Overlooked?
ShareA plank in Sen. John McCain's lobbying reform legislation would bar registered lobbyists from being treasurer of a campaign committee or a PAC.
And not two weeks ago, Sen. George Allen signed Ed Gillespie, ex-RNC chair and current lobbyist, to chair his PAC.
Now: McCain's legislation was written well before Gillespie's hire was made public and campaign finance reformers for years have tried to reduce the influence of lobbyists on fundraising. (Even Rep. David Dreier's PAC treasurer is a lobbyist.) Still...
One other reform note: Speaker Dennis Hastert, in his latest blog post, addresses concerns that some upstanding folks (and lobbyists) "feel that some of this reform is overkill and all we need to do is punish those who broke the rules."
Says Hastert: "But I think we need to go further if we want, as an institution, to regain the trust of the American people."
He also addresses "earkmark" reform, coming down on the side of transparency. "I am interested in the ideas that some of my colleagues are putting forward to make sure that this is a much more open and transparent process where those who suggest an earmark are accountable to the public for the merit of the projects being funded."
BTW: It's not true that most RSCers want to ban earmarks; to the contrary, most have taken advantage of them. RSCers seem to be pushing for transparency, overall. It seems like the RSC hard liners might accept a compromise: If a member wants to add an ear mark to a spending bill, he or she should make the request publicly and permit enough time to debate the spending on merit. The easiest way to do that: embrace Rep. Jeff Flake's bill, HR-1642, which would forbid lawmakers from attaching ear marks to committee or conference reports.
Finally, Hastert wants to "tackle" 527s. Dems, allied with deep-pocketed labor unions, use them to fund GOTV and independent expenditure campaigns. The GOP has an easier time funding those activities through parties.
Says Hastert: "A lot of these groups came out last year. They basically raise tons of money from anonymous donors and then use it to run distorted campaign ads. We saw a lot of them in the weeks before the hearings for Judge Alito, and we saw a lot of them crop up in the last election. In my opinion they have made our election more nasty and personal and less about issues. And the 527 groups are not accountable because they use a loophole to keep us from knowing who is donating the unlimited and unregulated money to put on these ads. Well, I for one intend to work very hard with John McCain and others to reform the way these 527 groups are run."
I think you all know that the State of the Union Address is January 31st. We're starting on our agenda right afterwards and that means working immediately on the Deficit Reduction Act, the Patriot Act, immigration reform, more accessible health care and the lobbying reform I was just talking about. And then we intend to move on to pension reform, extension of tax cuts, energy legislation and other measures that will help us sustain our economic growth and job creation. And we will continue to keep our focus on the War on Terror both abroad and at home.
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