Man, the editorial boards are hitting Democrats hard on the lobby reform issue - as they should be. Common Cause has been on the case, as well as the rest of our partners in the reform community.
This is too important an issue to sit idly by while lawmakers act to protect their own interests over those of their constituents.
Today it's the New York Times on the offensive. Why can't the House Democrat rank-and-file understand what's apparent to everyone else?
The House’s new Democratic majority is flirting with disaster as it guts key provisions of the strict lobbying reform it promised voters last November. Rebellious lawmakers, worried about their own career path, fought their leaders to defeat tighter restrictions on the sleazy, revolving-door culture by which members of Congress move on from an apprenticeship of merely serving the people to real Washington money as insider lobbyists.
“What you are telling me is I cut off my profession,” one Democrat, Representative Michael Capuano of Massachusetts, complained in baldly defending the vox pop-to-riches scheme.
Excuse me, Congressman, but your profession at the moment is Representative of the people of the 8th District of Massachusetts, not lobbyist-in-training.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows failure to approve bundling disclosure will reduce the Democrats’ vaunted vows to political farce and shorten their chances of retaining the majority. Republicans are chortling, but the smarter moderates in their ranks better keep their eyes on the people’s agenda, not the lobbyists’ A.T.M.’s. A crucial vote over the lobby bill’s debating rule is about to determine whether reform dies at the hands of greedy incumbents. They might remember that next year’s voters will check for enactment of last year’s promises.
You can be sure they will...and I wouldn't bet on them being in a forgiving mood, either.
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