprised of current rulings or
advisory opinions when those rulings or opinions constitute
changes to or interpretations of current policies.
TITLE VI--REFORM OF SECTION 527 ORGANIZATIONS
Section 601. Short title
This section provides the short title of this title, the
527 Reform Act of 2006.
Section 602. Treatment of section 527 organizations
This section amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of
1971 (FECA; 2 U.S.C. 431 et seq.) to require 527 groups to
register as political committees with the Federal Election
Commission (FEC) and comply with Federal campaign finance laws,
unless they raise and spend money exclusively in connection
with non-Federal candidate elections, state or local ballot
initiatives, or the nomination or confirmation of individuals
to non-elected offices, such as judicial positions. The bill
provides a narrow exception for 527 groups whose annual
receipts are less than $25,000, or whose activities are related
exclusively to state or local elections or ballot initiatives.
However, this exception doesn't apply if a 527 group spends
more then $1,000 (aggregate) to transmit a public communication
that promotes, supports, attacks, or opposes a Federal
candidate in the year prior to a Federal election, or spends
more than $1,000 (aggregate) to conduct any voter drive
activities in connection with an election in which a Federal
candidate appears on the ballot. However, the bill makes
further exceptions for groups that make voter drive
disbursements with respect to elections in only 1 state, make
no references or contributions to Federal candidates, or have
no Federal candidates, officeholders, or national political
parties control or materially participate in the direction of
the organization, solicit contributions, or direct
disbursements.
This section also provides that 527 groups registered as
political committees can only use Federal hard money
contributions to finance ads that promote or attack Federal
candidates, regardless of whether the ads expressly advocate
the election or defeat of the candidate.
Section 603. Rules for allocation of expenses between Federal and non-
Federal Activities
This section generally sets forth rules for allocation and
funding for certain expenses relating to Federal and non-
Federal activities of political committees. When a Federal
political committee makes expenditures for voter mobilization
activities or public communications that affect both Federal
and non-Federal elections, at least 50% of the costs of those
activities would have to be paid for with Federal hard money
contributions. Further, at least 50% of administrative and
fundraising expenses must be paid with funds from a Federal
account (not including fundraising solicitations or any other
activity that constitutes a public communication).
With regard to the non-Federal funds that can be used to
finance a portion of voter mobilization activities and public
communications that affect both Federal and non-Federal
elections, those funds must come from individuals only and must
be in amounts of not more than $25,000 per year per individual
donor. National political parties and Federal candidates are
prohibited from soliciting funds for these non-Federal
accounts. [This is similar to the provision in the Bipartisan
Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that places a limit on the size of
a non-Federal contribution that can be spent by state parties
on activities affecting both Federal and non-Federal elections.
$25,000 is the same amount that an individual can contribute to
a national political party. An individual can give only $5,000
per year to a Federal political committee to influence Federal
elections.] The section also requires that 527s must report all
receipts and disbursements from a qualified non-Federal
account.
Finally, the provision directs the FEC to promulgate
regulations within 180 days to implement these provisions and
establishes the effective date as 180 days after the date of
enactment of the legislation.
Section 604. Repeal of limit on amount of party expenditures on behalf
of candidates in general elections
This section repeals the limit on expenditures coordinated
between party committees and their candidates contained in
section 315(d) of FECA.
Section 605. Construction
This provision specifically provides that nothing in the
language of this title should be construed as approving,
ratifying, or endorsing a FEC regulation, establishing,
modifying, or otherwise affecting the IRS's definition of a
political organization, or affecting whether a 501(c)
organization should be considered a political committee.
Section 606. Judicial review
This section establishes certain special rules for actions
brought on constitutional grounds. Those actions (1) must be
filed in United States District Court for the District of
Columbia and be heard by a 3-judge panel; (2) a copy of the
complaint must be delivered to the Clerk of the House and the
Secretary of the Senate; and (3) a final decision in the
actions is only reviewable by direct appeal to the Supreme
Court. This section also provides that Members of Congress have
the right to intervene either in support or opposition to the
position of a party to the case regarding the constitutionality
of the provision or amendment and any Member may bring an
action for declaratory or injunctive relief to challenge the
constitutionally of any provision of the title.
Section 607. Severability
This section provides that, should any part of this title,
or amendment made by this title, be held to be
unconstitutional, the remainder of the title and amendments
made by the title will remain unaffected.
TITLE VII--FORFEITURE OF RETIREMENT BENEFITS
Section 701. Loss of pensions accrued during service as a Member of
Congress for abusing the public trust
This section amends section 8332 of title 5, United States
Code, to provide that a Member of Congress, if convicted of
bribery or acting as an agent of a foreign government
(including the associated conspiracy charges), will lose those
contributions made by the government to their Congressional
pension. The provision also authorizes the Office of Personnel
Management to promulgate regulations to carry out the section,
including regulations providing for the payment of the full
amount of the pension to the spouse or children of the Member
to the extent deemed necessary given the totality of the
circumstances.
Changes in the Rules of the House Made by the Bill, as Reported
In compliance with clause 3(g) of rule XIII of the Rules of
the House of Representatives, changes in the Rules of the House
made by the provisions of the bill referred to the Committee,
as reported, are shown as follows (existing provisions proposed
to be omitted are enclosed in black brackets, new matter is
printed in italics, existing provisions in which no change is
proposed are shown in roman):
RULES OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
* * * * * * *
RULE II
Other Officers and Officials
* * * * * * *
Chief Administrative Officer
4. (a) * * *
* * * * * * *
(d) The Chief Administrative Officer may not pay any
compensation to any employee of the House with respect to any
pay period during which the employee, as determined by the
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, is not in
compliance with the applicable requirements of regulations
promulgated pursuant to clause 3(r) of Rule XI.
* * * * * * *
RULE XI
Procedures of Committees and Unfinished Business
* * * * * * *
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct
3. (a) * * *
* * * * * * *
(r) The committee shall establish a program of regular ethics
training for employees of the House and promulgate regulations
providing for the following:
(1)(A) Except as otherwise provided, all employees of
the House are required to complete ethics training
offered by the committee at least once during each
congress. Any employee who is hired after the date of
adoption of such rules is required to complete such
training within 30 days of being hired.
(B) Any employee of the House who works in a Member's
district office shall not be required to complete such
ethics training until 30 days after the district office
has received a notice from the Committee on Standards
of Official Conduct that the required ethics training
program is available on the Internet.
(2) After any employee of the House completes such
ethics training, that employee shall file a written
certification with the committee that he is familiar
with the contents of any pertinent publications that
are so designated by the committee and has completed
the required ethics training.
(3) As used in this paragraph, the term ``employee of
the House'' refers to any individual whose compensation
is disbursed by the Chief Administrative Officer,
including any staff assigned to a Member's personal
office, any staff of a committee or leadership office,
or any employee of the Office of the Clerk, of the
Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, or of the
Sergeant-at-Arms, but does not include a Member,
Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.
(s) The committee shall establish a program of regular ethics
training for Members, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner
similar to the program established in paragraph (r), and
encourage participation in such program.
* * * * * * *
RULE XXIII
Code of Official Conduct
There is hereby established by and for the House the
following code of conduct, to be known as the ``Code of
Official Conduct'':
1. * * *
* * * * * * *
14. (a) A Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner shall
file with the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct a
statement that he or she is negotiating compensation for
prospective employment or has any arrangement concerning
prospective employment if a conflict of interest or the
appearance of a conflict of interest may exist. Such statement
shall be made within 5 days (other than Saturdays, Sundays, or
public holidays) after commencing the negotiation for
compensation or entering into the arrangement.
(b) A Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner should
refrain from voting on any legislative measure pending before
the House or any committee thereof if the negotiation described
in subparagraph (a) may create a conflict of interest.
15. A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or
employee of the House may not, with the intent to influence on
the basis of political party affiliation an employment decision
or employment practice of any private or public entity (except
for the Congress)--
(a) take or withhold, or offer or threaten to take or
withhold, an official act; or
(b) influence, or offer or threaten to influence, the
official act of another.
[14.] 16. (a) In this Code of Official Conduct, the
term ``officer or employee of the House'' means an
individual whose compensation is disbursed by the Chief
Administrative Officer.
* * * * * * *
RULE XXV
Limitations on Outside Earned Income and Acceptance of Gifts
* * * * * * *
Gifts
5. (a)(1)(A) * * *
* * * * * * *
(2)(A)(i) In this clause the term ``gift'' means a
gratuity, favor, discount, entertainment, hospitality,
loan, forbearance, or other item having monetary value.
The term includes gifts of services, training,
transportation, lodging, and meals, whether provided in
kind, by purchase of a ticket, payment in advance, or
reimbursement after the expense has been incurred.
(ii) A gift of a ticket to a sporting or entertainment event
shall be valued at the face value of the ticket, provided that
in the case of a ticket without a face value, the ticket shall
be valued at the highest cost of a ticket with a face value for
the event.
* * * * * * *
----------
MINORITY VIEWS
The markup of H.R. 4975 this Committee held on April 5,
2006 was one of a number of hearings and markups the House of
Representatives held in the early months of 2006 on the subject
of Congressional corruption, which the Majority has very
carefully named ``Lobbying Reform.'' The three hearings
Chairman Dreier conducted in the Rules Committee on this topic
allowed us to consider a number of different viewpoints and
develop a solid committee record. We appreciate Chairman
Dreier's willingness to conduct these hearings and sincerely
hope he will continue this spirit of deliberation when the
Rules Committee takes up the rule for H.R. 4975. We urge the
Committee to report a rule that will allow the House to conduct
an open and unrestricted debate on this crucial issue. The
first step we can take to restore the American people's
confidence in their legislative branch is to show them we are
carefully considering every reform idea. All of the serious
reform proposals both Democrats and Republicans have put
forward over the past few months deserve full consideration on
the House floor.
We oppose this bill in its current form because it pretends
that the degradation of the legislative process and ethical
standards in the House of Representatives we have all witnessed
over the past few Congresses can be solved with a few narrowly-
targeted fixes. By proposing this legislation, Republicans are
telling a seriously ill patient to take two aspirin and call
them in the morning. As the outside experts testified at our
hearings, and as a multitude of editorial writers, bloggers,
and other commentators have observed, the current Congress is
suffering from a systemic illness that affects every aspect of
its operations. We do not believe that a piecemeal response to
the scandals that have tarnished the reputation of the House
over the past few years is a credible one. A more serious, more
comprehensive proposal to reform Congress would address the
procedural abuses that have flourished in the past few years
and allowed special interests to capture the legislative
process. It would also restore accountability and enforcement
to the moribund House ethics process. Most importantly, it
would demand that Members and staff renew their commitment to
serving the people who sent them to Congress and restoring
Americans' faith in the ``People's House.''
Finally, we must note with disappointment that while
Chairman Dreier and the Republican leadership talked constantly
about crafting a ``bipartisan'' reform proposal, H.R. 4975 is a
Republican bill. It does not include any of the major policy
ideas put forward by Rules Committee Democrats (H. Res. 686),
Minority Leader Pelosi (H.R. 4682), or senior Democratic
Representatives Obey, Frank, Price, and Allen (H. Res. 659).
Furthermore, as the record of our markup demonstrates,
bipartisanship ended with the opening statements. During the
hearing, Democratic Rules Committee Members offered 12 separate
amendments we believed would strengthen the bill and create a
more credible reform package. As the record shows, our twelve
proposals did not garner even one vote from our Republican
colleagues on the Rules Committee. As we have pointed out
before, merely calling a process ``bipartisan'' does not make
it so.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See our Minority Views in House Report 109-220, Part 1,
Establishing the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the
Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. ``Lobbying Reform''--Broad Problem, Narrow Solution
We think the name the Majority has given to this effort and
to this legislation (the ``Lobbying Accountability and
Transparency Act of 2006'') is very revealing. First of all, by
calling their effort ``lobbying reform,'' Republicans are
suggesting that responsibility for the corruption scandals that
have plagued the House in the 109th Congress lies not with
elected Members of Congress, but with the people who lobby
them. Their argument seems to be that if you tweak a few rules
governing the lobbying profession, the ethics controversies
that have clouded the 109th Congress will go away. If now-
convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff had simply been required to
disclose his activities four times a year and disclose more
information about his political activities, supporters of this
bill seem to be saying, he would not have been able to operate
his criminal conspiracy in and around Congress.
But rapacious lobbyists are only part of the problem. As
Ranking Member Slaughter observed at one our hearings:
``Lobbyists, after all, can only knock on the door. Members are
the ones who have to open it.'' Or as the editorial page of the
Spokesman Review in Spokane, Washington recently put it:
``Congress continues to spin this as a lobbying issue, but it
takes two to do the influence tango.'' \2\ In other words, Jack
Abramoff was able to demand and receive unconscionable fees
from his clients because they believed he had access to the
decision-makers in Congress. The USA Today editorial board made
this same point in an editorial written earlier this year:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA) editorial, ``Kick the Habit,''
April 3, 2006.
What is most shocking in the Abramoff case is not
that he would want to make a fortune and spread it
around to gain power and influence. It is that so many
members of Congress would be so quick to accommodate
him.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ USA Today editorial, ``Lobbyist's Plea Likely to Expose Seamy
Underside of Congress,'' Jan. 4, 2006.
While we wholeheartedly support lobbying reform, we feel
the authors of H.R. 4975 have confused cause with effect--the
key to restoring the people's trust in their Congress is
restoring ``accountability and transparency'' to the way we do
our own business. According to an April 10th Washington Post-
ABC News poll, only 38% of Americans approve of the way the
Congress is doing its job--our lowest approval rating in 10
years. They have figuredout that Congress spends most of its
time these days working to help special interests, rather than the
public interest. Increasing disclosure requirements for lobbyists and
preventing them from flying with Members of Congress on corporate jets
are perhaps positive steps, but they will do little to change our
constituents' current attitude towards the legislative branch.
Congressional reform, not lobbying reform, is the key to restoring the
Americans' confidence in the people's House. As our colleague,
Representative David Price, observed in his Rules Committee testimony,
``a debate focused only on lobbyist disclosure and travel and gift
rules risks missing the forest for the trees.'' \4\ Another Committee
witness, Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, made this point to
us during our March 2nd hearing. He testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Lobbying Reform: Accountability Through Transparency, Original
Jurisdiction Hearing before the House Committee on Rules [hereinafter
March 30th Lobbying Reform Hearing], 109th Congress (March 30, 2006)
(statement of the Honorable David Price); available at: http://
www.rules.house.gov/techouse/109/lobref/Accountability/
109_lob_ref_oj_3_trans.htm.
All professional groups, including lobbyists, can
benefit from higher ethical standards and self-
regulation. But I think it is a mistake to assume the
broader problem is one of their own making. The
Congress would be well advised to focus on its own
Members and staff, for its leaders to articulate and
champion high ethical standards in dealing with
lobbyists and to set up educational programs whereby
those inside Congress are assisted in meeting those
standards, and to establish effective systems of
transparency and enforcement.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Lobbying Reform: Accountability Through Transparency, Original
Jurisdiction Hearing before the House Committee on Rules [hereinafter
March 2nd Lobbying Reform Hearing], 109th Congress (March 2, 2006)
(statement of Dr. Thomas Mann, Ph.D.); available at: http://
www.rules.house.gov/techouse/109/lobref/109_test_lob_ref_oj.htm
Dubbing this legislation ``lobbying reform'' also suggests
the current rules governing Members and staff members are not
adequate to regulate their behavior. While we have proposed a
number of reforms that we feel will improve the accountability
of the Congress to our constituents, we also must point out
that there are already a number of statutes and rules setting
standards for Members' behavior and regulating our
relationships with registered lobbyists. Moreover, as attorney
Robert Bauer reminded us at our March 9th hearing, our ethics
rules require us to not only follow their ``black-letter''
requirements; they also command us to ``observe their spirit as
well as their letter.'' The Code of Official Conduct requires
Members and staff not only to follow the rules, but also to
avoid actions (even lawful ones) that would discredit the
House.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Lobbying Reform: Reforming the Gift and Travel Rules, Original
Jurisdiction Hearing before the House Committee on Rules [hereinafter
Gift and Travel Reform Hearing], 109th Congress (March 9, 2006)
(statement of Robert Bauer); available at: http://www.rules.house.gov/
techouse/109/lobref/travel/109_test_lob_reftravel_oj.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is painfully obvious to all of us that the current
ethics scandals occurred because some Members and staff lost
sight of their obligation to observe the spirit of our rules.
Because Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the
exclusive authority to govern the conduct of and discipline its
Members, the House is a self-governing body. It is ultimately
our responsibility to create, and then honor, rules of conduct
that inspire confidence in the American people that their
elected representatives are acting in our country's best
interest. Perhaps the most effective ``lobbying reform'' would
be a new commitment by Members and staff of the House to
conduct themselves ``at all times in a manner that shall
reflect creditably on the House,'' as we are required to do
under clause 1 of Rule XXIII.
A number of witnesses before the Rules Committee made this
same point--plenty of good rules already exist, but they are
useless if the House does not enforce them. Professor James
Thurber urged us to ``strengthen the enforcement of existing
laws and ethics rules that cover Members of Congress, staff,
and lobbyists.'' He described the committees that oversee the
current rules as ``moribund'' and proposed the following:
At a minimum the Congressional committees with
jurisdiction over lobbying and ethics must hold regular
oversight hearings, investigate allegations of existing
ethics and lobbying law violations, and hold regular
training sessions for Members of Congress and staff
about existing rules and standards of conduct.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ March 2nd Lobbying Reform Hearing (statement of Dr. James
Thurber, Ph.D.).
Former Representative James Bachus reminded us that ``Rules
without the resources to make them real are but empty
promises.'' \8\ On the issue of gift ban limits, Professor
Thurber testified that the House does not need to change the
limits, rather ``it needs to effectively oversee and enforce
the existing gift ban rules.'' \9\ Our Republican colleague,
Representative Heather Wilson, made exactly the same point a
few weeks later when she testified: ``The problem with the gift
ban isn't the limit, it is the failure to enforce the gift rule
effectively.'' \10\ On Member travel rules, Professor Thurber
offered the following thought:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ March 2nd Lobbying Reform Hearing (statement of the Honorable
James Bachus).
\9\ March 2nd Lobbying Reform Hearing (statement of Dr. James
Thurber, Ph.D.).
\10\ March 30th Lobbying Reform Hearing (statement of the Honorable
Heather Wilson).
Congress does not need to prohibit the support of
legitimate educational travel by Members and staff; it
needs to enforce existing rules and ban non-educational
travel for Members of Congress and staff. Obviously,
the appropriate travel would not be, for example, an
eight-day golf trip to St. Andrews that happened to
include a one hour meeting or lecture.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ March 2nd Lobbying Reform Hearing (statement of Dr. James
Thurber, Ph.D.).
During our markup, Representative Hastings of Florida
offered an amendment (amendment # 11) that would have
reinforced the current House rules that allow Members to take
educational trips sponsored by private entities that are truly
education in nature. His proposal to require the Ethics
Committee to pre-approve groups for privately-funded travel and
to require Members and staff to more fully disclose their
travel itineraries was intended to clarify the common-sense
difference between education travel and travel that involves
playing golf with lobbyists. The Hastings amendment was
consistent with the almost unanimous view we heard from Members
and outside experts that legitimate educational travel helps
Members deepen their knowledge of important issues and forge
relationships with their House colleagues. Unfortunately, Rules
Committee Republicans rejected this proposal on party-line 3-9
vote, and instead supported a temporary travel moratorium
(section 301) that kicks the issue of privately-funded travel
down the road until after the November elections by banning all
travel (educational or not) until December 15, 2006.
We must also point out that H.R. 4975 does not fix all of
the problems it claims to fix, nor close all of the loopholes
it claims to close. For example, while section 303 of the bill
prohibits lobbyists from flying with Members of Congress on
corporate jets, it still allows Members of Congress to fly on
these private jets at the cost of a first-class ticket on a
commercial airline. While Section 304 of the bill requires
gifts of tickets to sporting events, concerts, or theater
performances to be valued at their ``face value,'' it does not
requires the tickets to be valued at the price a member of the
public would pay for the same ticket. During the markup,
Representative McGovern offered two amendments that would have
fixed these problems and applied the laws of economic supply-
and-demand to Members of Congress. One of his amendments
(amendment # 9), which was defeated on a party-line vote of 4-
9, would have valued a ticket for entertainment according to
what it would cost a member of the general public. His other
amendment (amendment # 8), again defeated by a party-line vote
of 4-9, would have required Members of Congress to pay the same
amount to fly on a private jet as it would cost a member of the
general public to fly on a corporate-owned or chartered jet.
This amendment also would have required Member to disclose who
owns the jet and the names of the people who accompanied him or
her on the flight.
The section of the bill addressing earmarks (section 501)
also appears to be less than airtight. While H.R. 4975 claims
to address the proliferation of earmarks in the legislative
process, the bill as it is currently written will not touch
many bills that contain provisions specifically targeted to
benefit individual persons or small groups. While the current
version of the bill requires appropriations bills to list
earmarks and the names of their sponsors inthe text of the bill
or accompanying report, it does not address the increasingly common
earmarking that occurs in authorizing committees. As Ranking Member
Obey pointed out in his March 30th testimony, the 2005 transportation
authorization bill contained more than 5,000 earmarks totaling more
than $24 billion, while last year's FSC-ETI tax bill contained billions
of dollars of narrowly targeted tax benefits to aid special interests
such as horse race tracks and fishing tackle box manufacturers. To
correct this oversight, Representative Hastings of Florida offered an
amendment (amendment # 10) requiring Members to disclose their earmark
requests for any type of bill, not just appropriations legislation.
Unfortunately, Rules Committee Republicans rejected this amendment to
broaden the earmark disclosure process.
Finally, in the past few days, we have learned that
Republican leaders have blocked bipartisan improvements the
Judiciary Committee made to H.R. 4975 during its markup of the
lobbying disclosure sections of the bill. The Committee Print
posted on the Rules Committee website on Friday, April 21, 2006
removed and/or watered down several Democratic and bipartisan
amendments the Judiciary Committee adopted that required
lobbyists to disclose more of their fundraising activities. In
other words, the Republican leadership unilaterally blocked a
bipartisan idea to improve lobbyist disclosure (the stated goal
of this legislation). Mr. Fred Wertheimer, President of
Democracy 21, who participated in our March 2nd hearing,
commented on this change, ``House Republican leaders have
turned an already unacceptable lobbying and ethics bill into a
complete joke.'' \12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Elana Schor, ``Watchdog Groups Blast House Lobby Reform
Bill,'' The Hill, April 25, 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. A House Without Ethics
It was amazing after the 2004 election we considered
repealing the rule requiring a Republican leader to
step down if indicted. Next, we proceeded to remove the
members of the Ethics Committee who had voted to hold
our former Majority Leader accountable for his actions.
And then, we proceeded to make it more difficult to
initiate an Ethics Committee investigation. It is clear
to me power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. We need bold action. We need bold reform.--
Representative Christopher Shays, Testimony before the
House Rules Committee, March 30, 2006 \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ March 30th Lobbying Reform Hearing, (statement of the
Honorable Christopher Shays).
Although H.R. 4975 treads lightly around the subject, it is
obvious to all observers of Congress (including many who
testified before our Committee) that one of the major problems
in the 109th Congress has been the failure of the Committee on
Standards of Official Conduct (the Ethics Committee) to enforce
our Code of Official Conduct (codified at Rule XXIII of the
current House rules). During his testimony before the Rules
Committee on March 2nd, Mr. Fred Wertheimer, the President of
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Democracy 21, did not mince his words. He said:
The performance of the House ethics committee, in
particular, is its own scandal. During the entire year
of 2005, the House ethics committee was not even
functional. This failure of the Committee to be able to
operate for an entire year is unprecedented and
demonstrates a complete breakdown of the process in the
House for overseeing and enforcing House ethics
rules.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ March 2nd Lobbying Reform Hearing (statement of Mr. Fred
Wertheimer).
It was a particularly bad year to operate without an Ethics
Committee, since 2005 was a year in which a number of new
congressional ethical scandals came to light. One particularly
embarrassing episode for the House was former Representative
Randy ``Duke'' Cunningham's pleading guilty in November 2005 to
accepting more than $2 million in bribes from defense
contractors. While enterprising reporters from Cunningham's
hometown newspaper published story after story on his shady
financial transactions through the spring and summer of 2005,
the Ethics Committee took no formal notice of the exploding
scandal and conducted no investigation.
The failure of the Ethics Committee to investigate
Cunningham's actions inspired a rare unity among government
watchdog groups. Commenters across the ideological spectrum
agreed that the Cunningham case demonstrated a total failure of
the current Congress to police Members' behavior. As Tom
Fitton, president of conservative Judicial Watch put it:
``There is no ethics enforcement in Congress today, and it's
inexcusable.'' Melanie Sloan, speaking on behalf of the liberal
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington commented,
``No matter what level of corruption the members of Congress
engage in, the ethics committees do nothing. . . It's a
national embarrassment.'' Senator John McCain commented on Meet
the Press: ``I don't think the Ethics Committees are working
very well. The latest Cunningham scandal was uncovered by the
San Diego newspaper, not by anyone here. . . .'' \15\ A Roll
Call editorial bluntly summed it up: ``Let's face it: The
Justice Department has become the de facto ethics police force
for Congress.'' \16\ The editorial board of the Nashville
Tennessean wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, ``In a Season of Scandals, Ethics Panels
Are on Sidelines,'' Washington Post, Dec. 5, 2005.
\16\ Roll Call editorial, ``Ethics vs. Justice,'' December 7, 2005
``While federal prosecutors spent 2005 building cases
against politicians, like Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-
Calif., the House so-called Ethics Committee met once
and did nothing. Surely members of Congress can
understand that it is better for them to police their
own members for ethics violations than to wait until
those violations devolve into crimes, forcing
prosecutors to come in to clean house.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Nashvile Tennessean editorial, ``Abramoff's plea signals need
for real reforms, It's the whole system, not just one lobbyist, that
has become corrupt,'' Jan. 5, 2006.
What sometimes gets lost in discussions about the breakdown
of ethics enforcement in the 109th Congress is that it was not
inevitable. The ethics shutdown was engineered by the House
Republican leadership at the beginning of the 109th Congress in
order to protect their Members from the scrutiny and
accountability of the ethics process. Ethics enforcement was
shut down in 2005 because the Majority launched an
unprecedented, partisan attack on a process that the House has
proudly protected from partisanship since it established the
Ethics Committee in 1967. Key to this process is the structural
bipartisanship of the Committee. It is made up of five
Republican and five Democratic Members and is staffed by non-
partisan professionals who are appointed only by majority vote
of the Committee.
The attack started on the first day of the 109th Congress,
when Republican leaders included several controversial ``ethics
reform'' proposals in their new rules package (H. Res. 5). The
ethics reforms that were forced through on the Opening Day of
the 109th Congress on a party-line vote changed a key provision
in the 1997 ethics rules that prevented Members of only one
party from blocking ethics investigations. Under the 1997
rules, a validly filed complaint that the Committee does not
act on within 45 days automatically goes to a subcommittee for
investigation. The purpose of this rule (called the ``automatic
transmittal'' rule) is to encourage committee Members to reach
a bipartisan decision to either dispose of the complaint if it
has no merit, or begin an investigation within 45 days. The
knowledge that an investigation will automatically move forward
if they do not act within the 45-day period, however, prompts
quick action on a complaint.
By removing the 45-day default provision, Republican
leaders knew that they were fundamentally changing the
incentive structure created in the 1997 reforms. Eliminating
the 45-day transmittal rule would allow committee Members from
one party to ``run out the clock'' on ethics complaints against
Members from their own party. In other words, five members of
the Committee (less than a majority of the 10-member committee)
could force the dismissal of an ethics complaint simply by
doing nothing. As a Roll Call editorial observed at the time,
by jamming this rule change through on opening day, the
Republican leadership ``made it unmistakably clear that the
House ethics process henceforward will be a partisan
undertaking, not a bipartisan one.'' \18\ After trying to
defend this indefensible ethics rule change for several months,
the Republican leadership of the House finally gave up and
allowed the House, by an overwhelming 406-20 vote, to restore
the 45-day rule to its 1997 version (H. Res. 240).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Roll Call editorial, ``Ethics Retreat,'' Jan. 10, 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even more outrageous was an ethics rule change that the
Republican leadership had been forced to abandon by the time
the House adopted its rules package on the first day of the
109th Congress. The week before the 109th Congress convened,
GOP leaders had circulated a proposal to eliminate the most
fundamental tenet and first rule of the House ethics code,
namely that ``A Member . . . shall conduct himself at all times
in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.'' \19\
The effect of this change would have been to turn a code of
conduct based on each Member's duty to behave in a manner
worthy of the United States House of Representatives into a
code of enumerated offenses. Members would be allowed to act in
a way that brought discredit to the House, as long as they did
not violate one of the ``black-letter'' ethics rules. As a
Washington Post editorial explained this provision:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ House Rule XXIII, clause 1.
No matter how slimy a lawmaker's behavior, it
couldn't be deemed an ethical violation unless the
ethics committee could cite a specific subparagraph of
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
a specific regulation that was breached.
The editorial went on to point out that by eliminating this
general principle of honorable conduct, the House was holding
itself to a lower standard than it requires from members of the
Armed Forces. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice,
soldiers can be court martialed for ``all conduct of a nature
to bring discredit upon the Armed Forces.'' \20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ Washington Post editorial, ``Rigging the Rules,'' Dec. 31,
2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was no mystery why the House leadership was desperately
struggling to water down the House ethics rules at the
beginning of the 109th Congress. In the final months of the
108th Congress, the House Ethics Committee admonished then-
Majority Leader Tom DeLay for (1) improperly promising
political support in exchange for a vote on the Medicare bill,
(2) appearing to link campaign contributions to proposed energy
legislation, and (3) using Federal Aviation Administration
resources to track down Texas legislators who opposed
Representative DeLay's Congressional redistricting plan. The
effect of these admonishments was not to force Representative
DeLay and the Majority leadership to pause and think about how
they could modify their behavior to better conform with the
House's ethical standards; instead, they tried to lower the
House's ethical standards to make their unacceptable behavior
acceptable.
In the months leading up to and following these ethics
rules changes, the Republican leadership took several further
steps to punish the people who dared stand up for the House
Code of Conduct. Late in the 108th Congress, the Republican
Conference repealed its internal rule prohibiting a Member from
holding a leadership position if he or she were under
indictment. This indictment rule, obviously intended to protect
the job of then-Majority Leader DeLay, was reinstated at the
beginning of the 109th Congress after a storm of criticism.
A GOP leadership decision that was not repealed, however,
was the Speaker's February 2nd ``Wednesday Afternoon Massacre''
dismissal of Chairman Joel Hefley, and two other Republican
Ethics Committee Members. According to Chairman Hefley, there
was ``a bad perception out there that there was a purge in the
committee and that people were put in that would protect our
side of the aisle better than I did.'' \21\ One of the first
actions of the new Chairman, our Rules Committee colleague
Representative Hastings of Washington, was to halt the
Committee's ongoing investigations and dismiss the Committee's
long-time non-partisan staff director and chief counsel.\22\ In
spite of the Ethics Committee's rule that its staff be
professional and nonpartisan,\23\ Chairman Hastings then tried
to unilaterally hire a long-time political aide as the
committee's staff director.\24\ Chairman Hastings' insistence
on hiring a political aide to fill this key non-partisan
position paralyzed the Committee's activities for months. In
fact, the Committee did not fill its staff director position
until November 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ Roll Call editorial, ``Ethics Odor,'' Feb. 9, 2005.
\22\ John Bresnahan, ``Critics Slam Hastings' Dismissal of Ethics
Staff,'' Roll Call, Feb. 17, 2005.
\23\ Rules of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, 109th
Congress, Rule 6(a).
\24\ John Bresnahan and Ben Pershing, ``Ethics Panel Finally; Ready
to Hire Staff,'' Roll Call, July 5, 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the Rules Committee markup of H.R. 4975,
Representative Slaughter offered an amendment (amendment # 6)
to prevent the disruption caused by the dismissal of the Ethics
Committee's counsel at the beginning of the 109th Congress. Her
amendment would have required a majority vote to dismiss a
member of the Committee's non-partisan staff, which would
therefore require the votes of Membersfrom both parties. The
purpose of this amendment was to re-confirm the Ethics Committee's
commitment to bipartisan decision-making. Unfortunately, Rules
Committee Republicans rejected this amendment--as they rejected all of
the amendments Democrats proposed--on a party-line vote of 4-9.
3. A House Without Rules
We also oppose this bill because it does almost nothing to
address the procedural abuses that have become so commonplace
in our legislative process. By dubbing this legislation
``lobbying reform,'' the Majority ignores the fact that one of
the biggest problems currently plaguing the House is the
breakdown of the deliberative process. They have chosen to
ignore the obvious connection between the ethics scandals that
have plagued the 109th Congress and the closed, undemocratic
way in which the House has conducted its business over the past
few years. A legislative process that does not allow open
debate and provide opportunity for amendment on legislation,
and instead allows small groups of House leaders and private
interests to write the bills, is a process vulnerable to
corruption and improper influence from lobbyists. Making the
lobbying process more transparent will do little good if we do
not act to make the legislative process more credible and
transparent as well.
Although our colleagues in the Majority choose to ignore
the connection between corruption and the lack of procedural
fairness, it is obvious to outside observers. During our March
2nd hearing, for example, longtime Congressional scholar Dr.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute testified:
The problem goes beyond corrupt lobbyists or the
relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers. It gets
to a legislative process that has lost the
transparency, accountability, and deliberation that are
at the core of the American system; the failure to
abide by basic rules and norms has contributed, I
believe, to a loss of sensitivity among many members
and leaders about what is and what is not appropriate.
Three-hour votes, thousand-page-plus bills sprung on
the floor with no notice, conference reports changed in
the dead of night, self-executing rules that suppress
debate along with an explosion of closed rules, are
just a few of the practices that have become common and
that are a distortion of the regular order.\25\
\25\ March 2nd Lobbying Reform Hearing (statement of Dr. Norman
Ornstein, Ph.D.).
Over the past few years, Rules Committee Democrats have
carefully compiled a record of the procedural abuses that have
unfortunately come to define the last several Congresses. In
other venues, we have detailed how the number of closed and
severely restricted rules has increased over time, thereby
restricting the ability of both Democratic and Republican
Members to debate, amend, and improve legislation. We have also
documented how the Majority routinely jams large, complex
conference reports through the House with just a few hours
notice. At the same time it has severely limited deliberation
on controversial issues, the House occupies more of its already
short work week debating non-controversial suspension
bills.\26\ In spite of the promises they made to restore
``deliberative democracy'' when they took over the House in
1994, Republicans have taken unprecedented steps to quash
debate and stifle ``the full and free airing of conflicting
opinions through hearings, debates, and amendments.'' \27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\26\ See, for example, Profoundly Un-Democratic: A Congressional
Report on the Unprecedented Erosion of the Democratic Process in the
House of Representatives and the Rise of the `Imperial Congress' During
the 108th Congress, (March 2005), available at: http://
www.housedemocrats.gov/Docs/BrokenPromises.pdf
\27\ Rules Committee Republicans, The Decline of Deliberative
Democracy in the People's House, Congressional Record, Apr. 21, 1993,
p. H 1956.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the markup of H.R. 4975, Democratic Rules Committee
Members offered a number of proposals addressing the procedural
abuses that have taken root in the House over the past few
Congresses. Most of these proposals came from a rules reform
package we introduced on February 16, 2006 (H. Res. 686) in
response to Chairman Dreier's promise to consider reform
proposals in a bipartisan manner. Unfortunately, our reform
proposalsdid not make it into H.R. 4975. Furthermore, when we
presented our ideas in the Rules Committee markup of H.R. 4975, Rules
Committee Republicans voted all of them down on straight party-line
votes. As we mentioned earlier in these views, a bipartisan process
requires more than the constant repetition of the word ``bipartisan.''
Bipartisanship requires the majority party to seriously consider the
minority's ideas, to conduct a good-faith discussion of these ideas,
and perhaps even adopt a few of them.
One of the procedural abuses we have repeatedly highlighted
over the past few years is the Republican leadership's use of
the conference committee to jam unfamiliar (sometimes even un-
read) material through the legislative process. House-Senate
conferences are a critical part of the deliberative process
because they produce the final legislative product that will
become the law of the land. Although Members can follow and
influence legislation as it moves through the committees and
then to the House floor, the conference is where the final
compromises are made and the final statutory language on the
bill's toughest issues is negotiated and drafted.
Since only a restricted group of House Members participates
in conferences and because conference reports can contain
significant policy changes from the House-approved version of a
bill, the standing House Rules provide Members a number of
protections against abuses during the conference process. Under
these rules, House conferees are not permitted to adopt
modifications outside the scope of the House-passed bill.\28\
They must also comply with numerous provisions of the
Congressional Budget Act of 1974. In addition, the standing
House rules are designed to prevent the House from rushing a
conference report to the floor for an up-or-down vote without
giving Members the adequate time to understand the contents of
the final product. Rule XXII requires the conference committee
to hold at least one public meeting \29\ and requires the
conferees to attach a joint explanatory statement to the report
that is ``sufficiently detailed and explicit to inform the
House of the effects of the report on the matters committed to
conference.'' \30\ Perhaps most importantly, House rules
require conference reports and explanatory statements to be
available to Members for three days after publication in the
Congressional Record.\31\ This three-day layover requirement is
specifically intended to give Members time to read the
conference report and weigh its merits before a final vote.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ Rule XXII, cl. 9.
\29\ Rule XXII, cl. 12(a)(1).
\30\ Rule XXII, cl. 7(e).
\31\ Rule XXII, cl. 8(a)(1)(A).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the past few years, we have repeatedly objected to the
Rules Committee's practice of granting ``blanket waivers'' to
conference reports headed to the House floor. The effect of
these waivers is to negate all of the protections the House
rules give Members against abusive conferences. These blanket
waivers strip the right of Members who did not participate in
the conference to insist on regular order so they can have time
to learn what is in the final conference report before they
vote on it. As the statistics we have collected on the
conference process so far in the 109th Congress show, Rules
Committee Republicans have protected all 18 conference reports
the House has considered with blanket waivers. Furthermore,
they waived three-day layover on all but two of these
conference reports (see appendix 2). The result is that House
members are regularly forced to vote on major legislation
totaling hundreds or even thousands of pages, sometimes only
hours after the conference report has been presented in the
House. Thanks to the blanket waiver, these conference reports
may contain non-germane provisions and/or earmarks that have
never been considered in the House or Senate. The results of
this broken conference process are anumber of embarrassing
episodes that have made Congress an object of ridicule. Among the most
notorious episodes were:
The embarrassing provision Republican leaders
slipped into the Homeland Security conference report at the end
of the 107th Congress that protected Eli Lilly and a number of
other pharmaceutical companies from civil liability for their
production of the vaccine preservative Thimerosal.
The notorious ``greenbonds initiative'' that
appeared in the Energy Bill conference report in the 108th
Congress, which turned out to be a subsidy to build a Hooters
restaurant in Shreveport, Louisiana.
The egregious provision in the Fiscal Year 05
Omnibus appropriations conference report that gave
Congressional staffers access to the confidential tax returns
of U.S. citizens.
The provision in the Fiscal Year 2006 Agriculture
Appropriations conference report that changed the regulations
governing the organic food standards hundreds of thousands of
American families rely on when buying their groceries.
The most notorious recent episode of conference report
abuse occurred late last year during consideration of the FY 06
Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 2863), the bill that funds
our troops and military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
During the conference negotiations, conferees agreed in
principle to include funding that would allow the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) to begin preparing a response
strategy to the emerging threat of the avian influenza virus.
During discussions on this provision in the conference, some
conferees supported the addition of language that would exempt
drug manufacturers involved in creating avian flu
countermeasures from liability, should their drugs injure
people who took them. The conference did not accept this
language because some conferees thought the exemption was too
broad. According to the senior Democratic conferee,
Appropriations Ranking Member David Obey, when the conference
committee ended its session in the early evening on Sunday,
December 18, 2005, there was an agreement ``in writing and
verbally as well, that there would be no legislative liability
protection language inserted in this bill.'' \32\ The 533-page
conference report was signed at 6 p.m. that evening and filed
in the House at 11:54 p.m. the same night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\32\ Congressional Record, Dec. 22, 2005, p. H13181.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At some point between the time the conference report was
signed and the time it was filed, however, Republicans broke
their word and the rules by slipping in 40 new pages of
legislative text that not only exempted the producers of
vaccines related to avian flu, but also gave the HHS Secretary
discretion to exempt other pharmaceutical products from
liability when they injure consumers. The 40-page proposal
gives the Bush Administration broad new powers to exempt drug
manufacturers from liability for a wide array of drugs that
have nothing to do with an avian flu epidemic. It exempts these
companies even if they acted with gross negligence. While the
legislation promises an alternative compensation program, it
provided no funding for such a program, which means that
nurses, first responders and all other American citizens would
be out of luck if they were harmed by an exempted drug.
According to Ranking Member Obey, here's how this massive
Christmas gift to the drug industry got into the bill:
But after the conference was finished at 6 p.m.,
Senator Frist marched over to the House side of the
Capitol about 4 hours later and insisted that over 40
pages of legislation, which I have in my hand, 40 pages
of legislation that had never been seenby conferees, be
attached to the bill. The Speaker joined him in that assistance so
that, without a vote of the conferees, that legislation was
unilaterally and arrogantly inserted into the bill after the conference
was over in a blatantly abusive power play by two of the most powerful
men in Congress.\33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\33\ Id.
Republican appropriators tell the same story. A top aide to
Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran said of the
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
provision:
It was added after the conference had concluded. It
was added at the specific direction of the speaker of
the House and the majority leader of the Senate. The
conferees did not vote on it. It's a true travesty of
the process.\34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\34\ Bill Theobald, ``Hastert, Frist Said to Rig Bill for Drug
Firms; Frist Denies Protection Was Added in Secret,'' Gannett News
Service, Feb. 9, 2006.
In other words, in the dark of night, the two top Congressional
Republican leaders snuck an extremely controversial piece of
legislation that had never been considered in the House or the
Senate into an already signed conference report. Republican
leaders decided to override the collective decision-making
process of the Congress to slip in a gift to one of their most
important political allies.
For this underhanded maneuver to succeed in the House,
Republican leaders needed to protect this provision from the
House rules it so blatantly violated. When the Rules Committee
met later that night, Representative Hastings of Florida tried
to strike the vaccine language from the conference report, but
was defeated on a straight party-line vote of 4 to 9.\35\ The
rule protecting this provision (H. Res. 639) was reported from
the Rules Committee about 1:00 a.m. and taken directly to the
Floor for consideration pursuant to another rule that waived
the 1-day layover requirement for consideration of the rule (H.
Res. 632). The House passed this conference report shortly
after 5:00 a.m. on the morning of December 19, 2005, less than
seven hours after the 40-page drug company giveaway had first
appeared.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\35\ Rules Committee rollcall vote # 144, H. Rept. 109-361.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the markup of H.R. 4975, we proposed a number of
amendments to the House rules that would have protected House
Members from such conference report abuses and restored some
badly-needed deliberation to the conference process.
Representative Matsui proposed adding a requirement (amendment
# 12) that a conference committee conduct an open meeting and a
roll-call vote to approve the final version of a conference
report, while Representative McGovern (amendment # 7) proposed
giving Members a point of order against the consideration of
conference reports that have not been available to Members for
three days. Unfortunately, both of these amendments seeking to
restore Members' rights to know the contents of conference
reports failed on party-line votes. Ranking Member Slaughter
offered an amendment (amendment # 2) that would have required
any rule granting consideration of a conference report to list
the items in the report that did not appear in the House or
Senate versions of the bill. This ``out-of-scope'' disclosure
requirement, which failed on a party line vote of 4-9, would
have allowed Members to know which items (including earmarks)
the conference had added to the bill at the last moment, and
given them the opportunity to strike them.\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\36\ During the markup, Chairman Dreier incorrectly asserted that
such a provision is already part of the House rules. As Chairman Dreier
conceded, it has become the practice of the current Rules Committee to
waive points of order against out-of-scope items when it grants rules
for conference reports, but it is impossible for Members to learn which
parts of the bill are actually in violation of the scope rule.
Amendment # 5 would rectify this problem by requiring the rule itself
to list the out-of-scope items.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, in order to protect the House against the serious
corruption of the conference process that occurred on the
Defense Appropriations conference report last December, Ranking
Member Slaughter proposed creating a point of order (amendment
# 5) the Majority or Minority Leaders could raise if they
believed the integrity of the conference report was in
question. This amendment also failed on a party-line vote.
During debate on this amendment, Chairman Dreier opposed it on
the grounds that it set a vague andconfusing standard, while
Representative Bishop objected that the amendment did not provide a
precise definition of ``serious violation'' of the conference rules. We
would respond that if our colleagues do not think it was a serious
violation of the conference rules to add 40 pages of controversial,
new, out-of-scope legislative language to a report after the conferees
had signed it, and only a few hours before it came before the House for
a final vote, then we understand their ``no'' vote. For our part, we
feel that House leaders should be able to bring such gross abuses to
the attention of the House and give the House an opportunity to block a
conference report written under these circumstances.
During the markup, Rules Committee Democrats proposed other
rules changes that we felt addressed some of the procedural
abuses that have recently undermined earlier stages of the
legislative process. Representative Matsui offered an amendment
(amendment # 13) that would have prevented the Rules
Committee's too common practice of gaming the one-day layover
requirement of clause 6 of rule XIII by reporting a rule early
in the morning, adjourning the House, coming back in shortly
thereafter in a new legislative day, then debating and passing
the rule. Representative Matsui's amendment would have required
a 24-hour layover period, rather than a manipulated legislative
day. Such a rule would guarantee Members at least 24 hours to
read and understand a rule, in particular a rule that modifies
the text of reported legislation or a rule that provides for
consideration of a complex manager's amendment that has been
submitted to the Committee at the last moment.
On the very controversial issue of votes held open for
longer than 15 minutes, Ranking Member Slaughter offered an
amendment (amendment # 4) that would require greater disclosure
of what is happening on the House floor during votes the
Majority holds open for long periods. On a number of occasions
in recent years, House Republicans have made national news by
holding votes open for long periods while they begged, cajoled,
or threatened enough Members to switch their votes to pass a
bill. The most infamous long vote in recent memory was of
course the three-hour late-night vote on the Medicare
conference report during which Republican leaders and at least
one Bush Administration official roamed the House floor
offering political favors to Republican Members who would
support the legislation. A Republican Member present at the
scene commented, ``It was an outrage. It was profoundly ugly
and beneath the dignity of Congress.'' \37\ As the table below
shows, in the 108th and 109th Congresses, Republicans have held
votes open for periods significantly longer than 15 minutes on
at least eight separate occasions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\37\ Mark Wegner, ``Night Of House Drama Yields A Narrow Medicare
Victory,'' Congress Daily AM, Nov. 24, 2003.
HOUSE VOTES HELD OPEN BEYOND THE CUSTOMARY 17 MINUTES IN THE 108TH AND
109TH CONGRESSES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date Bill/Vote Description Length of Vote
------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 17, 2005............. Final Passage of Labor- 36 minutes
HHS Appropriations
Conference Report.
Rejected 224-209.
October 7, 2005............... H.R. 3893-Gas Act-- 46 minutes (for
vote began at 1:57 pm a 5-minute
(a five minute vote) vote)
and was gaveled down
at 2:43 pm) vote #519.
July 27 & 28, 2005 H.R. 3045-CAFTA the 63 minutes
(legislative day of July 27, vote started at 11:00
2005). pm on the 27th and
went on until 12:03
am) Vote #443.
July 8, 2004.................. Sanders amendment on 38 minutes
PATRIOT Act to FY
2005 Commerce-Justice
State Appropriations
bill.
March 30, 2004................ Motion to instruct 28 minutes (on 5-
conferees on PAYGO on minute vote)
the FY 2005 Budget
Resolution.
November 22, 2003............. Final Passage of the 3 hours. (during
Conference Report on this vote,
H.R. 1, the former Rep.
Prescription Drug Nick Smith
bill.. claimed to have
been offered a
bribe by then
Majority Leader
Tom DeLay)
June 26, 2003................. Final Passage of HR 1, 50 minutes.
the Prescription Drug
bill..
March 20, 2003................ Final Passage of 26 minutes
Budget Resolution..
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ranking Member Slaughter's amendment would not prevent the
Speaker from holding a vote open for longer than 15 minutes (as
is allowed under clause 2 of rule XX), because there are
sometimes legitimate reasons to extend votes (for example,
Members are en route from the airport or stuck in an elevator).
But if the Speaker is holding a vote open to bully Members or
to change a vote outcome, the American people should be allowed
to know what their Members of Congress were doing during the
vote. The Slaughter amendment would require that a log be
printed in the Congressional Record showing which Members voted
after the initial 30-minute period and the time they voted. It
would also list which Members switched their votes and the time
they switched. As Chairman Dreier correctly stated during the
Committee markup, current practices in the House do require a
listing of any vote changes that occur during a vote. However,
it requires no record of when these changes occurred and, in
particular, no indication of when an initial vote was cast or
when a vote was changed. Letting the public know what voting
activity occurs after the 30-minute mark is an important step
in bringing more accountability and transparency to the voting
process in the House.
Conclusion--An opportunity lost
If the markup of this legislation in the Rules Committee is
any indication of the tone and process that will occur when we
consider this bill again in the Rules Committee and on the
House floor, then the Republican leadership has squandered a
real opportunity to reform Congress. The American people have
very accurately concluded that the current Congress acts not in
their interests, but at the behest of special interests who
have purchased access to the legislative process. While
Republicans have had some success in labeling the scandals of
the 109th Congress as ``lobbying'' scandals, Americans
understand that at their core, they are Congressional scandals.
They understand that lobbyists like Jack Abramoff would not
have won access to the halls of Congress without the help of
their friends on the inside.
As a result, a narrowly-targeted, watered-down set of
reforms focused on ``lobbyists'' is just not enough to convince
a skeptical American public that their representatives are
finally committed to making Congress work again. A partisan
process that excludes many reform ideas from the debate and
that Republicans pushed through the process by party-line votes
is likely to make them even more skeptical of the final
product. We are disappointed that the Majority's commitment to
reform seems to be lacking, because restoring ethical standards
and a truly deliberative lawmaking process to the House would
be good for both parties, for this institution, and for our
country.
Appendix 1--RULES ORIGINAL JURISDICTION MARKUP ON H.R. 4975 DEMOCRATIC
AMENDMENTS OFFERED AND REJECTED
Slaughter-Amendment 2 (two part amendment)
Require an itemized list of any scope violations in the
rule providing for consideration of a conference report (items
that were not in either the House or Senate passed versions of
the bill) and provides for a consideration point of order
guaranteeing a vote when this rule is violated and provide a
motion to strike items that are beyond the scope of a
conference. Rejected 4-9 party-line vote
Matsui-Amendment 12
Require a roll-call vote, in an open meeting, on the final
version of a conference report. Rejected 4-7 party-line vote
Matsui-Amendment 13
Use actual time (24-hours as opposed to one legislative
day) to determine how soon a rule can be called up on the House
Floor after it is reported from the Rules Committee. Rejected
4-8 party-line vote
Slaughter-Amendment 4
Require, whenever a recorded vote is held open for more
than 30 minutes, that the Congressional Record include a log of
the voting activity that occurs after that 30-minute time frame
to show which Members voted after that time and which Members
changed their votes during that period. Rejected 4-9 party-line
vote
McGovern-Amendment 7
Whenever 3-day layover is waived against a conference
report, it is in order for a Member to raise a point of order
guaranteeing a vote to determine whether the House will
consider the conference report. Rejected 4-9 party-line vote
Slaughter-Amendment 5
Create a new Majority/Minority leader point of order with a
guaranteed vote that can be raised against consideration of a
conference report where the integrity of the conference is in
question. Rejected 4-9 party-line vote
McGovern-Amendment 8
Regulates Member travel on private jets by requiring
Members to pay full charter costs when using corporate jets for
official travel and to disclose relevant information in the
Congressional Record, including the owner or lessee of the
aircraft and the other passengers on the flight. Rejected 4-9
party-line vote
Hastings (FL)-Amendment 10 (strike section 501 and insert new language)
Mandates public disclosure of which Members sponsor
earmarks and disclosure of whether Members have a financial
interest in the earmark. Earmarks include authorizations,
appropriations, and tax provisions. Rejected voice vote
Hastings (FL)-Amendment 11
Establishes pre-approval and disclosure system through the
Standards Committee for privately-funded travel. Rejected 3-9
party-line vote
McGovern-Amendment 9
Clarifies that the ``face value'' of a ticket for the
purposes of section 304 means the cost of that ticket if a
member of the general public were purchasing it. Rejected 4-9
party-line vote
Slaughter-Amendment 6
To provide that staff on the Committee of Standards of
Official Conduct can be dismissed only by an affirmative vote
of the Standards Committee. Rejected 4-9 party-line vote
APPENDIX 2.--109TH CONGRESS-CONFERENCE REPORTS IN RULES-THROUGH APRIL 6, 2006--PREPARED BY RULES' DEMOCRATS
[E-Rule done as emergency measure]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rule/Bill number/Title Date & Time passed Time between Floor
--------------------------------- Date & Time on House Floor Report number and filing and final
Conference filed (time taken from number of pages in passage & between
on Floor & Date Clerk's recorded conference report Rules' action and
All conference reports were and Time reported votes chart) & (page numbers from final passage
given blanket waivers except as from Rules final passage vote PDF version where (rounded to
otherwise noted Committee of conference possible) nearest \1/2\
report hour)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)
H. Res. 248-E................... Floor--4/28/05- 4/28/05........... 109-62............ 6 hours
2:46 pm.
Conference on H.Con.Res. 95-- Rules--4/28/05- 8:30 pm........... 91 pages.......... 4 hours
FY06 Concurrent Budget 4:30 pm. 214-211 (#149)...
Resolution, plus new point of
order for Appropriations bills
that exceed 302(b) allocations.
H. Res. 242................. .................. .................. .................. 3-day layover
waived
2)
H. Res. 258-E................... Floor--5/3/05- 5/5/05............ 109-72............ 1 day 14 hours
11:50 pm.
Conference on H.R. 1268-- Rules--5/4/05-5:00 2:04 pm........... 188 pages......... 21 hours
Emergency Supplemental Iraq, pm. 368-58 (#161)..... 3-day layover
Afghanistan, Tsunami Approps., waived
Real ID & Sec. 2 on Judiciary
Report on H.R. 748 .
3)
H. Res. 392-E................... Floor--7/26/05- 7/28/05........... 109-188........... 1 day 18 hours
11:47 pm.
Conference on H.R. 2361-- Rules--7/27/05- 5:47 pm........... 164 pages......... 21 hours
Interior FY06 Approps. 8:45 pm. 410-10 (#450)..... 3-day layover
waived
4)
H. Res. 394-E................... Floor--7/27/05- 7/28/05........... 109-190........... 24 hours
1:22 pm.
Conference on H.R. 6--Energy Rules--7/27/05- 1:10 pm........... 567 pages......... 16\1/2\ hours
Policy Act. 8:45 pm. 275-156 (#445).... 3-day layover
waived
5)
H. Res. 396-E................... Floor--7/26/05- 7/28/05........... 109-189........... 1 day 18 hours
11:46 pm.
Conference on H.R. 2985-- Rules--7/27/05- 5:55 pm........... 41 pages.......... 21 hours
Legislative Branch FY06 Approps. 8:45 pm. 305-122 (#451).... 3-day layover
waived
6)
H. Res.__-E..................... Floor--7/28/05- See 2nd rule (#7) See 2nd rule (#7) See 2nd rule (#7)
6:59 pm. next vote. next vote. next vote
Conference on H.R. 3--TEA-LU Rules--7/28/05-
Highway Reauthorization--1st 10:15 pm.
rule.
*H. Res. 393-rule not used-- .................. .................. .................. 3-day layover
Rule reported but not filed- waived
rule not used.
7)
H. Res. 388-E................... Floor--7/28/05- 7/29/05........... 109-203........... 16\1/2\ hours
6:59 pm.
Conference on H.R. 3--TEA-LU Rules--7/29/05 11:38 am.......... 1231 pages........ 11 hours
Highway Reauthorization--2nd (Leg day of 7/28/ 412-8 (#453)......
rule. 05)-12:30 am.
Rule done by u/c on House .................. .................. .................. 3-day layover
Floor. waived
8)
H. Res. 474-E................... Floor--9/29/05- 10/6/05........... 109-241........... 7 days 3 hours
5:30 pm.
Conference on H.R. 2360-- Rules--9/29/05- 8:43 pm........... 104 pages......... 7 days & 2 hours
Homeland Security FY06 Approps. 6:30 pm. 347-70 (#512).....
9)
H. Res. 520-E................... Floor--10/26/05- 10/28/05.......... 109-255........... 1 day & 17 hours
6:37 pm.
Conference on H.R. 2744-- Rules--10/27/05- 11:34 am.......... 109 pages......... 19 hours
Agriculture FY06 Approps. 4:30 pm. 318-63 (#555)..... 3-day layover
waived
10)
H. Res. 532-E................... Floor--11/2/05- 11/4/05........... 109-265........... 1 day 14\1/2\
8:42 pm. hours
Conference on H.R. 3057--Foreign Rules--11/3/05- 11:13 am.......... 128 pages......... 20 hours
Operations, Export Financing 3:25 pm. 358-39 (#569)..... 3-day layover
FY06 Approps. waived
11)
H. Res. 538-E................... Floor--11/7/05- 11/9/05........... 109-272........... 1 day 20\1/2\
6:32 pm. hours
Conference on H.R. 2862-- Rules--11/8/05- 3:04 pm........... 212 pages......... 21\1/2\ hours
Science, State, Justice, 5:45 pm. 397-19 (#581)..... 3-day layover
Commerce FY06 Approps. waived
12)
H. Res. 539-E................... Floor--11/7/05- 11/9/05........... 109-275........... 1 day 19\1/2\
7:24 pm. hours
Conference on H.R. 2419--Energy Rules--11/8/05- 2:55 pm........... 199 pages......... 21 hours
& Water Development FY06 5:45 pm. 399-17 (#580)..... 3-day layover
Approps. waived
13)............................. ................ Conference report
failed.
H. Res. 559-E................... Floor--11/16/05- 11/17/05.......... 109-300........... 17 hours
9:10 pm.
Conference on H.R. 3010--Labor/ Rules--11/17/05 2:13 pm........... 182 pages......... 7 hours
HHS/Education FY06 Approps. (leg day of 209-224 (#598).... 3-day layover
16th)--7:00 am. waived
1st conference report
(failed).
14)
H. Res. 564-E................... Floor--11/18/05 11/18/05.......... 109-305........... 11 hours
(leg day of 17th)-
1:50 am.
Conference on H.R. 2528-- Rules--11/18/05 12:47 pm.......... 77 pages.......... 5 hours
Military Quality of Life & (leg day of 17th)- 427-0 (#604)...... 3-day layover
Veterans Affairs FY06 Approps. 8:00 am. waived
15).............................
H. Res. 565-E................... Floor--11/18/05 11/18/05.......... 109-307........... 7\1/2\ hours
(leg day of 17th)-
5:30am.
Conference on H.R. 3058-- Rules--11/18/05 1:05 pm........... 308 pages......... 5 hours
Transportation, Treasury, HUD, (leg day of 17th)- 392-31 (#605)..... 3-day layover
DC FY06 Approps. 8:00 am. waived
16)
H. Res. 595..................... Floor--12/8/05- 12/14/05.......... 109-333........... 5 days 20 hours
5:51 pm.
Conference on H.R. 3199--USA Rules--12/13/05- 2:07 pm........... 118 pages......... 20 hours
Patriot Improvement & 6:00 pm. 251-174 (#627)....
Reauthorization Act of 2005.
17)
H. Res. 596-E................... Floor--12/13/05- 12/14/05.......... 109-337........... 24\1/2\ hours
3:00 pm.
Conference on H.R. 3010--Labor/ Rules--12/13/05- 3:40 pm........... 182 pages......... 21\1/2\ hours
HHS/Education FY06 Approps. 6:00 pm. 215-213 (#628).... 3-day layover
waived
2nd conference report.......
18)
H. Res. 639-E................... Floor--12/18/05- 12/19/05 (leg day 109-359........... 5 hours
11:54 pm. 18th).
Conference on H.R. 2863-- Rules--12/19/05 5:04 am........... 533 pages......... 4 hours
Department of Defense FY06 (leg day of 18th)- 308-106 (#669).... 3-day layover
Approps. 1:00 am. waived
*H. Res. 632................
19)
H. Res. 640..................... Floor--12/19/05 12/19/05 (leg day 109-362........... 5 hours
(leg day of 18th)- of 18th).
1:13 am.
Conference on S. 1932--Deficit Rules--12/19/05 6:07 am........... 367 pages......... 4\1/2\ hours
Reduction Act of 2005. (leg day of 212-206 (#670).... 3-day layover
reconciliation waived
18th)-1:30 am.
*H. Res. 632 ...............
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**All conference reports were given blanket waivers unless otherwise noted.
*Rule done pursuant to this Rule waiving \2/3\rds-clause 6(a) of Rule XIII 3-day layover waived.
Louise M. Slaughter.
James P. McGovern.
Alcee L. Hastings.
Doris O. Matsui.
