Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007

HONEST LEADERSHIP AND OPEN GOVERNMENT ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - July 31, 2007)

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S.1, the Honest Leadership, Open Government Act of 2007. S.1 contains the contents of an agreement between the House and the Senate in the reconciliation of provisions between the respective bills of these institutions to impose the highest standards of ethics reform on the House and the Senate and to restrict the influence of special interests and lobbyists. The American people spoke loud and clear in their demand for change on Capitol Hill. They conveyed a very strong message that an environment that accommodated Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff was unacceptable and that the culture of corruption must stop. As a result I urge the House to adopt this measure. This Conference agreement between the House and Senate contains some of the following provisions:

Bans lavish convention parties--prohibits Members of Congress from attending national political convention parties held in their honor and paid for by lobbyists or their clients.

Creates new transparency for lobbyist political campaign fund activity and other financial contributions--requires disclosure when lobbyists bundle campaign contributions for any federal elected official, candidate or leadership PAC; and requires lobbyists to detail their own campaign contributions, and payments to Presidential libraries, Inaugural Committees or entities controlled by or named for Members of Congress.

Ends K-Street Project--Prohibits Members of Congress and their staff from attempting to influence employment decisions in exchange for political access.

Imposes restrictions on corporate flights--requires Senators, Senate candidates and Presidential candidates to pay charter rates for trips on private planes; bars House candidates from accepting trips on private planes.

Expands public disclosure of lobbyist activities--requires lobbyists to file reports on their lobbying twice as often each year, and for the first time to file them electronically in a public, searchable database; and increases civil and criminal penalties for knowingly violating lobbying disclosure rules.

Creates Congressional Pension Accountability--Denies Congressional retirement benefits to Members of Congress who are convicted of bribery, perjury and other similar crimes.

BUNDLING CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

This bill also contains a provision that creates greater transparency at the intersection of campaign contributions and public policy. While existing campaign finance laws place limits on campaign contribution amounts, individuals that want to exceed the limits may do so by pulling together the contributions of third parties. This practice is known as ``bundling''. In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with this practice of aggregating the contributions of others. However, when the bundling of contributions is done by someone who lobbies on behalf of a particular interest, this practice enables the lobbyist to enhance his or her stature with an official. This enhancement increases their opportunity to advance the cause of a special interest.

In order to guard against the use of this practice to exert an undue influence over public policy, I believe that we need to inject transparency into this process. Last year I introduced a bill to require that lobbyists disclose their bundling of campaign contributions on lobbying disclosure forms that are required under existing law in accordance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. While this bill was added to the lobbying reform bill by overwhelming support on a vote of 28 to 4 in the House Judiciary Committee, it was stripped from the larger bill by the Republican leadership in the dead of the night. Ultimately, the underlying reform bill failed to pass the Congress.

After the voters elected a Democratic House majority, in November of 2006 with a strong message of reform, I introduced a bill this year, H.R. 633. This bill required that lobbyists disclose the contributions that they bundle on behalf of a candidate. After a series of clarifications were made to the bill, it was reintroduced as H.R. 2317. This bill required that registered lobbyists disclose the contributions that they bundle for a candidate that are equal to or exceed $5,000 on a quarterly basis. ``Bundling'' was defined as the physical aggregation of contributions by a lobbyist or by attribution to a lobbyist for contributions received from other sources regardless the means of transmission. This bill passed the House on May 24, 2007 382/37 and was added to the Honest Leadership, Open Government Act of 2007 by a vote of 346 to 71 on the same day.

Since the House passage of the bill, the House and Senate have been reconciling the differences between their respective bills. The Senate proposed on changing the bundling disclosure requirement by shifting the onus from the lobbyist to the candidate to disclose the receipt of contributions within reports already required under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. The FEC disclosure would reflect bundled contributions from lobbyists that exceed $15,000 on a semi annual basis. The House receded to the Senate's demands under the condition that the reporting shift, from the Lobbying Disclosure Act to the Federal Election Campaign Act, would not compromise or diminish the transparency of the bundled contributions provided by a lobbyist and hence, not reduce the availability of the information to the American public.

The reporting requirements in this bundling disclosure requirement apply to ``bundled contributions'' that have been made to the following covered entities: a candidate, political committees, party committees and Leadership PACs and Members who control Leadership PACs, and their agents.

Subparagraph (i) defines a ``bundled contribution'' as any contribution that is ``forwarded'' by a lobbyist, or the agent of the lobbyist, to a covered entity. This includes all instances where a lobbyist transfers or otherwise delivers or forwards contributions to a covered entity. It includes the transfer regardless of whether the transfer occurs in conjunction with a fundraising event or in the absence of such an event.

Subparagraph (ii) is intended to capture bundling activity where the contributions may have been solicited in the aggregate by a lobbyist but where the contributions may have been provided at different times and/or transferred from the contributor or a party other than the lobbyist but is ultimately ``credited'' to the lobbyist. The ``credit'' that the lobbyist receives can be recorded through designations or other means of recognizing that a ``certain amount of money'' has been ``raised'' by the lobbyist. However, the credit that is attributed to the lobbyist does not need to be memorialized in writing or captured within a database or any other contribution tracking system to trigger the reporting requirement. Moreover, the recognition that bundled contribution is attributed to a lobbyist does not need to be communicated back to the lobbyist; it merely means that a covered entity attributes the contribution to the lobbyist.

The term ``a certain amount of money'' means that the covered entity has information that a dollar amount has been raised by Ðthe lobbyist who is credited with raising the money. The term does not require that the candidate or other covered entity knows the total amount raised by the lobbyist or that the lobbyist has reached the threshold amount for reporting.

Subsection (5) requires the FEC to promulgate regulations implementing this disclosure requirement but prohibits the Commission from exempting from the disclosure requirement any lobbyist on the grounds that the lobbyist is authorized by the committee to engage in fundraising ``or any other similar grounds.'' Moreover, this subsection explicitly prohibits the Commission from issuing a regulation to make this, or any similar grounds, the basis for an exception for the fundraising activities of certain lobbyists from the bundling disclosure requirement.

Finally, it must be noted that this provision is not designed to prohibit any action by a lobbyist. The purpose of this provision is to require disclosure. Therefore, I trust that the Commission, in its regulations, will strive to maximize the disclosure of contributions that have been bundled by lobbyists. This will bring much needed sunlight to the intersection of bundling and public polity and hopefully, will serve as a ``disinfectant'' to clean up any undue influence brought to bear by the use of third party contributions by lobbyists.

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