As you may or may not know, the House of Representatives is about to consider its version of the lobbying and ethics reform legislation that the Senate passed a few weeks ago. It is a weak bill with little to recommend it. It does not do anything about the indefensible House Ethics Committee which has been frozen since the beginning of last year, despite the unraveling of one of the biggest Congressional scandals in history. Nor does it address the issue of lobbyists, like Jack Abramoff, acting as fundraisers for Members of Congress. What's more, the House bill still includes the 527 language that Republican leaders had said would be separated out from the bill. Remember, the House has already passed 527 reform legislation.

At this point, the only reason to leave the 527 language in the bill is to use the lobbying reform legislation as leverage to make it harder for Democrats to stop the 527 reforms. If the House passes a bill with 527 language in it, it is entirely possible the conference report that reconciles the House and Senate version will include the 527 stuff even though the Senate bill did not. If that happens, then the Democrats will be in the unfortunate position of having to filibuster the lobby reform bill (gasp!) in order to block the 527 reforms. Democrats oppose the 527 limits because 527 groups were so helpful to the Democrats in the last election.

In the end, Republicans are using the lobby reform legislation as a way to pass something totally unrelated and entirely political - since Republicans in general have not historically been huge supporters of campaign finance reform, until now. I think this speaks to the general cynicism with which many members of Congress and especially Republicans have greeted this ethics reform legislation. The legislation does little to actually address the problems that have come to light as a result of the Abramoff scandal, but opportunistically the reform legislation in the House attacks the Democrats fundraising apparatus. And just so you know, I support better campaign finance laws - I just think the proposition that 527's are somehow relevant to the ethics and lobbying scandal in Congress is complete garbage.