Via the NYT: Senate Approves Lobbying Limits by Wide Margin

The bill would require lobbyists to file more public reports about their activities in a searchable Internet database, would demand that lawmakers receive advance approval for trips paid with private money and would bar former lawmakers and (senior aides from lobbying Congress for two years.

[...]

The measure would not ban private travel, as some members have urged. Nor would it rein in lawmakers’ ability to fly on corporate jets at heavily discounted rates, a practice that gives precious access to lobbyists, who often go along for the trip.

The measure would not do away with earmarks, though it would make it more difficult for lawmakers to insert the pet projects quietly into bills at lobbyists’ behest. And the Senate overwhelmingly rejected, 30 to 67, a move to create an independent ethics office to investigate accusations of abuse.

I am somewhat agnostic on a lot of this stuff, and am most intrested in the earmark issue–too bad that appears to be only a weak reform. I suspect that the other reforms will ultimately have very little effect on much of anything.

And, of course, there’s this:

House Republicans are split over the plan, and it is not clear whether the House and Senate will be able to agree on a measure this year.

Leaders of both parties, as well as the architects of the Senate bill, hailed its bipartisan passage at a time Republicans and Democrats rarely work together.

As such, this may well all be symbolic.

Here are the one’s who voted against:

Some of the most highly visible advocates of overhauling laws on lobbying disagreed. Senators McCain and Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, who joined forces in the lobbying debate and then had a public dispute over it, were among those voting against the bill, as was Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

[...]

The other senators who voted against the bill were John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts; and three Republicans, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Senators Robert C. Byrd and John D. Rockefeller IV, both Democrats of West Virginia, did not vote.

Opposition was based on the weakness of the bill.

One Response to “The Anti-Abramoff Act of 2024 (at Least the Senate Part)”

1. Sacramento California Says:
   October 30th, 2024 at 12:08 am

   Sacramento California