| The Legislators Fore! In the halls of Congress, it’s an open secret that members often return from official travel having accomplished little more than shaving a few strokes off their handicaps. Among the first transgressions to emerge from investigations into Abramoff was a golf trip he apparently funded to St. Andrews Links in Scotland, known as the home of golf. “Members are invited to speak at very nice locales all the time, particularly those who play golf,” says former congressman Martin Frost (D-Texas), a research fellow with CCPS. “There are many speaking events held where there are nice golf courses, it’s just a matter of how much time you spend actually working and how much time you spend on the links.” As a longtime staffer on Capitol Hill, Hugh Halpern ’91, ’92 has taken privately funded trips with legislators. He’s now Dreier’s chief staffer on the House Committee on Rules. “Travel is a huge problem area,” Halpern says. “I think that’s evident in that the Speaker and Chairman Dreier came out with their view that there probably should be a ban on privately funded travel. It’s not something that’s hugely popular, but the problem is how do you tell the difference between the ‘good’ travel and the ‘bad’ travel? I’ve been up here almost 20 years and I’ve done both. I’ve done far more of the good stuff when you’re out there learning about the issues. I served for four years on the Financial Services Committee, and you don’t understand how financial markets work until you’ve stood on the floor of the stock exchange in New York City. That’s something you can’t do behind a desk in Washington.” When Frost served in Congress, from 1979 to 2005, he attempted to limit his travel to daylong excursions. “I think the harm is that people with a special interest in a particular legislative point of view get to spend quality time with a member that the average public does not. I’ve come along to the view that we should eliminate all privately funded travel. It should either be paid for by the federal government, which [members] have to justify to [their] constituents, or paid for out of campaign funds.” Former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), who was awarded a distinguished public service award last year in honor of CCPS’s 25th anniversary, has arrived at the same conclusion. “It should be said up front that trips by lawmakers [are] very good things,” he said during a January CCPS forum on lobbying reform. “I think you can get a lot of insight by getting out there and poking around. I think there’s good travel and there’s bad travel that serves a recreational purpose or the interests of those who are bankrolling it. If a member of Congress needs to travel, the United States government should pay for it. If a trip is not important enough for the United States government to pay for, it is probably not important enough to the people’s business.” Under the current rules, private groups—but not registered lobbyists—can fund congressional information-gathering junkets. Often, these trips are taken to major metropolitan cities or balmy warm weather locales in the dead of Washington’s winter. Additionally, members are permitted to fly on private jets as long as they pay a first-class airfare, which is substantially less than the price of the charter flight. Hamilton, who after serving 34 years in the House now directs the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, believes all the trips can have a damaging effect. “They control your life; they control the agenda; they control the schedule,” he says of the groups that foot the bill. “It gives the special interests a huge advantage in the legislative process.” After initial pledges of bipartisanship, in February fractures began to emerge among party lines, with each party angling to cast itself as “reformers.” Democrats, for example, wanted to prohibit lobbyists from paying for any meals for members, while Republicans wanted to reduce the gift limit from $50 to $20. “Real reform means eliminating all gifts and meals from lobbyists, not just expensive ones,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said at the January forum, just days before he got into a very public spat with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over the issue. “Ninety-five percent of the American public spends less than $20 on lunch. I get paid enough to buy my own lunch.” 
Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was the keynote speaker during a lobbying reform summit in January cosponsored by AU’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.
The Lobbyists Before he became a punch line for late night TV show jokes and a cover boy for the perils of greed, Jack Abramoff lived in the rarified air of the glitzy world of Washington lobbying. He owned a restaurant at which he wined and dined clients, could often be spotted at professional sporting events, and was not bashful about flashing money in front of friends and associates. But as quickly as Abramoff seemed to have arrived on the Washington lobbying scene, he lost his way. “Abramoff wrote the book and signed it and provided members of Congress a road map on how to get around all of these things if they want to,” says Healy, a CCPS research fellow. Congress’s record in policing itself in regard to lobbying is abysmal. Thurber said he knows of no prosecutions or civil penalties assessed to any member since the Lobbying Disclosure Act took effect in 1995, and the House Ethics Committee, charged with enforcing the rules, has been paralyzed by partisan bickering. That’s prompted many, like Frost, to support the creation of an independent, nonpartisan integrity department to police the dealings of lobbyists and members. But Healy believes altering the relationship between lobbying and campaign fund raising provides the most reform bang for the buck. “If I could wave the magic wand and make one thing happen today, it would be to do away with campaign finance and institute public financing at all levels for federal elections,” he says. “We’ve been tweaking regulations for a long time now, and it hasn’t changed anything . . . If the members of Congress are serious, there really is only one place to go and that is public financing.” The cost of running for Congress has skyrocketed over the last 15 years. In 1990 congressional races considered competitive, victorious incumbents spent an average of $607,000, as compared to $1.44 million a decade later, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. The Center for Public Integrity reported that federally registered lobbyists have served as the treasurers of at least 868 political action committees (PACs) since 1998. These committees spent more than $525 million to influence the political process. “We need to have a big picture look at this thing,” Healy says. “In the world of lobbying, most Americans would like to think that things happen automatically, but we all know that they don’t. So the clash between the ideal and the real tends to be disturbing at times. I think lobbying will probably always have a certain degree of question marks around it because it deals with power, questions of influence, unequal access, all the kinds of things that most people in a democratic society don’t want to believe exist but do.” Like Thurber, Griffin remains confident that lobbying, done right, can have an enlightening effect upon the legislative process. “You educate people, you build political support back home, you build it here, you work grass roots, you maybe even buy some advertising, you make a public argument,” he says. “There are lots of tools you can bring to bear on your agenda.” continued next page >> top |
