The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) is broken and it is time for Congress to fix it. The LDA is falling woefully short of its stated goal of “ensuring public awareness of the efforts of paid lobbyists to influence the public decision-making process” and through this transparency “increase public confidence in the integrity of Government.” Lobbyists have deregistered, or simply never registered in droves. As a result the American people are left in the dark as to who is lobbying and the special interests paying them to influence decision-makers in Washington.
A new, bipartisan proposal to update the LDA seeks to change the registration and reporting requirements for lobbyists and shift enforcement of the LDA to the Department of Justice. The proposal comes out of the work of a blue ribbon Task Force assembled by the American Bar Association, chaired by Campaign Legal Center President Trevor Potter, a former Republican Federal Election Commission Chair; Harvard University law professor Charles Fried, a former Solicitor General under President George H. W. Bush; Perkins Coie attorney Rebecca Gordon, a former Deputy General Counsel to the Democratic National Committee; and attorney Joseph Sandler, a former counsel for the Democratic National Committee. The Association of Government Relations Professionals (formerly the American League of Lobbyists) has endorsed a similar set of reforms
[Disclosure: I was a member of that ABA task force.]