Okay, this shouldn't come as a surprise, but the lobby "reform" bill proposed by the House GOP has a huge loophole according to the Washington Post:
According to lobbyists and ethics experts, even if Hastert's proposal is enacted, members of Congress and their staffs could still travel the world on an interest group's expense and eat steak on a lobbyist's account at the priciest restaurants in Washington.The pigs feeding at the trough aren't going to give up all the freebies. They'll just have the lobbyists feed them and take them on trips through their campaigns.
The only requirement would be that whenever a lobbyist pays the bill, he or she must also hand the lawmaker a campaign contribution. Then the transaction would be perfectly okay.
"That's a big hole if they don't address campaign finance," said Joel Jankowsky, the lobbying chief of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, one of the capital's largest lobbying outfits.
It's classic GOP bait and switch. They're just going to say that they're doing reform -- but not do it. That fits their pattern. Lobby reform doesn't reform anything, like "Clear Skies" doesn't clean the skies and like "No Child Left Behind" leaves kids behind.
