Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006

LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2006

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, let me begin by applauding both Senator Dodd and Senator Lott for their work on the membership part of this bill, and for the outstanding statements explaining the provisions and urging us to act.

Senator Lott mentioned that the Rules Committee bill was reported unanimously, and that the bill that came out of our Homeland Security Committee was reported with only one dissenting vote. That is a remarkable show of bipartisanship. But to my colleagues in the Senate, it is probably more remarkable to see two Senate committees working together very carefully, outlining the jurisdiction of each committee and working in concert to produce a comprehensive and well-balanced piece of legislation.

Title I of this bill is the Rules Committee bill; title II is the Homeland Security bill.

Today the Senate begins consideration of the first significant lobbying reform legislation in a decade. The bills we are debating today and over the course of this week represent the good work of their sponsors, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman--and Senator Lott and Senator Dodd as well--and the hard work of the two committees I have mentioned.

The committee I am privileged to chair, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, marked up the Lieberman bill this past Thursday. The committee reported out the measure, as I mentioned, on a 13-to-1 vote.

The issue we take up today is serious, and it is pressing. Recent scandals involving Jack Abramoff and Representative Duke Cunningham have brought to light Congress's need to strengthen the laws and rules governing disclosure, and to ban practices that erode public confidence in the integrity of government decisions. That is what this debate is all about.

We know that if we are to tackle the tough issues facing our country, whether it is entitlement reform or other vital issues, the public must have confidence that our decisions are not tainted by special interests and are not subject to undue influence.

I want to emphasize that all of us here today recognize that lobbying, whether done on behalf of the business community and environmental organizations or children's advocacy groups or any other cause can provide us with very useful information that aids but does not dictate our decisionmaking process. Indeed, lobbying is a right guaranteed by our Constitution--the right to petition our government. But, unfortunately, today the image of lobbying often conjures up images of expensive paid vacations masquerading as factfinding trips, special access that the average citizen can never have, and undue influence that leads to tainted decisions. The corrosive effect of this image--and in a very few cases the reality on the public's confidence--in the political process cannot be underestimated.

I think it is also important to emphasize, however, that the vast majority of people in Washington, the vast majority of elected officials care deeply about their constituents and this country, and are making decisions which they believe are in the best interests of both. Nevertheless, we in Congress have an obligation to strengthen the crucial bond of trust between those of us in government and those whom government serves.

At the committee hearing last month on lobbying reform, we heard from several of our colleagues. We heard from business and labor organizations that engage in lobbying. We heard from a representative of a lobbyist organization, and from public policy experts. I mention this because I want my colleagues to understand that we had a wide-ranging hearing that reached out to people with various views on how we could reform our lobbying disclosure laws. The package before the Senate, the comprehensive package of bills, represents the culmination of what we have learned.

Again, I thank Senators McCain and Lott for their leadership in the development of this bill, along with the ranking members of Homeland Security, Senator Lieberman and Senator Dodd. We have crafted a bipartisan package.

I also want to thank Senator Rick Santorum for convening a bipartisan working group to help us find some common ground on the principles that underlie both bills.

Before describing the details of the bill we reported last Thursday, I want to point out that the committees addressed only those issues within our jurisdiction--the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Ethics in Government Act, and congressional organization. But here on the floor we have married the two bills to produce a comprehensive package.

Let me quickly run through some of the major provisions of what is now title II of the bill we are debating.

The first section of this bill, title II, will enhance the lobbying disclosure provision. It will require quarterly filings rather than the present semiannual filing, and it ensures that the information is made available to the public on the Internet.

To facilitate this effort, it specifies that lobbyists must submit their filings electronically. This will ensure that the public information is widely available on a more timely basis. So our goal here is to have an easily accessible, transparent, and searchable database available on the Internet so the public is fully aware and able to access these reports.

To ensure timely disclosure, the substitute doubles the maximum penalty for noncompliance to $100,000.

To increase public confidence and enforcement, the legislation requires disclosure of reports to the Justice Department for enforcement. The enhanced disclosures will make the process of lobbying far more transparent to the public.

I note that the committee also adopted an amendment that would require the disclosure of so-called ``grassroots lobbying efforts.'' I did not support this amendment because of my concern that we don't want to chill any effort to encourage citizens to contact their members of Congress, but I nevertheless appreciate the efforts of the sponsors of the amendment--Senators Lieberman and Levin--to address some of the legitimate concerns and to craft it in a way that is far more focused than the original provisions in the underlying bill that was before our committee.

Section B of what is now title II focuses on enforcement of congressional ethics. In some cases, there have been concerns about the enforcement effort.

We have included provisions that will include auditing and oversight of lobbyists' disclosure filings by the comptroller general who will also provide recommendations on how compliance could be improved and to identify needed resources and authorities.

This section of the bill would also provide for mandatory ethics training for Members of Congress and congressional staff. It also includes a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that there should be greater self-regulation within the lobbying community. I am thinking of the kinds of self-regulatory organizations--SROs, as they are often called--such as the securities industry, for example, employs.

Subtitle C of our bill, now title II, addresses the revolving-door problem, whereby Members of Congress and high-ranking staff leave Government for jobs focused on the institution they had once served in. We made essentially two changes in this provision of the law.

First, we doubled the cooling-off period that applies to Members of Congress who become lobbyists. We require a 2-year cooling-off period rather than the 1-year that is in current law. The second important change we make is we prohibit those high-ranking former congressional staffers from lobbying the entire Senate--not just the office in which they once worked. Those are two significant provisions strengthening the revolving-door provisions of the bill that will help to promote public confidence in the integrity of decisions by ensuring there is not undue special access by people who have inside information. Those are important provisions.

I point out in response to a comment made by Senator Dodd that we do extend these provisions to high-ranking members of the executive branch who are covered now by the revolving-door provisions of the Ethics in Government Act.

The next subtitle of the bill creates a commission to strengthen confidence in Congress. This is a proposal included at the recommendation of my friend and colleague, Senator Norm Coleman. It would establish a commission to review and make some additional recommendations if needed. The commission would report its initial findings and recommendation to Congress by July 1, 2006. This is not a big, longstanding commission. It is a commission that is expected to act quickly, where we take a look at the whole area and report back.

I am very proud of the hard work of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on this issue. We have produced a strong bill, a strong bill that significantly increases the disclosure, that toughens the revolving-door provisions, and that will make a real difference in increasing the oversight of ethics and lobbying.

However, we need to take another look at a provision that did not get included in the bill that was included in the mark that Senator Lieberman and I put forward but was deleted as a result of an amendment. That is a provision to create an Office of Public Integrity within the congressional branch. I will be talking more about that later, but let me say that proposal by no means is an indication of disrespect for or lack of appreciation of the Senate Ethics Committee. We know the Senate Ethics Committee has a very difficult job and does a good job. The members who serve on it are individuals of great integrity. It address a problem of perception.

It is difficult for the public to trust us to set our own rules, investigate violations, act as jury and judge--which is what the current system is now. So we carefully crafted a proposal intended to strike a better balance while still recognizing and maintaining the preeminent role of the Ethics Committee. Regrettably, there was a lot of confusion about this provision in committee because it resembles a provision that has been introduced on the House side. But Senator Lieberman and I modified that provision and came up with our own proposal that ensured that the Ethics Committee was involved in every step of the process. We will have a further debate on that issue, but I raise it now for the benefit of my colleagues.

Again, we can make a real difference by passing this bill which marries the two bills that were reported by the Rules Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. The Senate has a very important opportunity to make Government more transparent and more accountable. At the end of the day, the public is going to review this legislation and ask one question: Does it promote more public trust and confidence in the decisions we make? I hope when we have the final vote on this bill, we will see the same kind of strong, bipartisan support the legislation enjoyed in both the rules and the Homeland Security Committee.

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I commend the ranking member, the Senator from Connecticut, for his excellent statement and for his championship of this bill. He is a longtime champion of good government. It has been a great pleasure to work with him on this legislation.

I see that the Senator from Ohio is in the Chamber. I believe he has a unanimous consent request to speak as in morning business. As one of the managers of the bill, I inform the Chair that I have no objection to that request.

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