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Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4975, Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006

Date: April 27, 2006
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Judicial Branch Arts, Entertainment, and History


PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4975, LOBBYING ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - April 27, 2006)

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I had an amendment that was adopted in the Judiciary Committee, and the adoption of this rule would eliminate that amendment.

That amendment would have created just a study of a practice where some lobbyists appear to be charging percentage contingency fees for getting earmarks. Now, when you combine this idea with the K Street Project where you are supposed to be hiring Republican lobbyists who are supposed to be contributing back to the legislators, you can see how ugly a practice this can get. I just asked for a study.

And, Mr. Speaker, these kinds of contracts are illegal for agents of foreign governments. They are illegal in some executive branch lobbying. The Congressional Research Service in a memorandum cited these as bad because they furnish the strongest incentive to the exertion of corrupting and sinister influences to the end that the desired legislation may be secured, and there is a long line of cases in which it is utterly void against public policy. The CRS memo cites Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1906, saying that it is the tendency in such contracts to provide incentives towards corruption. An 1853 Supreme Court case said that it is an undoubted principle of the common law, that it will not lend its aid to enforce a contract such as this to do an act which is inconsistent with sound morals or public policy or which tends to corrupt or contaminate.

Mr. Speaker, these kinds of contracts are illegal in 39 States because of their corrupting influence. If we are going to have a bill that suggests it is going to do something about corruption, what is wrong with at least studying the prevalence of these contracts which do not appear to be illegal in the Federal Government but everybody knows have a corrupting influence?

I would hope that we would defeat the rule so that my amendment, which was adopted in the Judiciary Committee, can be reinserted back into the bill.

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