Another facet to being the Party of Reform

July 15, 2005

I have no idea whether voters are really concerned about lobbying abuses and the corruption of K Street by the GOP machine, but I think Dems are on the right track when they position themselves as the “party of reform” and unveil initiatives like this one.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) will introduce a bill today that would radically overhaul the ways in which lobbyists and lawmakers interact with one another.

Feingold’s bill would require more disclosure of meetings between lawmakers and lobbyists, curb privately funded travel, slow the revolving door between government service and lobbying, and raise the cost of traveling on private jets, according to talking points released by Feingold’s spokesman.

Perhaps the most substantial change to current lobbying laws is a prohibition on former senators-turned-lobbyists from using the Senate gym or visiting current members on the Senate floor.

Good for Russ. As I’ve noted before, this seems to work well on a variety of levels. It’s good policy because it helps clean up a corrupted process; I think it’s good politics for voters who are anxious to see these kinds of changes; and it’s good public relations because it highlights Republican excesses while positioning Dems as the party who’ll help clean this mess up. (And as far as Feingold is concerned, it doesn’t hurt his burgeoning presidential bid to make honesty in government his principal legislative issue.)

Again, maybe this isn’t as important to voters as I’d like, but most of the names making news in Washington lately include Rove, DeLay, Abramoff, and Cunningham.

DC’s culture of arrogance has reached the point in which public officials hand lobbyists their bills in restaurants. The more Dems take bold stands with initiatives like Feingold’s, the better.

With all of the Rove hoopla (properly) occurring right now, this likely won’t get the attention it so richly deserves. However, getting it on the radar screen is a serious step forward in taking back our government from the lobbyists and the corporations.

More of this, please!!

  • and it’s good public relations because it highlights Republican excesses while positioning Dems as the party who’ll help clean this mess up

    and the power of this particular item can’t be overstated. Our path back to power in the Senate in 2006 and the White House and/or the House in 2008 will hinge on this meme.

  • I’m with Analytical Liberal. If there is one thing more than any other that I would like to see with our government officials is a sense that these are public service jobs, not service (screw) the public jobs.

  • As the previous commenters have noted, this doesn’t have to play out today. Next year when the Democrats release their Vision Plan (or whatever it will be called), this will have a spot of prominence.

    The real “architects” of the modern, mutant Republican Party are Rove, Cheney, Norquist, DeLay and Dobson. The first four are all under ethical/legal clouds of some degree. Our job for the next year-plus is to keep attention focused on this fact. These guys aren’t honest, aren’t public-minded, and can’t be trusted.

  • The real “architects” of the modern, mutant Republican Party are Rove, Cheney, Norquist, DeLay and Dobson. The first four are all under ethical/legal clouds of some degree.

    As always, jeffstoned has a good point, but I think he mis-uses the term “architect�. If we use the analogy of the current Republican majority as a building, the current party leadership is more of the landlord/owner/inheritor from the architects that came up with Newt and were then sacrificed.

    In that respect alone, this is not only an important development, it is the ONLY important development from the Democrats. If it goes largely ignored, all the better. Newt was an unsupported, marginalized member of the party he ended up taking over. It was the failure of Republicans and Democrats to take the issue of integrity too seriously that empowered the “revolution.� Americans can only hope that the situation is the same today, allowing a serious foundation of integrity legislation to be built quietly under their noses.

  • I think the whole K-Street business would resonate with the public to Democratic advantage. That public servants so openly accept bribes is something everyone can understand and should be repelled by. Regardless of the behavior of any given Republican up for re-election, an ad showing a half-dozen of these criminals (or the newspaper headlines about them) would make great campaign fodder for all Democrats.

  • I mostly agree, but I’ve got a hard cae or two that I’d like to test. Maybe someone could address just what exactly counts as lobbying. I know that Bob Dole lobbies for commercial ventures, but let’s pretend that he didn’t. Would Feingold’s law prevent him from going to the Senate gym or the floor of the Senate to discuss the placement of the WWII veterans memorial or the issue of missing persons in Bosnia?

  • I believe a “lobbyist” is someone being paid to lobby for something, as opposed to the vernacular use of “lobbyâ€? as simply being to advocate for something. I would assume (anyone know specifically?) that Bob Dole could go in and “lobbyâ€?, as in advocate, for just about anything he wanted to whenever, as long as it was as a citizen, not a paid (or otherwise compensated) lobbyist.

  • I’l bet the Republicans pull an “amend then vote down” job to turn this bill into a dog. They’ll amend it with a heinous position giving them a reason to vote against it. Still, the Dems should keep setting-up the bowling pins for the Repubs to knock down, so in 2006 we can get a portion of these Republicans out of office because they voted against lobbyist reform, they voted against …

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