Senate Passes Election-Year Ethics Package:

Posted By: Mark Smith

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

The legislation would bar lawmakers from accepting gifts or meals from lobbyists or moving quickly to lobbying jobs after retiring. But members of Congress could still use corporate jets for the price of a first-class ticket and accept free lodging, travel and meals from non-lobbyists.

"Trust is the foundation of our democratic government," Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said moments before the Senate voted 90-8 for the first lobbying overhaul bill in a decade. "With the public opinion of Congress at an all-time low, we have to do a better job of retaining that trust and that confidence."

The vote came just hours after a U.S. District judge in Miami sentenced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose influence-peddling activities spawned the Senate action, to five years and 10 months in prison on conspiracy and wire fraud charges.

The legislation also seeks to restrain earmarks, those thousands of special projects that make their way into legislation. Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., went to prison this year after using the earmark process to help defense contractors who had given him bribes.

The House is now working on its version of the bill, which also is expected to emphasize greater disclosure of lobbying activities. House leaders are also pushing for a provision to restrict political groups that are permitted to accept donations of unlimited size. Such groups have tended to favor Democrats, and Senate Democrats vowed to keep that out of the final bill.

Republicans and Democrats, in a rare show of bipartisanship, defended the Senate bill against critics who said it didn't go far enough. It's a "measured response to this scandal," said Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., "ensuring that special interests cannot operate under a cloak of darkness."

The bill bans lobbyists from giving gifts or meals to lawmakers, and requires lobbyists to file quarterly electronic reports of their activities, up from the current two times a year.

Lobbyists must also disclose their contributions to officeholders and political fundraisers and their "grass-roots" lobbying activities — helping clients to encourage the general public, through mass mailings or ads, to contact federal officials.

Senators must get pre-clearance from the ethics committee before embarking on privately funded trips and, when accepting rides on corporate jets, must reveal who was on board.

Lawmakers and other senior executive branch officials must wait two years, up from the current one, before accepting jobs as lobbyists trying to influence the institution where they formerly served.

But lawmakers and clean government groups who saw the scandals as a golden opportunity to enact far-reaching reform expressed disappointment in the final product. The sponsors turned back efforts to ban privately funded trips or force lawmakers traveling by corporate jets to pay more expensive charter rates, rather than the first-class ticket prices they now pay.

And the Senate on Tuesday rejected an amendment that would have created an Office of Public Integrity to carry out investigations of charges of ethics violations in the Senate.

"I believe this bill was crippled without it," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "It's not a law without an enforcement system." Supporters of an independent office argued that the congressional ethics committees, particularly in the highly partisan House, have proved incapable of investigating their own members.

The legislation also takes several steps to make Senate procedures more open. Senators would have to identify the source and purpose of earmarks, the thousands of special projects that find their way into larger bills. And a procedure is set up where lawmakers could strip out earmarks that are not in original bills but are later attached to House-Senate conference reports.

Several senators, led by John Ensign, R-Nev., and John McCain, R-Ariz., said the procedure for eliminating earmarks was too vague, and tried unsuccessfully to extend the definition to include federal as well as nonfederal projects.

Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense said 40 percent of the estimated 15,000 earmarks that were inserted in legislation last year were federal in nature.

The Senate also decided to end the practice of secret "holds," where a single senator can block action on a bill or nomination without revealing that he is the source of the delay.

The eight senators voting against the measure were Democrats Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barack Obama of Illinois and Republicans Tom Coburn and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona. Not voting were West Virginia Democrats Robert Byrd and John D. Rockefeller.

The Senate lobbying reform bill is S. 2349.

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